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Music Media

HP To Pay German Antipiracy Fee For CD Burners 236

Posted by timothy from the what-about-for-xerography? dept.
RiotXIX writes points to this USA Today story which reads in part: "Hewlett-Packard has become the first company to be snagged by a German law requiring firms to pay fees for making CD burners that are being used to illegally lift the latest hits off the World Wide Web. The case sets the stage for other European countries to possibly adopt similar rules to stem an epidemic that cost the music industry an estimated $5 billion last year." He adds, "DeCSS was attacked partly because the courts felt the creation of LiViD was not it's primary intention. Is this therefore insinuating that computer CD-writers were initially created to ruin the music industry?"
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HP To Pay German Antipiracy Fee For CD Burners More

HP To Pay German Antipiracy Fee For CD Burners

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  • Excuse me, as far as I know, cd sales have gone up since Napster went into business. MP3's have cost the music industry nothing, it just represents a piece of the pie they aren't getting. Unrealized profits from a technology you had nothing to do with are not losses, just missed opportunities.
  • You think this is representative of how the vast majority of people use Napster?

    If you do, you have a very optomistic view of human nature.

    KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.

  • Just remember, $6 at the manufacturer side equals about $100 at the consumer end.

    Where do you get this figure from? It sounds implausible to me.

  • I see your point, but I find it highly illogical that Hewlett Packard should be the one to pay for their customers' crimes.

    It's pretty obvious that without so much will to pirate HP would've sold much less media and CD burners, but I don't think that's any argument to convict them.

    HP wasn't peddling illegal MP3's or inducing people to pirate music on the internet. They have profited on that, true, but they haven't done anything wrong.

    Put yourself in HP's place. I'd be pissed, that's for sure.

    Flavio

  • There is one giant loophole in this law, though, which is that these fees don't apply to computer based systems, only to standalone ones. This was put in, IIRC, specifically because legislators recognized that there were so many legitimate, non-copyright related uses for computer based equipment- specifically backing up data. That's part of the reason that computer CD-RW drives, and all of the reason that computer CD-RW disks, are so much cheaper than their standalone counterparts. What people apparently didn't anticipate was that A) computers would be quite so ubiquitous so rapidly, to the point that anybody technically sophisticated enough to want to copy CDs would have a computer to which a CD-RW drive could be added and B) that it would be possible to engage in massive on-line trading instead of casual, friendly trading. Those two factors have triggered the explosion in copyright violation that's making the RIAA and friends so upset.

  • I'd like to learn more, why this came through and which parties did what in the process (in two years it's election time ;-)). The major German parties have become so similar in their behaviour that minor topics like this may make a difference...

    The couple of DM they charge for a burner do not matter much, but once they put taxes on the media...

    I don't like the idea of paying for the ability to store copyrighted material when in fact I just burn some videos from the last family reunion.
  • But them's my lyrics and I'm a gonna represent!
  • Frankly I would have stopped reading or even responding after the words "so calm down."

    He oughta know it ain't polite to tell people their concerns are insigfignicant (ok enough GWB puns).

  • MUCH more than 123 full cds actually a 128Kb/sec MP3 file is roughly 1MB/min.... so we assume a cd has a full 74 minutes on it, do the math and you get 1081 full length CD's

  • Re:That's absolutely ridiculous! (Score:3)

    by Drakantus ( 226374 ) on Saturday November 25, 2000 @11:12AM (#601862)
    What is your point exactly? There are several perfectly legal ways to shoot people with guns.

  • A clarification from someone affected by GEMA (Score:4)

    by Hanno ( 11981 ) on Saturday November 25, 2000 @12:35PM (#601863) Homepage
    People here are discussing this as if this was a new law and some outragious thing.

    It isn't. Here in Germany, every recordable media and recording equipment is affected by this pseudo-tax, since decades. The money is collected by royalty agencies such as GEMA [www.gema.de].

    This, btw, includes audio equipment such as audio tape, mini discs as well as paper copiers, e.g. copying machines, telefax machines, scanners etc. For paper copiers, the often used example is the copier in the local library. Everyone is allowed to make a copy for private use and since every copy is indirectly pseudo-taxed, the authors of printed books get their share.

    The money is then distributed to companies and the authors of copyable works (books, music, film, tv and radio broadcasts).

    I see this system from two perspectives.

    On the one hand, yes, it is a strange, bureaucratic conglomerate of royalty collecting agencies taking money from consumers.

    On the other hand, I am a semi-professional singer who has done some small studio jobs with my band [sechsrichtige.de]. We have written a song that aired in a children's show on National German TV and - boom - we got an extra check from the GEMA royalty agency (that very same agency that is responsible for the HP story above). Our album was played on some small radio stations and again, the GEMA got notified and we got a little extra income.

    There is another royalty agency collecting money from those using my band's vocal work (e.g. for jingles or dubbing work), so if we did the vocals for an advertisement song and that advertisement would be broadcast a gazillion times, we'd benefit from that (we're not that professional, though).

