taxes on (potentially fostering piracy) CD burners

[Olivier Berger]

Lutz Horn a écrit :
> 
> This comes as no surprise here in Germany. This fee is payed by the
> manufacturers of empty audio or video tapes or audio or video recorders
> since each of these technologies were available. The idea behind it is
> that the author of some peace of art (a song, a film, etc.) has the
> right to get some money for it. At the same time there is some kind of
> "fair use" rule which allows the consumer to copy a CD or a video tape
> for his own private use, even for his friends. The money the author
> doesn't get for these copies is payed by the fee added to the price of
> the recorder or the empty media. This arangement is considered legal
> because there is not way to control what the consumer does with the CD
> or video tape he bought and trying to control it would pose to great
> difficulties.
> 

FYI France's situation is the same for empty video and audio tapes and
CDs (for the latter since the beginning of this year).

Some people in the government counceling circles think about extending
it to every digital memory systems as hard-disks or digital camera
memory cards.


-- 
Olivier BERGER - Secrétaire de l'association APRIL 
APRIL (http://www.april.org) - Vive python (http://www.python.org)
Pétition contre les brevets logiciels : http://petition.eurolinux.org