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Topic: Swedish government goes crazy! (Read 18052 times) previous topic - next topic
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Swedish government goes crazy!

Reply #50
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Have you read the 600pages long divided by two pdfs text where the definitions are?

MRTH: I agree that she is a more credible person than me in this matter - she works full time at Copyswede that allocates the fees to the copyright holders. I work as a reporter on many topics and have no possibility to be as insightful in seperate topics.

As a result of this, I have not read through the 600 pages. And even if I/one should have, the possibility of misunderstandings even there would be quite big. We have not yet seen any practical examples of the 600 pages in this matter and changes in fees where the fees are a big percent of the whole media cost might also change according to Magnusson. The actual fee is, as I said before, an agreement from both sides.

My source regarding the fees are from Bo Rydin at "Institute of Recording media" (located at Branschkansliet) who are also in the article.  They act as a "link between the market and the society", and I had no reason to doubt their facts at the time.

In any case, I have updated the article with correct information from the 600 page law proposal at The Swedish Government and it is also marked "Updated". The main difference is that the extreme fees only covers re-recordable digital media such as dvd+(-)rw and cd-rw.

Kind regards,

EDIT: Corrected URL

Swedish government goes crazy!

Reply #51
[aside]
Any chance the linked articles (including the one in JohnV's original post) have English-language equivalents?  (For us lowly mono-lingual folks.    )  What I have gathered so far has been in the context of posts by other people in this thread.

I looked for buttons that might mean "English version" on the linked pages, but couldn't find any.
[/aside]

Swedish government goes crazy!

Reply #52
Really sorry, this article is written in Swedish as a daily web-article. The only english information is on liks to pdf-docs above.

Regards,

Swedish government goes crazy!

Reply #53
A.) I have to pay tax because i could use a certain device to illegaly copy music.
B.) I am not allowed to actually circumvent copy protections and copy music.

How do the two fit together? It boggles my mind.

Swedish government goes crazy!

Reply #54
Hi thop,

That's exactly what the AI (Internauts Association) is asking in Spain. But they took another step and went to court to sue Alejandro Sanz (he's a very famous singer here in Spain) and ask the same question to a judge.

The case isn't over yet, but Alejandro's record company reacted quickly and launched a new edition of his latest album without copy protection. They even offered consumers a free replacement CD for those that had already bought the original copy protected CD.

However, it would be very sad if we had to go to court everytime we want to copy a CD.

Cheers.

Swedish government goes crazy!

Reply #55
Quote
Hi thop,

That's exactly what the AI (Internauts Association) is asking in Spain. But they took another step and went to court to sue Alejandro Sanz (he's a very famous singer here in Spain) and ask the same question to a judge.

The case isn't over yet, but Alejandro's record company reacted quickly and launched a new edition of his latest album without copy protection. They even offered consumers a free replacement CD for those that had already bought the original copy protected CD.

However, it would be very sad if we had to go to court everytime we want to copy a CD.

Cheers.

Sometimes all you need is a precident.  I wish that would happen in the U.S. 


Edit:  Then again, copy protection's not much of a problem here, but a nice court case in the favor of the consumer for any instances of copy-protection would (maybe) help prevent the spread of such a disease.

Swedish government goes crazy!

Reply #56
Here in Italy taxes on cd dvd and hard disk increased few months ago.
Result: cdr price doubled
Here the income of that tax is given to local riaa equivalent.
I still have to understand what they are doing with that money.

Swedish government goes crazy!

Reply #57
Quote
Quote
Have you read the 600pages long divided by two pdfs text where the definitions are?

MRTH: I agree that she is a more credible person than me in this matter - she works full time at Copyswede that allocates the fees to the copyright holders. I work as a reporter on many topics and have no possibility to be as insightful in seperate topics.

As a result of this, I have not read through the 600 pages. And even if I/one should have, the possibility of misunderstandings even there would be quite big. We have not yet seen any practical examples of the 600 pages in this matter and changes in fees where the fees are a big percent of the whole media cost might also change according to Magnusson. The actual fee is, as I said before, an agreement from both sides.

My source regarding the fees are from Bo Rydin at "Institute of Recording media" (located at Branschkansliet) who are also in the article.  They act as a "link between the market and the society", and I had no reason to doubt their facts at the time.

In any case, I have updated the article with correct information from the 600 page law proposal at The Swedish Government and it is also marked "Updated". The main difference is that the extreme fees only covers re-recordable digital media such as dvd+(-)rw and cd-rw.