    And a friend of mine, a freelance radio journalist, gets extra money through an agency that is exclusively collects money for spoken radio broadcasts, so that whenever a radio stations airs some of his work as a repeat, het gets a little share from that.

    So yes, the system works. It is a strange and scary system, but the authors, composers, singers, speakers and actors who create the content for recordable media benefit from it.

    With analog media, all this kind of (*) made of sense. But with digital media, things start to become strange. In fact, there are now two different versions of CD-Rs on the market, one for computer data (no GEMA-pseudo-tax) at around 2 DM/disc and one for audio data (GEMA included) for around 5-6 DM/disc. Techically, these discs are identical. This shows that the system does not work as intended anymore.

    ------------------
  • Yeah, what are 99% of CD-RW's used for anyway? I doubt 99% of CDRs are used for burning illegal music. There are a lot of people who use a CD's decent-sized capacity to backup data or send 1.4+MB files to people. Or burning their own music CDs from several of their own legitimate CDs.

    Yes, piracy is wrong, but this seems kind of like taxing pens and copy machines because they could be used to copy copyrighted books, or taxing VCRs because they could be used to copy movies, or taxing cassette tape recorders because they could be used to copy music, or removable disk drives because they could be used to copy software (Maybe those things are taxed already. If they are, maybe this isn't such an outrageous tax. Anybody know?).
  • By the way, since some people said it half-jokingly: Yes, copying machines are affected by a similar pseudo-tax, but paper, pens and similar trivial things are not.

    ------------------
  • It is said that old war Generals tend to fight the previous wars over again. Maybe instead of getting with the times, they're instead still trying to undo the damage done when they let Gutenberg use the Printing Press!

    "Guns don't kill people... I do!" - Sledge Hammer

  • Writable or rewritable CD media have, as their primary purpose, the storage of relatively large amounts of data on easily portable media for which there is a widespread and popular read-device

    This is correct. The great majority of this data is either illegally copied music or software.

    That is the real world, deal with it.

    I know you probably want to assuage your guilty conscience by portraying music executives/copyright laws etc as 'evil', but the simple fact is that these things are there to protect the artist.

    My primary data type is the music I make, Mr ME, and I am very annoyed when I find people pirating it. This is why I welcome these laws.

    KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.

  • Yes, and companies should stop selling blank cd-r, cd-rw, audiocasettes, and videocasettes in the U.S.
  • The U.S. version is called the Audio Home Recording Act. It specifically exempts hard drives and computers, but there is a fee of several dollars for Minidisc, Audio-only CDR, and DAT devices. There is a fee of several cents on the media for these devices. This is why there's those "Music" CD-R discs that cost more. I think HP had to pay such a fee a year or so ago for one of their CD-R drives that only had audio software bundled with it.
  • this is proof that big industries make the law

  • Next thing you know there will be a 10% tax on your electric bill that goes directly to the RIAA. After all, it would be impossible to operate a computer with attached CD-Writer without electricity.
  • oops. tk-427 was in the original script, but was later changed to tk-421 after several disappointing pre-screenings.
  • i know what the better protection scheme will be:

    german cd burners won't wrtie tocs with audio tracks in non GEMA disks ...

    :-(

    well i won't buy such a device

    :-)
  • Why not make military tech companies liable for war crimes ?
  • Didn't you notice there are two kinds of blanks. A data CD and a Music CD. The music CD is for Music. If you pay for it, go for it with a clear consience. Notice the music CD blanks do cost more. Just don't use a data CD for music. That would be wrong.
  • References? URL?
  • I should think HP is mostly indifferent to the tax premium, so long as it is applied to all CD burners. The reason for the tax may be galling, but to a corporate it is just another local tax like sales tax or import duty. It is naive in the extreme to think they would contemplate abandoning the German market to the benefit of their competitors.

    It is for German consumers and business users to seek to advocate more liberal policies to their government. Of course, if the german business users do succeed then (cf another post on this strand) they could be construed to have replaced one plutocracy with another.

  • Just about every aspect of technology and science can be used for good and evil. How is it that the provider can be punished? The manufacturers have absolutely no way of knowing let alone controlling what their coustomers do with their prouducts. In all fairness, it is the abusive users who should be taking the bullet for this.
  • But you can be sure that I can listen to it anyway.

    Of course. You're a freeloader. I wouldn't expect anything else.

  • "Consumers vs. Industry = Industry wins

    Consumers and a seperate Industry vs. Industry = Consumers and seperate Industry wins.

    Pissing off HP might not be a good idea for the music industry to do."

    Unfortunately, corporations (and HP is a huge one) don't behave morally or ethically, but financially. If HP can make a profit selling these things in Gernmany with this "RIAA Tax", then they will do so.

    You are correct, "comsumer" vs corporation always ends up on the corpers side. However, laws are supposed to protect CITIZENS equally. Laws that favor corporations over CITIZENS must be fought at every turn.

