Dutch iPod tax could squash digital audio player industry
posted April 28th 2005 8:03AM
The only thing remotely comforting about this story is that at least we in the States are not alone as consumers wrestling with legacy industries. In the Netherlands, the old guard recording industry has managed to persuade the government that they ought to tax any storage device that could ever possibly harbor a pirated work, which means levies of up to $4.30 per gigabyte on all MP3 players sold — imagine adding $240 to the price of an already expensive 60GB iPod. Unless the European Commission intervenes, the law proposed by Stichting Thuiskopie foundation will likely pass. It's possible the law could also include a provision similar to legislation already in place in Germany, which establishes levies on PC hard drives. If left in place, the sum total of the levy will actually exceed the revenue of the entire PC industry in that country within two years. If implemented in the Netherlands, a 1 terabyte drive would sell for the, uh, bargain price of only $4,300 — far outweighing the cost of the computer itself. Yeah, sounds like a very sane and reasonable way for the record companies to discourage piracy, doesn't it?
iPod Tax? Is iPod the name for DAP's? Like Walkman for cassetteplayers? I don't think so!
Better call it DAPTAX. Stichting Thuiskopie is a farce.
Completely insane...
It's about time that consumers create their own lobby groups to battle and kill these industry lobby groups.
I don't get it. Is this supposed to discourage people from buying DAPs/hard drives at all, or is it punishment in advance for all the copyrighted material you obviously will use it to steal? If the latter, does that mean that you can pirate with impunity after you've paid?
I don't pirate music or movies now, but if such a measure passed in the U.S., I'd immediately start doing so with prejudice.
Yet another reason why the gov't should stay the f*CK out of technology! It doesn't understand it, never has, never will, and no matter what country, its always run by the DUMBEST of people!
Then again, if I pay for it, i should consume my quota of (formerly illegal) downloads, shouldn't I?
Oh well, they did the same for writable CD's and DVD's here in Holland. I'm buying these CD's and DVD's in Germany now. I think this will happen to DAP's too.
I've stated this before in connection with Canada's policy on taxing CD media and distributing the money to the "music industry" - but nothing burns my libertarian-leaning butt more than a government taxing me on the assumption that I MUST be doing something illegal.
If I am guilty, PROVE IT (innocent until proven guilty and all that). Until then, stay the heck out of my wallet.
This is insane by anybody's standards. And doesn't the iTunes store launch for the Scandanvian countries this week?
Although ridicilous, it is in line with other Dutch copy-taxes. There already are taxes on CDr's and DVDr's.
14 cents on a CDr, 60 cents on a DVDr- and 40 cents on a DVDr+ [the government thinks its harder to copy with these]
I just order mine from Germany, shipping is cheaper than paying extra taxes.
Aye, the poor dutchmen! One of these days the recording industries and movie industries will remember that we are actually customers of their products, and not criminals. Until then, I hope they all burn.
More information at
http://www.geekBlue.net
The story says storage devices that could be potentially used to store pirated work, that pretty much includes every sort of medium, not just harddrives. Ie. flash drives, mp3 players, CF Microdrives, DVD-RW, CD-RW, Tape Media Including VHS (Yes you can store data onto VHS (http://www.g4tv.com/techtvvault/features/2437/Danmere_Backer_32.html)
, DV, MiniDV, NVRAM, Zip Disks, shall I go on?
I wonder who gets all that tax money?
Well now that people will have no money after paying this tax, they're going to illegally download songs even more now and not feel guilty about it. The only music I download is rare stuff that is only available on vinyl through SoulSeek.
Fishes,
narco.
This is a stupid law for an European country, it will mean that nobody will buy a hard drive in Netherlands, duch people will buy it in France, Italy, England, Ireland, Spain or to another european country without a similar law. Because they will not have to pay a $4.30 dolar extra for each gigabyte of their new 500 GB HD. You don't have to pay any kind of taxes to move items between European Union countrys. Poor duch computer shops.
Couldn't they just run accross the border to Germany, and buy one there to duck the levy? It seems like it's something that would be hard to enforce with the EU's open border policies.