Kind regards,

EDIT: Corrected URL

ok,
thank you for the clarification. It's sincerely not easy to pin out truths in matters such as this one.
CD-RW & DVD-RW are the ones affected by this change, but it's unlikely to see a 40SEK(5.xEUR) tax per item, as this is not in line with the product price. The settled figures should be lower.

Swedish government goes crazy!

Reply #58
Here in Germany, it works exactly like the nonsense-scenario some people here talked about. For a long time, the state of affairs was like this in Germany: You have to pay a small fee on everything that can be used to copy copyrighted material (that is, media, scanners, printers, photocopiers, cd-recorders, etc.). This fee goes to an organization called GEMA, which in turn is responsible for distributing the money to the artists which are registered there (virtually every artist). The GEMA is definitely a very mafia-like organization and GEMA-laws are some of the most distubring in German legislation, but that's a different story.
Now, in turn for these fees, you were allowed to make "private copies" of copyrighted material (excluding software, which has special legislation). What exactly constitutes a "private copy" is hard to tell from the laws alone, and would have been up to a judge to decide (although it is of very little interest now, as I will explain shortly). Generally, the consensus was that copies for family members and close friends were allowed.
Now comes the wicked part of the story. The laws for "private copies" are actually very old (about 70 years IIRC). When they were drafted, they were mainly meant for carbon copies. Later they were extended to analog copies of music by court decisions. But now that perfect digital copies are possible, the music companies were rooting for some time for a change of these laws.
About one year ago, the European parliament passed a law which prohibits the evasion of security measures to protect copyrighted material (very similar to the DMCA). Laws which are passed by the EU legislators do not automatically become valid law in the EU countries, but the legislators in EU countries are obliged to pass a law within a certain timeframe which implements the legislation they agreed upon on EU level (of course that's oversimplifying the matter a bit, but roughly, that's the way it works).
So, actually avoiding copy protection will sooner or later be illegal in the entire EU. In Germany a law which implements this, was passed about two months ago. Still, you are allowed to make "private copies" just like before (although you are not allowed to do so anymore if they are from "obviously illegal origin", which practically means that downloading from P2P networks is now illegal in Germany (uploading always was)). Of course, since you are allowed to make private copies, you also have to pay the fee to the GEMA. But now, if the music company use any form of copy protection on their CDs, you can go to jail for trying to copy those (although you paid for the right to do so).

Swedish government goes crazy!

Reply #59
Quote
Here in Italy taxes on cd dvd and hard disk increased few months ago.
Result: cdr price doubled
Here the income of that tax is given to local riaa equivalent.
I still have to understand what they are doing with that money.

They same thing is done here. The organisation gives them to the record companies who in turn give some of it to the artists.

Swedish government goes crazy!

Reply #60
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In Australia and Canada there is a levy on blank media, but some australians and canadians are complaining because most of the new music discs are being sold which copy protection, despite the extra taxation collected for the benefit of the music industry "losses".

There is definitely NO levy on blank media of any kind here in Australia. It's been proposed many times (it was proposed for the compact cassette back in the 1970s!) but has never become law.

The so-called "audio" CD-R discs are sold at a higher price, but the extra money goes to the CD-R manufacturer, who try to pretend that these are "special" discs that are better for music use

Also, the only record company using CD copy protection in Australia is EMI. All other companies' CDs are free of copy protection.

Swedish government goes crazy!

Reply #61
Incredible..
[ Commodore 64 Forever...! ]

Swedish government goes crazy!

Reply #62
This thread has put me into a reflective state of mind (please pardon the small diversion)... it seems to me that creativity has traditionally been held under a very tight leash by "the powers that be" -- and no surprise, as it's an incredible force for social and societal change.  It seems to me things as the Internet, open source software and such would not be "allowed" to run free by those who despise change and value tight control and maintaining the status quo -- as demonstrated by how Net access is limited in certain societies.  To a lesser extent, this limitation on freedom of expression seems to apply everywhere...

I wonder if creativity can really be "owned" and then controlled through laws and restrictions, while still desiring to share one's creations.  Isn't it somehow strange to release something to the whole world, while still claiming personal ownership and control?

[/rant off] -- sorry.  Hopefully it's related enough to the topic that I won't get in trouble... 

Swedish government goes crazy!

Reply #63
I don't know how the actual collection of tax like fees (it's not really a tax in the exact legal sense) happens in Sweden, but I guess it's not all too dissimilar from Finland.

