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RE: [microsound] Labels go after individual song-swappers



Hi there,

You would submit your reciepts with your tax or something. That way
they wouldn't care about copying. Of course independent CD's
wouldn't be counted

I am not absolutely sure what Mark means, but I guess something like paying for the copyrights of the artist whenever one copies a CD through taxes ?

In The Netherlands (Holland) [ where I live ] a system like that already
exists, more or less.

About 10 years ago the copyright/royaltee companies (they are
called Buma/Stemra here) start a new division called Thuiskopie
(which means in translation "home-copy"). In those days more and
more libraries started hiring out CDs and many people started
copying these CDs as well as CDs from friends on tapes, so the
Thuiskopie introduced a tax on blank tapes one buys in the shop.
(Also on video-tapes by the way).

The income the Thuiskopie generated that way, was later given to
the artists, but they used a mechanism that the money was divided
amongst the artists that made the best-selling CDs in a certain year
and in different genres. So artists who only sell a few thousand and
nevertheless had their copyrights signed up with Buma/Stemra
never saw a single penny.

Another unjust aspect of it, was the fact that artists who bought
tapes (open-reel tapes mainly) for their own music also paid this
tax. I think it is a weird thing to put tax on tapes because they
assume people will only use them to make illegal copies, which
is a reverse of the justice system, one is assumed to be guilty
before it is prooved, which is agains the constitution/fundamental
law.

I once confronted them with that and they said, yeah we realised
this ourself, so we will be introducing special forms for artists who
buy tapes for their own work. Whether these forms ever became
reality I do not know, but I know from befriended artists they did
not want to bother going through all that hassel.

A few years later they really did take a consequence because of
this unjustice, and now they reserve a certain percentage of their
income to be given back to Dutch organisations who stimulate
the audio-visual climate, this in the format of grants. Any artist who
makes audio-visual art, as well as people who organise events
in this field can apply for a grant. I have done so myself several
time to get money to organise music festivals and such, so my
anger with them has decreased a bit :)

All the above was before the CDR became the most popular
sound-carrier, but to my knowledge there are no taxes on blank
normal CDRs in Holland.

I write "normal" CDRs because there also exists a format that
is called "audio-CDR" (which costs about 2 to 3 times the price
of a normal CDR). This was an invention of Philips (together
with Sony, I think). They made the first cheap standalone audio-
CDR recorders ("burners"), and those devices don't work with
normal CDRs, one really needs to buy these expensive audio-
CDRs. The extra money you pay flows into the vaults of the
Thuiskopie again, I assume.
Furthermore these audio-CDRs are protected by some sort
of coded thing, which makes it impossible to make a copy
from that copy in a standalone recorder. I know from experience
though that such copies nevertheless *can* be copied with a
normal CDR recorder in one's computer.

Later on other companies (such as Marantz) also started
making standalone audio-CDR recorders that *did* function
with normal and cheap CDRs, and that did *not* have this
protection-code, but these recorders are more highly priced.

It's all a big "f...ing" conspiracy :)

Anton