[Sussex] This is appalling... Dutch Pass iPod Tax

[Geoffrey J. Teale]

The best thing about this is the logic.  The record companies see any
form of media onto which our "product" can be copied as a loss of
revenue.  They believe this because they can prove it is _possible_ to
do it on any instance of such media and they can prove that it has
happened on more than one occasion.  By induction they demand that the
purchase of such media have an additional levy to cover their costs
because in every instance it is possible that the user is "stealing"
from them.

The record companies achieved very similar in Canada where you
have to pay "record company tax" on blank tapes and CDs.

Now of course this then results in the problem that if I want to burn
CD's of content I've created I have to pay a totally unrelated company
some money (wow.. this sounds a lot like if I buy a computer to
install Linux on... how come I have to pay Microsoft?).  Fabulous
logic and the justification is simply "We can prove that some people
put pirated material on this media".

Excellent, so can we apply the same rules elsewhere? 

I can prove that the record companies sometimes fail to pay musicians
and song writers the royalties they are due.  The total value
owing to artists by the oligopoly of major record companies is estimated to be far
higher than the amount those record companies loose to pirates.  So
given this mindset I can say that because record companies are
_capable_ of recording and distributing _my_ music (that is the music
I create) and are _capable_ of not paying me the appropriate royalties
(indeed there is documentary evidence of them doing this).  Therefore,
I would like to lobby the government (any government will do) to make
the record companies pay a levy to me every time I pick up my guitar
and play an original composition.   Do you think they'll go for it?

-- 
Geoff Teale
CMed Technology            -   gteale at cmedresearch.com
Free Software Foundation   -   tealeg at member.fsf.org