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Germans may Pay Copyright Levy on PCs
Posted by Ren Bucholz on Friday, March 14 @ 01:31:28 EST Copyright
UPI's Sam Vaknin reports on a proposal by German publishers to charge a levy on computers to compensate for piracy. The trouble with this, and all previous hardware and media levies, is that there's no fair way to determine who gets the money. Without a method of distribution that's based on actual harm to artists or rights holders (which may not actually exist), consumers pay into a fund that gives the wrong people the wrong amount at best and sits dormant at worst. Further, it doesn't really address the legal problem for users. As Peter Suber writes on his blog:
"What I can't tell is whether the copyright levy on hardware will come with universal permission to copy. If so, that's a big gain for a small cost ... If the levy does not imply permission to copy, then which copying does it cover?"
Finally, Vaknin takes a moment to reflect on our current state of affairs:
"Middlemen are attempting -- in vain -- to sustain their dying and increasingly parasitic industries and refusing to adapt and re-invent themselves. Everyone else watches in amazement and dismay the consequences of this grand folly: innovation is thwarted, consumers penalized, access to works of art, literature and research constrained."
 
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