Nokia and Philips have written an open letter complaining that “the tax on blank media, designed to compensate artists for private copying, was out of date and that many consumers were already paying twice as they purchase digital content legally on the Internet and subsequently store it on a recordable compact disc”. This is something I agree with for a variety of reasons, including that people who don’t use the devices for music pay anyway, people who buy digital music pay twice and there are problems with distributing the funds raised. With mobile phones the issue is exacerbated by the fact that it’s not just music which can be loaded, but also videos, games, comics and so on.
“Also on Friday, electronics producers in the Netherlands said they were at stalemate in talks with the entertainment industry and that the chairman of their joint industry group SONT is ready to set levies for new devices in the country…These would mean an mp3 player like an Apple iPod would cost 25 euros ($32) more and a hard disk TV recorder 80 euros, the electronics industry’s lawyer, Dirk Visser, said.”
This primarily affects hardware manufacturers, but it could affect the content industry too…and not just by making people consider they’ve already paid for content so they don’t need to pay again. It could also encourage people to buy mobile phones with less multimedia capabilities, and experience has shown that the vast majority of people don’t consider content at all when they buy a handset. They begin to use content because their phone happens to have that capability…
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