  • Wow, that's kind of scary. Just imagine the possibilities.
    • Forget cell phone triangulation--the cell phone companies could be forced to put a GPS receiver in all of their phones, so that a trace always leads to an exact location (within 20 feet, or whatever the fuzz factor is for GPS).
    • Cars could be implanted with GPS receivers and two-way radios which authorities could use to track a driver's whereabouts. This could be sold to consumers as an anti-theft device (which it would be, at least until the car theives learn to disable it).
    • Speaking of implanting, surgical insertion of GPS devices has a whole new set of implications.
  • Blame Canada! They charge a piracy possibility obvious tax on CDs.
  • When the stuff you ordered comes over the border it gets taxed.
    Only if they look inside the package. And I have yet to have that happen to me (thank smurgnarf, I could never afford paying import taxes...)

    Mikael Jacobson
  • I go out and buy a CD-burner in Germany to back up my computer (ie, no infringing activity intended).

    A portion of my purchase price goes to the "copyright holders".

    Does that mean I am legaly entitled to copy their works now? After all I just paid them something - what do I get in return?

    I'm sure this argument doesn't hold any legal water, but I think it stands on moral grounds.
  • No. You are being sued in advance.
  • The International Federation of the Phonographic industry claims "about 500 million CDs are pirated annually by people creating their own CDs from downloaded tunes off the Internet. More than 25 million pirated music files are available online, the group estimates." I find that hard to believe. That would seem to be a large fraction of CD-R/CD-RW sales, but most of them are used for computer backup and other purposes.

    Why do newspapers just reprint biased estimates from institutions with an axe to grind? This is where journalists should get busy and do a bit of background research. In particular when the numbers are so out of whack.

    This is particularly common with AP stories, where no journalist ever signs responsible for it. The AP seems to have turned into a glorified PR newswire.

  • People with little dicks really shouldn't post photos of themselves. It can't possible lead to anything good.

    Just keep telling the ladies size doesn't matter, I am sure they will eventually believe you.

  • Aehm...actually this is already on their TODO list, they want the equivalent of about $20 for each sold computer.
  • So? You miss the point, which is that the gun manufacturers are in the best position to estimate what these damages will be and pay for them. Trying to make the people who are to blame pay for their damages doesn't work when people can easily cause damage beyond their net worth. Instead, insurance is necessary. The only question is, who buys the insurance. There are several possibilities: 1. The victims. This is very inefficient...we'd have to all buy gunshot insurance, and disentegrating tire insurance, and exploding Pinto insurance, etc. 2. The government. This is how damages from natural disasters are handled, and works. We could treat gunshots (and tires and Pintos, etc) as natural disasters, I suppose. 3. The product manufacturers. They know exactly how many products are manufactured, and they should know the risks, so they are in the best position to figure out how much insurance is needed. Blame is irrelevant.
  • Consumers in the US also pay additional fees like that (on blank media, including CD-R media, I believe). That was part of a copyright reform act a few years ago, and the deal was the same: consumer pay this extra fee, and in return, big content distributors would stop complaining about consumers taking advantage of fair use provisions (you can find lots of excellent links to the US laws in the discussions the last few times this came up on Slashdot).

    But, of course, collecting these fees wasn't enough for the US industry--they keep merrily complaining about piracy and implementing various technical means to deny consumers fair use rights. And the same will probably be happening in Germany.

  • Heh, I don't remember where, but some state here in the U.S. has a Marijuana Stamp Tax. Essentially, if you don't buy the stamps and get busted (since marijuana is illegal) you also get busted for the Stamp Tax. If you buy the stamps, bammo, you're under investigation and will probably get busted...you'll just not get busted for evading the stamp tax. =)
  • The fees, which are not collected by the government, are distributed by GEMA to copyright owners.

    Really? Man, I got to get a copyright on something that can be burned on to a CD. Then maybe I can get a check from GEMA.
    --

  • Bitter and jealous? You really shouldn't believe all that US propaganda. I live in the US, and I can hardly wait 'til the day I take all those hard-earned dollars out of your filthy country and move back to the old world, where life is good.
    As for being able to do anything you want: you aren't even capable of electing a goddamn president! You may have a lot of weapons, but your economic power is waning, and anything that requires a basic level of intelligence (e.g. voting) is beyond your abilities. The fact that you haven't even figured out how to post as something else than "Anonymous Coward" is proof enough of that.
  • If I'm paying the fine, I might as well do the crime, right? I mean if I'm pre-penalized, why should I not pirate? It's become my fscking duty.

  • ...or something like that.

    Boss of nothin. Big deal.
    Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.

  • The only way such a law could even have been passed is by corporate lobbying. It is just fucking stupid that a corporate entity could get away with establishing a policy that assumes guilt before innocence. I guess our nations are nothing more than hundreds of plutocracies disguised in hundres of myriad ways.
  • So if we just wrote off Florida entirely (not a bad idea in the best of times) he would be President

    Huh, no because he still lacks the 270 electoral votes the law says he needs. The race would then go to the House of Representatives.

    human eyes are better

    I hope you are never faced with eye-witness testimony in a court of law as the only evidence against you. The human eye is open to human interruptation, the machines are impartial.

    The Florida Supreme Court are all liberals, and the Federal Courts in Florida were all Clinton appointees. Fuck the courst, have a re-vote = with the sudden urgency in the my vote matters the other 90 million Americans that didn't bother would decide the election.

