Germany Increases 'You Are All Pirates' Tax On Solid State Media By 2000%
We have similar 3% in the US on blank media cds (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_copying_levy#United_States" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_copying_levy#United_Sta...</a>). The Audio Home Recording Act of 1992, the same legislation that put these levies into place, also protected the rights of individuals to make non-commercial copies of copyrighted works. At least that's my read on it, though I am not a lawyer.<p>All of the comments here seem vehemently opposed to the levy mentioned in the article but if it came with an extension of our rights to non-commercially copy and share works then I think that it would be a very fair trade. I would even be relatively unopposed if this was applied to bandwidth usage. Technologically speaking, there's no reason that a person shouldn't be able to go online and check out almost any song, movie, book, or television show in existence. Many, many people are aware of this and with good reason feel that it should be the case. The barrier to this is in the quagmire of licensing that is exemplified by what we've seen go on with Showtime, HBO, and Netflix.<p>Imagine if the government would stand up and say that universal access to art, literature, and educational materials is important enough that the laws need to be changed to facilitate it. If non-commercial exchange of copyrighted materials was legalized but in exchange bandwidth was taxed and the money paid out as royalties to rights holders based on torrent activity or something of the sort. To me, that sounds like a better alternative than having a country full of criminals. I'll keep dreaming.