Jason Levine
Premium
join:2001-07-13
Albany, NY
| reply to TK Junk Mail
Re: Another tax?
Exactly. Taxes like this are stupid for a whole bunch of reasons.
First of all, if the tax is to recoup "lost sales" from piracy, then the government is just giving users a green light to pirate. I don't pirate music, but if I were taxed as if I were a pirate, I would definitely download some illegal music files to get my money's worth.
However, what if I were incapable of pirating music at all. Suppose I was deaf. Obviously, I wouldn't be going around pirating music. However, I would still be taxed as if I was.
Secondly, I wonder where the money will go to. I'm guessing that it will go to the big record labels. But what about a smaller indie label. Their music might be pirated too. Do they get some compensation? If so, how do you divide up the funds. Does some money go to the singers and some to the songwriters?
Lastly, this seems to be slippery slope. Once record companies have a piracy tax, the TV companies are going to want one. And the movie companies. And the software industry. And so on. Before you know it, the price of your Internet connection doubles thanks to piracy taxes. (And going back to the first point, you can bet that I'll be pirating a *TON* if they double my ISP costs thanks to piracy taxes.)
This is just a bad idea all around. Here's hoping it dies a quick, painless (for us) death.
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-Jason Levine
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