Arachnotron
22nd April 2005, 17:02
There seems to be a proposal by the "Stichting de Thuiskopie" (http://www.cedar.nl/thuiskopie/info-gebruikers.html#tarieven) (which has a mandate from the Dutch government to collect the copy-tax on blanc DVD's and such) to also charge MP3 players for €3.28 per gigabyte storage capacity. Which adds €132 to the price of a 40 Gb apple iPod.
I could not find any links in English, so here is a Dutch link (http://www.tweakers.net/nieuws/37030?).
As with the blanc DVD charge, the idea is that you have the right to make one copy of TV shows and such for personal use, but that you have to pay for that. And to safe you from the hassle of contacting the licence holders personally, those nice people over at Stichting Thuiskopie have already taxed all blanc DVD's for you. And they are more than willing to do the same for your MP3 player. What is next? Taxing flashcards? Harddisks? Memory? :(
Interesting aside: if you go to the homepage of this Stichting and type "mp3" in their search engine, the first hit you get is from a site that offers unlimited downloads for €0.99 per month to p2p users... :D
I could not find any links in English, so here is a Dutch link (http://www.tweakers.net/nieuws/37030?).
As with the blanc DVD charge, the idea is that you have the right to make one copy of TV shows and such for personal use, but that you have to pay for that. And to safe you from the hassle of contacting the licence holders personally, those nice people over at Stichting Thuiskopie have already taxed all blanc DVD's for you. And they are more than willing to do the same for your MP3 player. What is next? Taxing flashcards? Harddisks? Memory? :(
Interesting aside: if you go to the homepage of this Stichting and type "mp3" in their search engine, the first hit you get is from a site that offers unlimited downloads for €0.99 per month to p2p users... :D