  • h4x0r-3l337 sez and if anything, the guy that gets the least number of votes will become president. Great job indeed Thank God for the Electoral College... ....otherwise, we'd be doing a manual recount of every state!
  • Maybe HP should just stop selling burners in Germany. Let the German tech firms who have come to rely on this technology tell their lawmakers what they think of their stupid law that says in effect everyone is guilty of piracy irrespective of their stated intentions.
  • Germany suing a company that goes by the advertising campaign, "Invent".

  • Go after the people who make the cd burners, what about the people who are using these 100% legal peices of hardware for their illegal use?

    ----------
  • Actually they have been taxing audio CDr's in the US for a while. The US law makes a difference between consumer Audio and consumer Data CD's though. And in Canada(one of the reasons this type of thing angers me), they tax data CD-R's too.

    Check out on the CD-Recording FAQ, its under section 7-13.

    http://www.fadden.com/cdrfaq/faq07.html

    I don't think, that they charge a tax on the CD Recorders yet tho.

  • Also here (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The Register is also reporting this here [theregister.co.uk]
  • Now if they'd only apply the same logic to weapons. Tag all ammunition. Then when a civillian gets shot / blown up - sue the weapons / ammo manufacturer.

    But there's far too much money in weapons for the govt to do that. Better just pick on nasty CD copiers.

    FNORD!
  • between being business friendly and having corporate America pull out of Europe in disgust over obnoxious bullshit like this. Harry Browne was correct when he said that the software industry has done a fine job at creating its own protection schemes, so let's now force the music/movie industries to do the same (ie no major government help in protecting content). It is obvious that without copyright laws we'd be screwed, even free software depends on copyright afterall, do we want Microsoft claiming credit for Linux (which they could legally do without copyright laws)? I just think that the music industry would be better off if it stopped this idiocy. Seemingly magnanimous acts like helping get better sound technologies availible for free (as in speech) and being very liberal about cd duplication would jack up the respectability of the music industry. In the end I do believe it would make people feel a bit guilty for not buying the real McCoy's.
  • Actually we do have something similar. A tax on CD-R media. Of course we also have the untaxed variety. The only difference between the two types is that one is sold in the computer department for $1/CD and the other is sold in the audio department for $7/CD. (Oh, and sometimes it says "For Music" on the label).

    Of course this relies on the honour system, so it probably doesn't achieve much, but an interesting thing to note is that it is now 100% legal for me to burn a song (that I have not paid for) to one of these expensive CD's.

  • Not "Antipiracy" (Score:5)

    by ee23 ( 257528 ) on Saturday November 25, 2000 @09:57AM (#601907)
    > Hewlett-Packard has become the first company to be snagged by a German law requiring firms to pay fees for making CD burners that are being used to illegally lift the latest hits off the World Wide Web

    Never trust what you read in the newspapers... The fee is actually not for illegally copied music, but for legally copied music. Any music privately copied and given to friends is legal. So this is a general fee that is required for all manufacturers of equipment capable of making copies of copyrighted works (audio, video, photocopiers). I think the law is from 1965 or so. It assumed that there was no practical way to control private copies of media works, so it was allowed and this general reimbursement was introduced (fee on copying equipment and media).

    The problem is obviously with computer equipment that is not just used for media, but also for data storage.

    HPs defense strategie is to say that with CD roms the manufacturer is able to prevent making private copies or at least control the copying, so the fees for their equipment should be less. I am not shure if I like the thoughts behind that more than the general fee.

    To put in into perspective: After all HP pays about $6 per CD burner to the GEMA. They announced starting work on better copy-protection schemes now.

  • as to how the German copying laws work

  • Currently such pseudo-taxes are meant to pay the copyright owners of music (and perhaps movies?).
    Since blank CDs are used to copy free software as well, perhaps free software organizations (FSF, Debian ...) should apply for a share as well?

  • Re:Maybe HP should just take it's toys and go home (Score:3)

    by Detritus ( 11846 ) on Saturday November 25, 2000 @06:34PM (#601913) Homepage
    It's about time for companies to grow some "cahunas" and stop dealing with places like this.

    Clone some Hawaiian shamans?

    It's a little weird, but it might work.

  • Re:Not "Antipiracy" (Score:4)

    by selectspec ( 74651 ) on Saturday November 25, 2000 @01:11PM (#601918)
    People. There should also be a tax on people, as they operate the computers that could copy the music. Remembering the music should be taxed. The mothers that gave birth to the people should also be taxed. People who talked with said mothers, should be taxed.
  • And even the British police are starting to pack guns now. And I demand my gun because:

    Who is ultimately responsible for my well being?

    Will police take the rap for murder if they fail to protect me? Will you? Fuck no. And even a 3 minute wait for cops to arrive and defend an unarmed citizenry is long enough for the bad guy to blow you away, rape your kids and slit your wife's throat.

    Fuck you, sir, for attempting to jeopardize me and my family by taking away my gun.