Do they tax pencil and paper? If not, I'm going to convert all my mp3s to text files and write them down. Suckers!
man.. stupid laws in this country.. we already have the taxes on dvdr's and cdr's.. if they want us to buy cd's and dvd's instead of coyping them.. try lowering the prices.. new cd's usually cost around 20 euro's.. and new dvd's can usually go up to 30 euro's.. that is insane!
but like most ppl already said.. buy in germany ;) to bypass these stupid tax laws.. it's the EU ppl.. no import costs in the EU :D
Insanity,
This will destroy their retail electronics industry. I can't belive a country would shoot itself in the foot this bad
At least the EU is there to help the poor consumers of the netherlands find everyday low low prices abroad
jay you should stay the fuck out of politics. im not even going to try to explain how lobbying works. mostly because im not sure how its done in europe and i dont talk shit about stuff i dont know. 'the government' isnt an individual person; saying that 'the government' or 'they' dont understand _________ is ignorant, lazy and makes you sound stupid. next time theres an election, run your junior college ass over and make yourself president, dumbfuck.
i hope the eu gets involved, but i think this must be reported incorrectly - theres no way a business will pay those prices. is the law for home users only? and only for individual hard drives and not drives already in a box? how about data centers with tons and tons of storage...if they did this, and then lowered prices on games/dvds/music cds, it would make sense. correct me if im wrong, but the did lwoer music cd prices because of the cdr tax, right? i heard something about that. so give me 5$ cds and 7$ dvds, free cable tv, and 2$ movie tickets...with lower costs there would be less piracy (in addition to the more expensive media) and they would make back the amount they think theyre losing via piracy with the tax.
$4.30 is steep, though..is that USD?
once again, all you need to do is buy your music/dvds from a local used record shop. the money goes back to your city/state/country and the record companies get fucked. plus they often feature local artists which is 'a good thing' :p
Yuck yuck yuck. When mass storage is outlawed, only outlaws will have mass storage!
But seriously, why not just walk across the border and pick up a drive there?
rotten stinking Dutch, oh wait I think that's Denmarks job.
cullen,
You're the one who sounds like a junior-college educated dumbass. If you're going to yell at someone else for "sounding dumb" when they're just stating quite a simple opinion, then put the effort into your post to make sure you don't sound dumb. How can you tell Jay to "stay the fuck out of politics" when you admit yourself that you "dont [sic] know how its [sic] done in europe"? You say that you don't talk about stuff that you don't understand, then do you talk much?
If you clicked the link and actually read the article, you would see that, yes, $4.30 is in USD.
Concerning your comment about purchasing from local used record stores: where do you think these "used" records were purchased from originally? The music industry will still profit from new cd sales because new releases don't just magically show up in used record stores. This idea might work great if one copy of a cd was purchased new, then everyone in the country sold and bought that single copy from a used record store, effectively sharing that copy amongst a nation of millions - right.
So, just so you know, you are the one who sounds stupid.
It's true, the only people getting shafted are the Dutch consumers.
This is just one example of the ineptitude of socialism. While a government has a right to tax its people, it shouldn't tax its people to death. In many of these socialist countries, it's not uncommon to surrender 50% or more of one's salary to the government. Clearly, this tax is just another instance of this insanity.
$4.30 USD per unit of storage? This is highway robbery, and I agree with those above, I would boycott with impunity and buy my goods in Germany. That's capitalism at work.
No one is entitled to my money nor anyone else's. If the Dutch lobbyists and government were really interested in the "welfare" of its people, they wouldn't treat them like children.
Down with socialism! Long live free trade!
Hey #23, being Dutch, it's quite amusing to see someone from the other side of the ocean call our current society 'socialist'. When did you get out of school? Socialism is a political system that came down more than a decade ago and was only to be found in eastern parts of Europe (and beyond).
The Netherlands is a capitalist, free trade country that provides it population with a couple of social services like affordable healthcare, quality public education and transportation, decent living standards for unemployed, sick and elderly people, and this is paid for by taxes indeed. However to keep the country's economy competitive, the 'social' breaks have become less and less.
The tax climate in NL is actually quite liberal - if not, national corporate flagships like Shell, Philips Electronics and Unilever would have long left for Luxemburg or somewhere else. In fact, many a Japanese or US corporation choosing their EU HQ picks The Netherlands for its mild tax climate.
Regardless of all of this, our government is retarded when it comes to IT, innovation and anything related and therefore take an insane decision like this. I will use the free trade that we have here in Europe to buy my stuff abroad, we don't need special privileges from Stalin for that.
Sometimes I just hate my own country! :@