[KLUG Advocacy] Computer Tax In Germany?

Adam Williams advocacy@kalamazoolinux.org
14 Mar 2003 12:45:58 -0500


>A recent Slashdot discussion mentions a German law levying a copyright
>tax on computers to address income lost by publishers to piracy. The
>article mentioned touches on the 3-year old law, which Germany is
>'poised to enforce', as well as efforts by other nations to pass and
>enforce similar statutes. Another one to watch, maybe.
>Slashdot article:
>http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/03/12/2024205
>Original UPI article:
>http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20030312-120912-6894r

This is just dumb.  So who estimates the cost of piracy?  The supposedly
aggrieved?   Isn't there a fundamental problem of
hypothesis-contrary-to-fact here?  If Joe Six Pack didn't have the
"option" of acquiring a copy of M$-Office from his buddy, would be just
capitulate and pay $300 for it?  Is every unlicensed copy of Windows a
potentially licensed copy?  Who knows.  Not to mention the presumption
of guilt implicit in this.

Now if GW had the foresight to impose a tax on all new computers sold in
order to fund public broadband infrastructure I'd be all for that.