    So what if it's primary purpose is to kill? Nothing wrong with killing, so long as the right people get killed. I have the right to denend myself with deadly force.

    Just get over it, m'kay?

  • Still no president after all this time...

    No, we have a president, and his name is Bill Clinton. We just don't have a president-elect. There is a lag time of 75 days between the election and the inaguration, and we're only a couple of weeks into that. There is still plenty of time to settle the election before the winner has to take office.

    And as a side note, all these jokes about the "Banana Republic of America" are missing something. There haven't been any riots. If this situation had existed in just about any other country in the world, there would have been riots by now. That is what separates America from a banana republic.

  • by suggesting that cd-burners were made to ruin the music industry, you'd have to assume that the music industry was out to ruin itself. How else would you explain the fact that companies like Sony are manufacturing CD burners, whilst having a huge stake in the music industry?
  • Get a life. You've been reading too much Heinlein and ESR. A government has restraints bcos if they don't do what the ppl want, they'll be out of office next time around.

    You want examples of what you're talking about? Look at any South American banana republic, or several Central/East African nations. Where the government has an armed uprising to contend with, the result is CIVIL WAR. And whilst only a minority of the country may be involved in the uprising, the majority will be affected due to looting, murder, starvation, etc.

    There's 2 ways that a country can be ruled, and only 2. Either you allow democracy, in which case ppl are voted into office and voted out of office; or you accept the rule of "might is right" and if you get in the way you get killed or disappeared. You want to allow ppl the right to shoot whoever they choose, then fine - just don't expect sympathy when it's your kids that are murdered.

    Armed uprising sounds all fine and dandy to your average hormonal teenager who's not seen too much of the outside world, and learned everything he knows playing Quake. Grown-ups, particularly those with spouses, children and other loved ones, have a rather different view of arbitrary violence.

    Grab.
  • http://www.eactivism.org/decss/
  • I would gladly pay an extra $6 on a CD burner if it meant more freedom to use the information I buy how I want.

    You should already *have* that freedom...you shouldn't have to pay extra for it. You shouldn't have to pay for constitutional rights. Should I pay a "knife" tax to compensate for those people who might buy knives and stab others?
  • You are a moron for titling your post Imagine This. I'll tell you why. It sounds like an advertisement for this sort of crap not an argument.

    I am an artist. I use CDRs to store my stuff for sale. I do not need to pay the German gov't a tax (through increased prices on equipment) which never comes back to me, the artist.

    I also use pen and paper. I've heard there's artists out there who use pen and paper to copy other artists' lyrics.

    Pay me for your ink and paper.

  • Looks ok to me in IE4, what browser are you using?

  • In a similar vein... (Score:4)

    by knarf ( 34928 ) on Saturday November 25, 2000 @11:43AM (#601955)
    This is an ongoing trend in Europe (and also in Canada I think), levies on equipment and media which CAN be used to copy copyrighted works.

    Paper can be used to copy copyrighted works. Why not put a surcharge on paper?

    FLASH-RAM can be used to copy copyrighted works. Why not charge that as well?

    I know the proceedings are supposed to go to the artists (they do, in fact, go to institutions like BIEM, GEMA, BUMA/STEMRA et al, which are supposed to share the spoils with the artists) for 'legal copying of protected works for personal use'. But why do they have to be paid for that? The law in many countries says it is legal to reproduce a copyrighted work for personal use, as long as you have paid the copyright fees (by buying the CD, video, etc). After you've paid, you may copy the work as many times as you wish, as long as you do not violate the copyright by giving those copies to others who have not paid. So I see no reason why there has to be an extra payment so you can do what is already legal.

    Of course, part of the reason for these fees is that people DO in fact give copies to others who have not paid. But by putting a fee on 'suspected' devices and media, buyers are automatically 'fined' for 'crimes' they have not comitted (yet).

    All European laws uphold the principle that a person is innocent until proven guilty. By making people pay a fine before they commit a crime, they (state governments) are breaking their own laws. They are violating their own constitution. If the laws can not be upheld, they should either change the law or find ways to make people abide by them. They should NOT make people pay for crimes they have not commited. By doing this, they create the illusion that it is OK to break the law, since the fines have already been paid.

    [I also posted this comment on linuxtoday btw.]
  • I stopped buying CDs for USD$19..$21 when I decided I'd had enough of companies ripping me off. We're talking about 1,000% markup on merchandise and these imbecilic law suits by RIAA & MPAA & others who can't carry a fucking tune and certainly don't want to pay the musicians a fucking cent.

    Don't call me a fucking crook. I buy from MP3.COM and direct from the artist and not from the multi-mega-buck churn mills who make sure that this week's hits are tomorrow's has-been to make space on the shelf more important than what you want to hear.

    I loathe the slime that musicians have to deal with to get their music out. Been there, done that and the industry toadies can find a splintery telephone pole and impale themselves 'til their guts squirm out of their throats.

