UK Campaign for Digital Rights condemns German PC levy [LWN.net]

From:		"Julian T. J. Midgley" <jtjm@ukcdr.org>
To:		cdr-press-contacts@ukcdr.org
Subject:		Press release: UK CAMPAIGN FOR DIGITAL RIGHTS CONDEMNS GERMAN PC LEVY
Date:		Thu, 13 Mar 2003 13:22:11 +0000 (GMT)

For Immediate Release
13 March 2003

Press Contact: Julian Midgley <jtjm@ukcdr.org>,
               Phone: +44 (0)7713 166000

UK CAMPAIGN FOR DIGITAL RIGHTS CONDEMNS GERMAN PC LEVY

Industry and consumer groups in Germany are to fight on against a 12 Euro levy
on every PC sold. The levy -- to be imposed under a three-year old law -- will
supposedly compensate copyright holders for copyright infringement by PC
users. The CDR condemns the charge, which will drive up the cost of PCs but
result in no benefit to consumers at all.

The European Union is currently in the process of bringing its copyright laws
into line with US practice, which will benefit media corporations at the
expense of consumer rights, according to the CDR's Chris Lightfoot: "This is
just another attempt to exploit new copyright laws to make consumers subsidise
record companies, which are really the dinosaurs of the information age. We'll
be keeping a close eye on this one, since there's every chance that this
stupid idea will spread to other parts of the European Union."

"Copyright levies are inherently regressive taxation," he continues, "since
they don't take into account ability to pay. Worse, the effect is to punish
everyone for copyright infringement by only a few users. Businesses and people
who never listen to music on their PCs will wind up subsidising the record
companies. In effect, this is collective punishment."

By forcing everyone to pay for the abuses of a minority, levies may well
increase copyright infringement. "Nobody likes to think that they're paying
through the nose and getting nothing in return," says CDR's Jim
Peters, "So I can well imagine that some consumers will respond to this tax by
starting to download music when they would otherwise have bought it in the
shops or from legitimate music download sites, so this is unlikely to improve
the situation in any way."

German trade association BITKOM estimates that the tax will cost German
consumers an extra 70 million Euros annually. British consumers should expect
to suffer just as much if such a levy were implemented in the UK. For the
moment, HM Treasury rejects imposing such a tax here, but those in other
countries may not be so lucky.

In many European countries, computer users are already forced to pay
over-the-odds for recordable CDs on which a similar levy is charged. This
makes everyday tasks like data backup more expensive, and puts businesses
which must pay the levies at a disadvantage to those elsewhere. In Chris
Lightfoot's view, "Europe is a free market, and to encourage fair competition
we should abolish these expensive levies everywhere."

While there's no reason to expect that a PC tax will lead to organised
smuggling of computers, there's every reason to suppose that German consumers
will buy their PCs abroad to escape the charge, just like price-conscious
British consumers buying cheap beer in Calais. It can hardly be the intention
of the German authorities to put money into the hands of retailers outside
Germany, but that may be the effect of their new tax.

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REFERENCES:

In the news:
http://idg.net/ic_1187905_9676_1-5122.html
http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20030312-120912-6894r
http://www.giantstepsmts.com/DRM%20Watch/germanpclevy.htm

German Patent Office press release:
http://www.dpma.de/infos/pressedienst/pm030206.html

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Campaign for Digital Rights is an organisation that campaigns for fair and
balanced laws for the information society. We fight for freedom of speech
online, positive fair use rights for copyrighted material and for consumer
rights in the digital age. For more information, please contact us or see our
website, http://ukcdr.org/.

This press release will be permanently available from:

http://ukcdr.org/files/press-releases/20030313_german_piracy_levy.txt

-- 
Julian T. J. Midgley                         | http://ukcdr.org/
                                             | jtjm@ukcdr.org
UK Campaign for Digital Rights               | Mobile: 07713 166000
Cambridge, England.                          | PGP Key ID: 0xBCC7863F

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UK Campaign for Digital Rights condemns German PC levy

Posted Mar 13, 2003 21:04 UTC (Thu) by arcticwolf (guest, #8341) [Link]

Actually, the idea behind this compensation is not so much compensation for copyright infringement, but compensation of fair law under german law, which includes, for example, making copies of CDs etc. for friends (IANAL, though). Of course, the fact that the industry is, at the same time, not only trying to limit what you can do by means of DRM techniques (fair use is not a *right* you have under german law, unfortunately) but also pushing for DMCA-like legislation that would make it illegal to even try is not exactly well-perceived.

