Recording Industry’s Next Target: iPod - Where There is Money to Be Made
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And before you say, “these crazy European politics won’t come to North America,” consider a few things. First, Canada has taxes similar to this. A small portion of the price of blank audio tapes and blank CDs goes to record companies already, regardless of whether they are used to pirate music or not. Under the same terms of taxing blank media, Canadians have been taxed on mp3 players based on 3 tiers of storage capacity: less than 1 GB is $2, 1-10GB is $15, more than 10GB is $25. Although this isn’t quite as absurd as the proposition in the Netherlands, the taxes are in question because upset mp3 player manufacturers took the case to a Canadian Court of Appeals where the judge ruled that mp3 players cannot be taxed by the same terms as other blank media (maybe somebody should tell the Dutch). Of course, the recording companies are trying to overturn the ruling or find a way to tax them otherwise.
Also consider that the United States has existing provisions to give royalties to recording companies for the sale of blank media. Currently you can see the going rate is 3%, if you visit the legal information on Copyrights and Royalties in Title 17. Whenever Americans buy a blank audio cassette or a blank audio CD (though not blank data CDs, whatever the difference is) recording tycoons get a little piece of it. Neither the U.S. nor Canada is extraordinarily far away from a stupid per-gigabyte tax on mp3 players.
Perhaps the new tax is actually vital to the recording industry’s health. With the spreading P2P networks despite the RIAA’s futile efforts to stop it, media moguls are becoming obsolete. Earlier media transitions were far easier to profit from. When people wanted to upgrade from vinyl, they had to pay a premium for tapes. If they wanted to hear their favorite albums when they rode in the car, they often purchased them again on tapes. Then from there it was CDs of course, and people again bought albums at a premium on CDs and re-purchased their favorite old albums all over again. However, the transition into the new digital medium, though far from complete, is happening without any real influence by recording companies.
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