A complex political analysis follows.
Zzzzzzzzz
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Three years after stomping out, big tech manufacturers have returned to talk to the French government about private copying levies. In France, an official working group, La Commission de la Copie Privée, sets the rules on which products will have copying levies slapped on them. Manufacturers and importers also had seats at the …
Some comedians in Belgium did already demonstrate that at least the Belgian system is totally shot.
They had some records produced by house hold appliances and then tracked what happened to royalty payments. It was both funny and infuriating at the same time. The larger these organisations get (and they do get fat quickly on a guaranteed percentage on something they don't deserve), the quicker a gap appears between reality and a profitable interpretation thereof.
Avoid, avoid, avoid.
If you are being taxed, then you may as well benefit by obtaining the product, so anyone know a good source of free music and videos ?
Do you also get a rebate when you just write your own data to the DVD instead - for example a backup of your PC or your save your own family pictures of that recent holiday ?
It raises an interesting question... Does this mean that video/music piracy is legal in France? After all you have paid a tax which assumed you are going to pirate something on the media, which rather blows a hole through claims of "theft" and denying the right holders of their income...
(Yes, I know, I live in a dream world which is far too logical).
"Does this mean that video/music piracy is legal in France?"
No, because the system is beyond corrupt with big media expecting to be paid for sales of blank media for something that the populace might do. It's an easier way to make cash than coming up with customer friendly legal content sources.
On the other hand, given as I have already paid a contribution for my "illegal" downloads, if I find a song I like (surprisingly hard these days) on YouTube and it ends up on my phone, I do so with zero guilt...
If the French raise the tax on blank media then buyers will simply get them from other parts of the EU that don't have this levy.
It would not be too far out to imagine Autoroute service stations close to but not in France selling blank media. As there is no border controls anymore due to Schengen zoom and you are in La Belle France with the booty in your car and not a Gendarme in sight to stop you.
The same would go for Cross Channel Ferries.
This could end up costing them money.
IMHO, these so called 'Artists' rights orgs are totally corrupt and should die.
I tend to buy CD's etc direct from the Artist wherever possible. I'll have my £££ ready when I see Ian Anderson next week. That way I know that my money goes to the right place and not to some crack smoking rights exec.
You don't use any hard-drives, SD cards, or memory sticks? I don't know about France, but in some jurisdictions those certainly count as "blank media".
Makes me wonder if they've also lobbied for the tax to apply to RAM as well. After all, I can create a logical disk entirely in RAM, and store copies of files in there.
My daughter told me recently that several media creation packages (she mentioned iMovie and Creative Suite/Cloud) are now removing the ability to write optical media from their most recent iterations. Many laptop/ultrabooks no longer even come with optical storage devices. It really upset her, as she has no desire to use the Cloud as a transmission path for private media she's editing for a friend.
It strikes me as if optical media is becoming a bit of a pariah. I still don't trust flash memory devices for long term storage. We need some new long-term storage media!
This will work out well for Sony and possibly other companies too.
They produce music CDs. They produce blank CDs and they produce the CD drives used to burn the copies of the music they produced in the first place. For which they will receive compensation.
Kerching!