typicallyspanish.com

We will end up paying a canon on our memory if we possibly can remember copyrighted material.
Has this not gone a bit too far?

So, assume every one is going to commit piracy.
1) So, do I get a refund for all the email I back up on CD's?
2) Where can I bring the CD's that don't contain music for my refund. Because i know the government would not tax me for something that is non-existant on my part.
3) For the people that download music and movies; I guess the RIAA / MPAA won't be pressing charges and wasting courts time; because they are being compensated for their movies and music. So, I guess this makes files sharing of movies and music legal; due to an agreed compensation package. Or have I mis-understood the premesis of said tax.

PS: This is coming from a non citizen, of Spain. But I guess this questions can be answered by any governement that imposes said taxes on media. I am looking at various governments though out the world.

And how will the money "be paid to the copyright owners of the music or films concerned" when the copyright owners are unidentified? What if I buy some blank DVDs to transfer all my home movies to DVD? Where do I apply to receive the money?

There's another, worse issue: In all likelihood the sole beneficiaries of this money will be all the big music and film companies. What about small, independent labels or even small groups and performers who aren't represented by such companies? Not only will they not receive a cent, they will actually have to PAY THEMSELVES. I know amateur bands who make their own recordings and produce their own CDs - using just such blank media. With this law, the small, struggling bands or performers will end up paying a tax to the Michael Jacksons and Madonnas for selling their own material.

Wrong, wrong and wrong. This news story is wrong, the moment it says:

"The money collected will be paid to the copyright owners of the music or films concerned."

It just isn't true; Just for the sake of things being clear, the money is given to intermiddle and private organizations such as SGAE, a theorically non-lucrative organization, which has an insane number of members, both musicians and writers, but mostly musicians.

For a musician to record something or to be able to use a concert hall, he has to be a member, so most of their members are locked in that way.

On the inside, SGAE works in a way that is quite interesting: Only a few artists, the most popular ones, do have the right to vote on the decisions, and the 150 most popular ones or so do have 5 votes. What this means is that a core team of just a few people make all decisions and get all the money.

So, don't even think SGAE is a fair organization or that the money really goes to the artists or something like that. Nevertheless, the canon is a bad idea independly of that, because I shouldn't have to pay any "author" each time I want to record a knoppix CD, my photos, backup my drives or whatever; in fact, I don't buy at all the fake consumers/authors division they created; everybody is a potencial author IMHO, and shouldn't have to register to dirty intermiddle orgqnizations like SGAE to be recognised as such.

The phony thing about this law is that there is a tax on blank media but the copyright owners are allowwed to use DRM preventing the "fair use" copies, and it is a felony to circumvent that DRM measures; so we pay a tax but we cannot use media to make fair use copies except for those rare ocations when there is no copy protection on the original.

Fran