New tax, what new tax?

[Phil & Pat]

Received an email from Pixmania.com today offering a selection of external hard drives.  The email had the title "Achetez votre disque dur multimédia avant la nouvelle taxe !"

Anyone heard of a new tax?

[plod]

I think it's the one to be used to replace the money lost due to the forthcoming ban on advertising on public French TV.

[Clair]

Is it the "loi DADVSI" (Droits d'Auteur et Droits Voisins dans la Société de

l'Information), transposing EU directive 2001/29CE, which apparently seeks to protects the rights of the author against copies...?

http://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/12/dossiers/031206.asp

There are rather worrying aspects to this law:

• likening MP3 downloads to illegal copying (€300 000 fine, 3 years sentence)
• distributing software for illegal copies (as above)
• promoting the distribution of such software (as above)
• removing copy protection from your own files (€3 750 fine)
• distributing software for the purpose of removing copy protection (€30 000 fine and 6 months)
• although using such software is not illegal... yet...

Analysis in French: http://www.maitre-eolas.fr/2006/08/07/411-la-loi-dadvsi-commentee

[Phil & Pat]

[quote user="Clair"]

There are rather worrying aspects to this law:

• likening MP3 downloads to illegal copying (€300 000 fine, 3 years sentence)

[/quote]

So are you saying that downloading all MP3 files is (or will be) illegal in France?  Could that be why I can't register for the new Qtrax service?

[Clair]

The law appears to allow the possibility that creating a copy by downloading could be seen as an "infringement of the author's intellectual rights"... How this is assessed in real life is another matter...

[AnOther]

Do you think there may be some exciting opportunities in France for ex STASI personnel [6]

 

[Phil & Pat]

Any idea how much tax will be levied on, say, a €100 hard drive?

Is the tax only on hard drives or on blank CDs, DVDs, memory sticks, MP3 players, computers too?

[AnOther]

Something about it HERE it seems.

Unfortunately my French isn't up to understanding too much of it [:$]

 

[Mr Coeur de Lion]

[quote user="plod"]I think it's the one to be used to replace the money lost due to the forthcoming ban on advertising on public French TV.[/quote]

So what does tax have to do with that? Why does the public have to pay a tax because there are no ads on tv? I do not understand the logic.

[woolybananasbrother]

The tax seems ao authorize copying for personal use too.

[Martin963]

I think the answer is that at the moment France has the worst of all worlds,   ie public TV funded by a licence fee but with revenues having to be topped up by advertising (the French licence fee is considerably lower than that of GB).

I think le petit Nicolas has been casting an envious eye across la Manche (although I may be wrong about this) and thinking that the Brit (BBC) system  of no-adverts on public TV is rather nice.    He doesn't want to put up the French redevance to UK levels so here is the alternative.

I make no judgement on the policy here,   I'm just rehearsing what I assume is happening.

I guess the tightening up on copyright law in the cyber world is a separate issue,   but I haven't checked the links Clair gave us.   That said,   the copyright legislation smacks of police state gone mad,  as someone else has already suggested.   Until copyright holders (CD, DVD,  sat bouquets) start playing fair with us I have little sympathy with them,  as they use the law to suit their own ends whilst flouting bits of it they don't care for.

[clarksinfrance]

The tax on Hard Disc Drives, is in fact a tax on recordable media, such as: cds, dvds, hard disc drives, it is to help combat lack of revenue for recording artists, due to illegal downloads. If it hasn't happened already, it will do in the nearish future, your internet service is also to recive an extra tax, also to go into the recording artists pot. Its not a massive amount, but its there, the ISPs may decide to forward this cost to you the user.

On an aside, I recently purchased some dvds of various flavours from the UK, including p&p it came to £52, the same items purchased here in France, was over €600, surely the government must realise that eventually most people will buy their stuff electronically from wherever gives them the best value for money, therefore losing valuable tax euros. Can't figure it out myself.

[Martin963]

I thought there already WAS a tax on all those things in France.   I was under the impression that ANOTHER tax was going to be levied,  as plod says,  to prop up la redevance.

But I really am not sure,  it's difficult to keep up with various governments' attempts to fleece us!  

Certainly I mind paying a tax to artists on blank media which - in my case - is often used to record MY OWN material!  And that's not to speak of all the anti-copying flags in digital bit streams that I have to filter out to allow me to copy said audio material more than once.    An absolute insult that a piece of kit attempts to stop me copying my own material,  recorded by me!

[AnOther]

[quote user="clarksinfrance"] surely the government must realise that eventually most people will buy their stuff electronically from wherever gives them the best value for money, therefore losing valuable tax euros. Can't figure it out myself.[/quote]The French seem woefully shortsighted and xenophobic when it comes to seeing the long game [blink]

Another example HERE

Does Sarkozy's INTERNET TAX mean that those without a TV can claim it back I wonder [;-)]

 

[Kitty]

So you download stuff on your MP3 in the UK and bring it to France.  What happens?

(NB - I don't have an MP3 but I do have a good old fashioned tranny.)

 

[AnOther]

Now you're really moving into STASI territory [:-))]

[Mr Coeur de Lion]

It's just another way for the rich to get richer.

Perhaps if they made all these movies and cd's at a reasonable price, piracy would decrease. €20 for a 90 minute movie. You got to be joking. Poor value for money. Buy the book, it's cheaper and lasts longer!

[Phil & Pat]

So, does anyone know if it's the downloading of copyrighted audio or video files that is (or will be) illegal, or is it all audio or video files (whatever their copyright status)?

The recently launched but perhaps not fully operational Qtrax service claims to offer free music downloads in return for exposing the user to advertisements.  The advertising revenue, allegedly, goes to paying the artists and music companies for their efforts, so copyright is not infringed.  Would I be risking a fine or imprisonment by using this service in France do you think? [8-)]

[Mr Coeur de Lion]

From what I have read about qtrax, they don't even have agreements with the 4 major companies they claim they do have deals with. And I can't believe they ever will. The big 4 would loose too much money to agree to something like that.