    I've seen talentless scum who were willing to play the game get deals while better musicians than I got fuck-all and even the talent-challenged are now working as office temps because the mill guarantees that you make it against the industry not with it
  • burners don't pirate, people pirate

  • They are all out to steal from us (Score:3)

    by Felinoid ( 16872 ) on Saturday November 25, 2000 @09:25PM (#601980) Homepage Journal
    It seems this is an old law based on the notion that piracy can not be prevented. So it is infact legal to do so.

    A very good recomendation was for HP to pick up and leave. I wish to extend this notion.
    No.. EVERYONE should pack up and leave. Microsoft due to lack of effective piracy laws and IoMega for the potental for piracy using the Zip and Jaz drives.

    Both sides are hurt by this addatude...
    Hardware makers for being tagged negitively and content sources for lack of protection against theft.

    Hay let's hit Intel.. they make ROMs that can store data.. and CPUs that can convert that data into music or other such information sources.

    Napster, Sony, HP, Intel, Linux, Microsoft it's all one great big conspericy to steal music we can not posably contend with it so we'll just pass some dumpy laws instead.

    [Incase anyone was wondering.. Sony sells tape recorders.. My reel to reel tape is a Sony]
  • What I have a problem with is this idea.I have a problem with the government making a law that basically taxes consumers, and gives the money over to some capitalist company? Since when have laws been made to protect the rights of multi-billion dollar industries? Since those companies started paying the politicians I suppose. But we have to keep our eyes open. I don't want to fall down this slippery slope where we are pretty much forced to pay companies for their services, whether we use their services or not. Before we know it, there will be several big companies that just raking in cash the government gets from the general population. Okay, I might be exaggerating a bit, but I'm sure you'll see more of this in the US. Companies whining because they're losing money (and it's their "RIGHT" to ask the government to do something about it...) and trying to get laws passed with propaganda that the laws are "Moral" and "For the sake of the artists". Bull. Companies should be making money by offering useful items and services that people want. Not by getting the government to tax items because they've fallen behind the technology curve.

    Peace out,
    -Kefabi
  • Punished? Surely you are simply paying for the privilege of being allowed to copy that material?

    Seems to me that if you _pay_ to be allowed to do a thing, that thing is tacitly accepted by the people you're paying. I don't see much grounds for 'you aren't ever allowed to do this! But gimme a buck in case you do anyway'.

  • Um.

    Do you mean to say that your band name/stage name is taken directly from a They Might Be Giants song on the 'Lincoln' album, 1988? Or was this just your unusual way of saying that you feel protective over 'Kiss The Blade' music?

    It seems strange to on the one hand be totally anchored in the musical tradition of ripping off artists you like, and on the other hand not giving your potential fans this liberty. It's rather like Led Zeppelin ripping off old blues artists (but their art is not free! Oh no!) except that almost anyone will recognize 'Mr. Me' as a TMBG song if they have any familiarity with that album.

    Sheesh...

  • Does this mean it's LEGAL now? (Score:4)

    by Checkered Daemon ( 20214 ) on Saturday November 25, 2000 @10:20AM (#601996)
    So I gotta pay $X extra when I buy a CDRW, and the money somehow goes to the music industry. So I'm paying them now for the POSSIBILITY that I might use it to burn a copywrited song. OK. I'm paying for it. Does that mean that it's LEGAL now for me to do so?

    Is that the sound of lawyers drooling on the table that I hear?
  • "I stopped buying CDs for USD$19..$21 when I decided I'd had enough of companies ripping me off. We're talking about 1,000% markup on merchandise and these imbecilic law suits by RIAA & MPAA & others who can't carry a fucking tune and certainly don't want to pay the musicians a fucking cent."

    That's WHY they want taxes like this. That way you pay them off no matter what you choose to do. An indie artist who buys equipment to produce their OWN CD also pays the RIAA/MPAA. It seems the RIAA/MPAA think they have some kind of fundamental RIGHT to ever increased profit.
  • In Canada, we have a similar situation: there's a tax on all CD-R media that is designated as "CD audio" material (you know the little logo on it), and the tax doesn't go to the government, or the artists. It goes directly to the Canadian equivalent of the RIAA.

  • A better way (Score:5)

    by Vassily Overveight ( 211619 ) on Saturday November 25, 2000 @10:44AM (#602003)
    With the cost of GPS chips dropping so rapidly, maybe it would be cheaper for manufacturers to equip each drive with a GPS receiver that disables the burner if the user is within German national boundaries. (No, I'm not serious. But some of the weirdest things seem to come true, so don't discount this completely.)

  • Re:Music /Industry/ (Score:3)

    by SlashGeek ( 192010 ) <petebibbyjr.gmail@com> on Saturday November 25, 2000 @10:46AM (#602005)
    If big companies didn't spend big money on making bands popular, you wouldn't be buying their t-shirts, and if it weren't for that big company, spending big money making them popular, who would see them in concert either? Who would fund the concert to begin with?

    I'm not siding with the RIAA or the MPAA, I think they are both overly greedy, but how do we usually become familliar with a band? Radio, MTV, etc. Do you really think that studio time, advertising, music videos, and touring are cheap? One hand does wash the other, record companies spend big $$$ promoting bands, bands get big $$$ from promotions, (concerts, tshirts, hats, etc.), and the record companies make their money back, and profit, from CD sales. Too much profit, I agree, but that is how it works.

