Spain Adds 'Copyright Tax' to Blank Media

[roma_turok]

On Thursday, June 22, 2006 the Spanish Congress voted to implement a tax on all blank media, including flash memory sticks, blank cd and dvd-rs, even mobile phones and printers. There is no word on how much this new tax will be, only that the revenues will be collected by the government, and will then be given to the "copyright holder."

Is this an example of what is to come in the United States or other parts of Europe? People have long discussed this concept, known as "compulsory licensing." Meaning that basically the government assumes people are going to be putting copyrighted material on this blank media, Other ideas in the same vein include licensing fees imposed on DSL or cable customers, again assuming they are going to be making unauthorized copies of copyrighted material.

This takes fair use and completely throws it out the window. God forbid you have taken some home videos and copied them to a blank cd or memory chip. You will be paying into some kind of fund administered by some kind of beaurocrat and overseen by some RIAA/MPAA type trade organization.

Please prevent this from happening in your country.

http://www.zeropaid.com/news/6672/Spain%2BAdds%2B%27Copyright%2BTax%27%2Bto%2BBlank%2BMedia

[edDV]

Are they really going to give the money to the "copyright holder"? Or their favorite copyright holders (political corruption). How do they determine what was recorded?

[yoda313]

I thought they've always had that???

I thought they implemented that on the very first recordable cds. And I thought that was the battle for delaying 80 minute cdrs because they didn't want us to be able to copy the long play discs.

EDIT - Besides this would be a punishment to those who would use it strictly for data backup such as family photos or document files.

[sacajaweeda]

Sounds pretty unconstitutional to this American.

This is the kind of tripe that sparked the Boston Tea Party.

We've since evolved.

[Conquest10]

What if you put your own data one there? Can you show the data on the disc and get your "tax" back?

[Bron]

Sure it can happen in America. Don't you remember the CD-R "for Music" CD blanks that included a copyright fee that was collected and split among the big Corporations. And to make it worse, the stand-alone CD copiers (consumer) could only record to this type of CD. It was stupid, ineffective, probably illegal (IMHO), but it took place right here in jolly ol' USA, the land of the free.

Don't think they aren't trying even now to stop fair use every way they know how. The DRM crap laws are a case in point, but don't get me started....

[painkiller]

Won't be long before we become known as:

The Land of the Fee.

Globally.


(sheesh - Spain. Aren't they the ones that left?)

[Nelson37]

This is a method to get around the Constitution that has been in use since the 1930's.

Automatic weapons were not made illegal, there was a requirement applied to pay a tax and obtain a tax stamp, then they just issued extremely few stamps. This law was used as the model for the Marijuana Tax act, though they changed the procedure just slightly and never issued any tax stamps at all. Though I have seen a reproduction of one apparently printed in Wisconsin or Minnesota in the 1930's, and this one example is the only one I have ever seen or heard of, and I have done a pretty fair amount of research on this. The tax is $100.00 per ounce, BTW.

I might be wrong on which came first, but one was the model for the other.

There is a tax on your phone bill enacted to pay for the Spanish-American war of 1898.

The existence of such things relies on the ignorance of the American people about their rights and freedoms. An informed public will refuse to be treated in such a way.

[Marvingj]

Stupid, Stupid, Stupid!!!

[edDV]

Our telephone bills are full of taxes like this that just never expire.

[adam]

A little bit of background...which probably makes this law even worse. Spaniards have actually been paying a tax on recordable media for some years now. The law that imposed it was a tradeoff for the right to make a single personal copy of any media you own. What this law does is remove this personal copying right and change the rationale for the tax. Now the tax is imposed purely to compensate copyright holders for infringements...basically those infringements which cannot be stopped. That is why it is applied indescriminately. It doesn't matter if you are burning a home movie, its just a tax that all consumers of this product have to share. But if there's some good news, the tax is now proportional to the price of the item so on average the amount consumers pay is probably going to be less. Previously they were often paying more in taxes for a blank cdr/dvdr than the price of the actual disc.

Many countries use a similar tax but only to compensate the music industry...and the tax is only on music cdrs and the devices that use them. The tax is a tradeoff though for the right to make copies of music in the first place. So Bron I would not say it was ineffective in the US. Without it there would be no right to make a backup copy of your music CD, or make a copy for each of your cars, etc...

As for how the taxed money is given to the copyright holder, I can only tell how it is done in countries that tax music cdrs and hardware. The price of the tax is set by the government but a board elected by industry representatives is in charge of collecting and distributing the money. They use a formula based on sales to distribute it to each label or independant artist and then the label uses their own formulas to compensate their artists. So in short, a more lucrative artist is going to get a larger cut. Its tough to trust the music industry with the artist's money but the whole process is heavily regulated and the penalties are extremely severe so it probably works about as well as can be expected. Except in the case of this Spanish law its not just the music industry dividing the money its all entertainment industries, which I assume means music, motion picture, and software industries. That would have to be pretty damn complicated to divide the money.

[ROF]

This is sad.

A government has imposed a tax on a specific corporate product because the corporation can not prevent illegal copying of information stored on the product and the government can not arrest the population commiting these crimes because than the government taxes collected would drop significantly. So instead, the government gets involved in a corporate sponsored tax in order to punish both the innocent and the guilty amongst their constituents. I am glad I don't live in Spain.