Unfortunately, the industry has been quite successful in shifting the public's view of this compensation away from one for fair use allowed under copyright law to one being awarded for lost revenues due to real or perceived copying (which I refuse to call piracy).

Presumption of Guilt Taxes

Posted Mar 13, 2003 21:40 UTC (Thu) by utoddl (subscriber, #1232) [Link]

I've never been even slightly tempted to use my computer to copy music or movies -- fair use or illegally. But if I were forced to pay one of these presumption of guilt taxes on my hardware and/or blank media, then I would be sorely tempted to take up the practice, if only because I like to get what I paid for.

Maybe I'm too close to the issues and read too much free as in speech coverage, but I personally feel that the whole intellectual property morass will prove to be the biggest challenge facing humanity for the first half of this century -- bigger than terrorism (it feeds the seeds of economic discontent), bigger than AIDS (hindering implementation of effective treatment and prevention programs), bigger than health care (driving up costs), bigger than environmental degradation (proping up obsolete institutions the basic structure of which depends on env. exploitation).

So what's all that to do with the music and movie industries? Not much, directly; they could disappear overnight in their current guises with arguably no great loss to humanity. But they are bringing to a head the first great conflict of IP vs. humanity. How successfully we deal with their threat will set the tone for the truly important battles to come.

Wow, that got me started. Must have hit a nerve.

12 euro for freedom?

Posted Mar 14, 2003 12:12 UTC (Fri) by libra (guest, #2515) [Link]

If paying 12 euro is enough to protect freedom of use for computers in Germany, or anywhere else, it is maybe not that bad.
What worry much more is the price to pay for additional chips and protection systems in computers that are intended only to reduce usability of these machine.
Maybe one day computers will become unusable, wether you pay 12 euro more or less, so paying now 12 euro more if it reduces the risk to have unusable computer later is not that bad.
Anyway I'm not completely stupid (or at least I hope so) and as you may understand by reading me I would find acceptable to pay 12 euro tax for computers ONLY IF there is a law that also prevent computer makers to sell anything with their computers which is not completly related to usability for the consummers (like DVD with zone restriction, protection chips, anti-copy mecanism etc...)

12 euro for freedom?

Posted Mar 17, 2003 10:02 UTC (Mon) by bockman (guest, #3650) [Link]

But it will not be _only_ 12 euro, but _also_ 12 euro.

12 euro ony covers the price of 1 CD (maybe 2, if it is > 20 years old music). You can't expect recording industry saying "Ok, give me 12 euro for each PC and then copy away". They wouldn't last one year.

Instead, I see this as part of the same strategy of mandating content protection technology in PC, because it pushes the same idea that "PC are only used to consume digital contents protected by copyright", so that
the recording industry has the right to do whatever it takes to 'recover' the 'lost' money.

12 euro for freedom?

Posted Mar 20, 2003 9:54 UTC (Thu) by beejaybee (guest, #1581) [Link]

Well I don't find it acceptable to be expected to pay _anything_ in order to avoid being penalised for a crime I'm not committing.

Acceptance of this "tax" is effectively saying that Big Business has the right to extort money from non-consumers. 12 Euros today, 12,000 dollars tomorrow? What's to stop them?

The _principle_ of the "tax" is _wrong_ and _must_ be fought at every level; the _amount_ of the "tax" simply doesn't matter.

12 euro for freedom?

Posted Mar 25, 2003 20:42 UTC (Tue) by roelofs (guest, #2599) [Link]

Well I don't find it acceptable to be expected to pay _anything_ in order to avoid being penalised for a crime I'm not committing.

And what do you think you're doing with every CD-R, CD-RW, DVD-R, DVD-RAM, DVD+RW, etc., that you buy? The limiting cost isn't due solely to manufacturing overhead and patent royalties, I assure you... There's a presumption of guilt built into those, too. (And quite possibly in the corresponding drives, although I don't recall for sure.)

Greg Roelofs