Tax on Private Copying an aberration tenacious Article
L. 311-5 of the Code of intellectual property, is where is the thing, but I will not go (yet) in cabbage defenders of the Private Copying
. I just want to try to make clear what it is today, more than 1986, an aberration. And more an aberration: a scandal, a large organized scam.
An unfair tax by definition, pay to compensate for the abuse of the right
First, even before the dematerialization of music and videos you had a situation where the consumer paid a fee for a right. The justification? Legally, the mind is very limited since it submits an isolated a specific tax law. Except that in reality this is not really a right but an exception
copyright . The concrete logic is to offset the shortfall due to abuse this right, namely copy for non-private.
The lobby behind the gadget does not hide it, it is indeed a compensation for the alleged commercial damage induced. The law, she can not confirm the existence of a tax for something illegal. That's why we swim fast
hypocrisy (bcp dough can be naturally a born hypocrite) and formally we have a very special law subject to special taxation.
We quite agree, if the right person is hypocritical to make a few copies for private use only does not pay.
It is as if a publisher required a fee to the fact that I can lend or sell the book / disk after purchase. The only rational justification for compensation is the fact that I still own the copy duly paid while circulating further copies then each constitute a loss for sure, but not full (1 equals illegal copying 1 sale less). Clearly, not all hypocrisy of the statement, there is justice in a total exception.
What is indisputable is that all our rights as citizens are subject to duties, including the discharge of various taxes & fees. These revenue to the Treasury will help finance (more or less efficiently, rigorously and intelligently, but this is not the point) the Common Good, the ability to live well in society. The State allocates these revenues by assigning them to its services, which themselves may be responsible for assigning them to other agencies, public, quasi-public or private, in the context of specific missions.
But with the tax exception to this exception to copyright, you enter the gross aberration more damaging to the image integrity of the state. Equality among citizens? Lobby asks favors and gets it. We are not naive, we know that it exists every day, but there is national and it affects heavily the vast majority of French who have returned to the digital age.
Incidentally, the small windfall private copy (a few hundred million euros) has not helped the industry in production / distribution of audiovisual appeared to react to challenges with the internet, so ill-gotten ...
When faced with this nauseating posture of "rights holders" (actually, publishers, jobbers against which the copyright has always sought to protect creators - cf. History of copyright by Maitre Eolas) it Only the solution of civil disobedience. Purchase its digital media recorders and elsewhere in the European Union not to pay this iniquitous tax. And continue to enjoy streaming quotes which, if wasting bandwidth unlike P2P download, do not put the consumer in any position thief / receiver / infringer.
Long live free codec!
