(no subject)

[warthog9]

Something just doesn't seem right to me. Copyright law around the world is one of the greatest things in the world. It gives people protection for their ideas and the creative works that they make. However in recent months (possibly even the last year) I've seen the copyright system so badly abused it's driving me nuts.

Recently a German court handed down a verdict that all computers sold in Germany will now have a tax levied upon them that will go to a company by the name of VG Wort. Sadly I don't speak or read German, and the translators seem to have a hard time on their website so some of my thoughts and opinions to follow will probably be misdirected a bit but still valid in general.

This kind of taxation is taxation without proper representation. Plain and simple. I'm guessing that VG Wort is either a clearing house for people to get some royalties for lost revenues (how they decide what you get is beyond me) or that it's a company working for the German version of the RIAA. Regardless while I can see their position of wanting to protect their works and that the internet has brought a rampant and easy means of making perfect digital copies of stuff that this threatens their livelihoods there are some limits to what they have a right to. For starters companies taking this battle to the courts in the way VG Wort did is just outrageous, they went to court asking for a tax to be levied so that they could collect the funds. Canada has a similar tax on their media (specifically CD-R's and CD-RW's, not sure if DVD's have made it that far yet or not) however there are some differences, lets explore the two.

	Canada	Germany
What's Taxed:	The Media, what can store the infringing material. CD's are what I know of, possibly even harddrives (remember hearing about these)	The whole computer
How much:	pennies if I remember correctly	$20 roughly
Any extra bennies?	Yeah, it's legal to copy stuff digitally in Canada as long as their isn't any money traded for the copies	Doesn't look like it (I could be wrong)

Hmmmmmmm so if I'm reading this correctly even though Canada has a tax on their media that goes into the pockets of the RIAA in Canada, they have more or less told that body that "Yes we are willing to pay you a tax on the media that is the media of choice for your product (cd's) in exchange for being able to make copies of the music"... Brilliant (when is the USA going to adopt something like this?! ok probably never but thats besides the point) Where as Germany has basically just said: "Yeah here's a tax to help sustain and uphold and old business model that is in obvious need to change because the consumers want it. You've cried wolf and here's your cash" and blanketly taxing everyone regardless of guilt and they don't seem to get anything for this taxation. Thats just not cool.

Lets switch to the USA, shall we? We are embroiled here in a fight that may affect the rest of the world, even possibly our children's children's children. We are trying to figure out what constitutes the rights of the holder of a copy of something, what they can do with it and what the big giant corporations want you to do with it. A quick summary boils down to this: The consumer just wants to be able to use what they have in any way they like for their own personal use. When I record something from cable I want to fast forward through the commercials. When I buy some music I wish to put it into a convient format for me so I can listen to it in my car while I drive, in my house while I cook, or heaven forbid use it to make derivitive works. This all sounds fairly reasonable. Now what the Companies want: money, lots of it, now. Well duh, let me expand that a little. They want to limit your use of the product you buy, they don't want you to modify it, change it, copy it stare at it, and in fact I don't think they want you to even use it without you paying them more money. Many companies even try to limit what you do own (Microsoft's XBox for example) and yeah, ok I'll grant you that the companies are looking out for themselves BUT they are going to far and it's really starting to tick me off.

There is legislation that is trying to be passed that would prevent people from fast forwarding through commercials, prevent me from recording stuff from television if the cable companies don't want me to record it, they want to prevent me from listening to my music where and how I want to listen to it, and they want to make me pay every time I want to watch a copy of a movie I have. As a consumer, this is absurd. And much of this is being percipitated by people copying stuff over the internet. Ok lets look at the root cause of the problem. CD's and DVD's haven't changed in price in 10 years. Music still costs $15 for a cd where you might get two good songs on most modern Pop cd's. DVD's still start you out at $20 or so. Now it's gotten cheaper, easier, faster, etc to produce and get the consumer these products, but the prices haven't changed. The companies making them just keep the difference. Most consumers know they are getting gouged but there isn't a whole lot they can do about it. Now along comes the internet, and it's suddenly easy to share the music, and in a situation where people don't feel like they are getting gouged. This is where the media companies call foul, and rightly so, but instead of going after the infringers they deicde to try and just take on the whole system and change it for their benefit instead of seeing the root of the problem and make it inconvient to make illegal copies of the music. Than along comes iTunes and it starts selling music like a gang buster, hmmmmmm I can buy music legally, I can copy it to cd's, and I can use it in places where I want without a whole lot in the way of restrictions AND it's CHEAPER than buying a real cd? BRILLIANT, this begins making copying a lot less disrable and file trading drops a little. Wish that bit of logic would thunk someone upside the head.

Instead we end up with legislation that makes waking up in the morning illegal, Digital Rights Management that is a complete waste of time and a hassle for everyone, and me wondering when everyone is going to wake up to what the consumers want, and the fact that the government is for the people by the people, not for the big business by the big business. Someone find a balance so everyone can be happy?