    Ask any band who is trying to make it "big". They're all begging for a record contract. It would be nice to say that we could do away with greedy record companies, but the investment required to make a return is too great. Any artist can make music free, but music, as an industry, will always need some type of investor assistance.

    So, in response to the previous posters comment "Burning their music hurts the /industry/ more than the artists themselves.", he/she is probably right, for the most part. But don't overlook all aspects of the record companies involvement. It does, in the end, hurt the artist as well.

    Freeing ourselves from record companies will have to begin with the artists themselves, taking huge leaps of faith, and huge chances, promoting themselves on the internet. Huge, because the amount of propaganda and mass media control (radio, TV) will always belong to the deep pockets of large corporations.

  • This is obvious but everyone is reading it as if they are the same.

    In Germany you are _allowed_ to rent a movie and copy it for personal use (use with familly or having close friends over). People pay a special "copying" tax for this. In Germany macrovision is illegal because it stops you from using your right to copy video tapes which you paid a tax for.

    This is why it's not unusual for them to tax CDROM burners because those are used for copying also.

    Did you know that the LiViD web site is hosted in Germany for legal reasons?

    It's not as bad as Slashdot is making it seem. It's just different.

  • No, it isn't legal. This just takes care of the lawyer fees needed to prosecute the people who use the CD-R blanks. *g*

    --

  • Musicians, although making very little from cds, make most of their money from concerts, t-shirts, and other trademarked stuff. Burning their music hurts the /industry/ more than the artists themselves.
    So I say, screw the industry, free the music, and pay for the awesome concerts ;P (And t-shirts of course)
  • Too late. Audio cassettes have been handled this way for some time. You didn't know that? That's the same Home Recording Act that was supposed to establish 'fair use' principles that the RIAA are now reneging on.

    You _didn't_ actually know that if I an independent musician buy consumer blank cassettes to record my music on, I'm forced to pay off my own deeply entrenched competition? That I PAY THEM to obliterate me? This isn't a free market, what made you think it was? We're talking about the MUSIC BUSINESS for crying out loud ;P

    An interesting sidenote is that if you wiped out government it'd be all the easier to exert this type of force on a purely economic basis- in other words if there's no government taxes are even HIGHER as long as there's an RIAA capable of extorting the taxes out of small store owners and putting them out of business by withholding product if they won't play ball.

    Personally I'd like to see _more_ government involvement, just not this corporate-welfare sort, speaking as someone who has literally paid RIAA taxes on his own musical endeavors for years.

  • Consumers vs. Industry = Industry wins

    Consumers and a seperate Industry vs. Industry = Consumers and seperate Industry wins.

    Pissing off HP might not be a good idea for the music industry to do.

  • Hmm, sounds just like the gun industry here in the USA. People use your product in an illegal way? Well then, obviously its your fault somehow, so let's tax you, the source of a perfectly legal product, instead of going after the people who use it in illegal ways. Right. When will the governments figure out that, from an economics standpoint, trying to cut the supply of an item in demand only increases demand? If a government decides that a certain product is eeeevil, why not work on cutting demand, and supply will go away on its own? Some people just have no business in the government. Oh well.
  • This goes further.

    • Scanners, in Germany, are sold with drivers that slow them down to avoid the GEMA tax on copying functions. Above a certain speed the scanner is considered a copying machine and costs taxes.
    • PC boards like Hauppauge WinTV are crippled in their recording capabilities to 320x240, because if the software allowed full PAL recording there would be an extra tax. (Of course, it's not a hardware limitation, it's the -Windows- software that is crippled. Check out KWinTV or xawtv and see the difference.)
    I'm just waiting for the GEMA to tax my brain, because from time to time, we do a little Blues Brothers music in our free time (and at University festivals). And I know the music by heart (i.e. brain).

    What I'd like to know is how much the GEMA actually forwards to the musicians, and how much they keep for themselves. Anyone?

  • You are exactly right. Why should a product that has many legal. legitimate uses be "assumed" to be used for illegal purposes? Should there be a "tax" on screwdrivers because they can (and are) used to break into houses?

    Why not go after the people who actually break the law?

    The answer is simple: they don't want to. It's easier to "tax" the product and distribute it to corporate monopolies like the RIAA.

    I guess they can tax paper, pens and xerox machines because they can be used to copy books.

    BTW, isn't this German statute similar to one the RIAA/MPAA tried to get in the USA some time ago?

    Something has to be done to get lobbyist influence OUT of government.
  • This reminds me of the way poluters are treated in the States. "Pay this "fee" and we will let you violate this law."

    Of course, the money will never go to the people supposedly harmed by the action they are collecting the money for. It will just go into the government's coffers and never be seen again.

    What bothers me the most is that they seem to think that the general polulace is too stupid to figure this out. (Then again, they may be right...)
  • You are an Artist. You have spent Two years working on your latest album. You have spent countless time trying to make it.

    Now it's payback time.

    Or so you thought. It turns out that everyone has the capacity to ruin your work & livelyhood at a whim. Wouldn't you want to license this technology?

    Imagine you work as a programmer (as you probably do) and furthermore that you make your money from the code you write.

    Now imagine that somehow someone has invented a way of getting the source from your binaries and copying at will. Wouldn't you be annoyed? The boot would be on the other foot then, wouldn't it?

    I purport that these measure are perfectly reasonable. I mean, what are 99% of CD-RW's used for anyway? It is right and good that the artists should be compensated.

    KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.

  • but at least we'll never see crap like this.

    No you have software patents, the DMCA and possibly the UCITA instead. America has just as many crap laws as Europe.
  • No he didn't, he was arrested due to pressure from the global cartel and has since received an official apology from the Norwegian government.
  • Exactly, that's why the government in the US is far more honest than the one in, say, Denmark. Don't make me laugh. Your government is the most corporate-owned in the world. And correct me if I'm wrong, but the DMCA was passed to benefit corporate cartels, so does this mean you're going to Washington to shoot up Congress.
  • I think you are looking at it in the wrong perspective. The tax does not assume guilt, it compensates for a privaledge, and that privaledge is the personal freedom of information. As Americans, (and just about everyone else too) we pay taxes for the creation of roads. Should this be abolished because it is wrong to say that everyone old enough to pay taxes is a driver? What if you live in a high density city like New York and can walk everywhere you need to. What if you are a recluse and have everything delivered to you. The same goes for any job payed for with taxes. What if you don't want mail? Too bad, it is assumed that you will use that resource so you pay for it. I would gladly pay an extra $6 on a CD burner if it meant more freedom to use the information I buy how I want.


  • Exactly. The law is rediculous. Why not stretch the claim to hard drives or RAM or computers. This is exactly the kind of inovation stifler that is driving down the Euro.

  • Here's my view: As a North American (both Canada and the USA do this), I'm paying a tax to the MPAA, RIAA, et al. when I buy a CD burner or blank CD. Therefor, I no longer have any moral obligation or good financial reason to NOT copy material with this burner. In fact, they seem to be encouraging that behavior. Any law that says differently is contradicting their statements of what they want you to do. I'm being punished for breaking a law I haven't actually broken, so I might as well get something out of it.

    Yes, I know this wouldn't work as a defense in court. And I am aware of the posts that say German copyright law works differently. But it needs to be said, to point out that these groups have lost whatever moral high ground they may once have held.


    -RickHunter
  • I think you (and many others) failed to realize just how much of an impact Napster and the like have had on music in general. I rarely listen to the radio, watch MTV, or otherwise faithfully consume the forumla music the recording industry tries to ram down my throat.

    Granted, a large percentage of Napster users likely just search for the "big name" artists, hell, thats what I first did. But then, after awhile, I started browsing the music of people who had songs I was interested in, and as such, I've been exposed to a huge amount of music I'd otherwise never have heard of.

    Sure, the recording industry is still necessary, but they're becoming less relevant everyday. For me, they're practically useless. I have no interest whatsoever in the Britney/N'Sync/etc crud. And it really pisses me off when I purchase a CD, knowing that they get the lion's share of the profits. But I still buy 'em, knowing that at least a bit of the money gets to the artist. About the only thing that I feel guilty about is the mp3's I really enjoy that I can't find CD's for.

  • Because the DMCA doesn't stifle anything does it? Isn't the US great?
  • Someone moderated this post's parent as a troll. Whether it is or not, in my opinion this person has a valid point although I do have a few nitpicks.

    Writable CDs are a HUGE market and I too have my doubts on how much of it is for "legitimate" use. Also, most people use CD-Rs and not CD-RWs as even now the cost of CD-RWs aren't worth it, although I don't know what the situation is like in Europe.

    In either case, copying CDs isn't "getting the source from your binaries", it is a lot more like copying the binary software itself, as few people have software that turns an audio stream into sheet music and/or lyrics, which is closer to "the source code" of music, the PCM stream on a CD is not "the source code" as it is "compiled" using instruments, vocals and mixers.

    BTW: Artists usually don't get compensated when recording media and devices get taxed and probably never have been. The taxes typically fatten up the "label", the company that signed them, but this might vary by country as well.
  • If industry cabals like the RIAA are legal, why not an industry cabal of CD and DVD recorder ad MP3 player makers who boycott countries/states that presume guilt on devices (not lawbreakers) and "tax" them.

    Partly, at least, because there's a lot of overlap between the hardware manufacturers and the content providers. Companies like Sony and Phillips are heavily involved in both sides of the market. It appears that they currently make more money from milking copyrights than they do from manufacturing consumer electronics, so the music and movie people get to call the shots. One more reason why massive conglomerates are bad for the consumer.

  • Re:Imagine this. (Score:3)

    by Digitalia ( 127982 ) on Saturday November 25, 2000 @09:46AM (#602084) Homepage
    Sir, your car can, and has, and will be used to kill someone. I believe you should be jailed to prevent my death as a pedestrian. After all, 99% of pedestrian deaths are the fault of the driver. It is right and good that I should be protected.

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