In Finland I'm already buying my CD-R/DVD-R media without the so-called "record company tax". Any rise in these taxes does not affect me.

I just filed for an application that allows me to use the blank media for professional purposes. I can't resell them and can not record other people's IP on them without consent (or ponying up the fees).

If such a bill were to be passed in Sweden/Finland, I'm sure there would be a few million people interested in filling out the same kind of application.

Legally they can't even deny you the possibility to buy the discs tax free.

After all, there is no law that says you have to pay dividends to recording artists or record companies for backing up your own word files or digital photos.

Then again, if you are already putting illegally obtained music (or other people's copyrighted IP) on the recording media you purchased, then I think it's just fair that one has to pay some sort of compensation to the copyrightholders in question.

I'm not one of those "information wants to free, let's pirate everybody else's work for free 12-year-old mentality" people. I think artists at least the very least deserve a compensation and copyright holders in general too.

How much is enough, well that's another discussion completely, but I agree that the proposal JohnV brought to light here is beyond silly considering the rise in recording media fees.

On a related note, Finland also had a law proposal that would criminalise circumvention of digital copy protection mechanisms.

Also, we have system (not law as I understand it) for collecting tax like fees on blank media, mainly to recording artists' benefit.

Now, had the law passed, it would have basically combined into a criminal tax.

It would have taxed activity (copying music onto a blank) that would have been implicitly illegal in 90% of the cases (record companies are projecting 90% copy protection penetration within the next few years within EU).

Such a situation would have been a legislative/juridical nightmare.

Fortunately the law was shot down and sent back to the drawing board.

It will rear it's ugly head again some time, so I'll say this again even though I've already said it once:

Get involved, stay informed and help to stop stupid laws.

Hell, I've even written to US Senators myself (and gotten a non-standard reply from their assistant) and I'm not even a US citizen myself.

Only bitching about things at HA doesn't help diddly squat. Not that you shouldn't bitch, it spreads the word

Not all lawmakers eat from the hands of big conglomerates. They just don't know better, because the lobbying organisations are spewing lies into both of their ears.

If you make reasoned, calm and rational arguments to them, they will listen to you and likely hold up your rights as a consumer as well.

friendly regards,
Halcyon

PS I agree that the American copyright holder conglomerates have way too much power over national and transnational legislative efforts. It is just plain silly that MPAA/RIAA-like lobbying organisations can influence the laws that are drawn up in Sweden. It makes no sense. When did Sweden become under the jurisdiction of United States of Robber Capitalists?

Swedish government goes crazy!

Reply #64
While pirating has certainly had some impact on the music industry, I am not convinced it is as significant as the record companies claim. Ther is a far more common sense reason why music sales have been declining: Overpricing! The industry knows this, which is why the largest company in the U.S. recently announced significant price reduction. Greed had a negative effect, driving sales down. Eventually the same thing will happen with live concerts, where the pricing has climbed to such a high level ($100 tickets are not unusual) that it will push sales down eventually.

Ivan raises an interesting point about the failure of Prohibition in the U.S. in the 1920s. But the issue of the death penalty is very different. It has a history as old as the republic, and laws of that type only exist with the consistent support of a solid majority of the population. No doubt that the crimes are tragic, and so is the punishment.

Swedish government goes crazy!

Reply #65
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And, as seanyseansean suggested, does this make music "piracy" legal, because you've paid for it?


That's the way is works in Canada, if I recall a Slashdot story correctly.

here in canada it's not that bad yet. the recording industry here is trying to do the same thing, and its been on the agenda for quite some time. they are already collecting levy off recordable media, and now they wanna hike that as well as tax portable mp3 players and hard drives. i read and watched on TV that it's highly unlikely the new lobby fees they want will be approved, mainly because some hardware companies threatened to stop selling their products in canada because the proposed levy is quite obscene

>>>'Also, the only record company using CD copy protection in Australia is EMI. All other companies' CDs are free of copy protection.'<<<

the same thing here in canada. EMI and whatever small labels they own are the only ones i've seen nowadays using copy protection on their entire catalogue. EMI canada is trying to have it all -- collect a shitload of money from taxes on recordable media as well copy protect all of their releases and prevent customers from making legal copies for personal use. this is madness. they can't have it both ways and the canadian government must step in and protect the consumers who are being ripped off. the record labels are losing money and customers because of lack of innovation and a shitty economic situation, not piracy
Be healthy, be kind, grow rich and prosper

Swedish government goes crazy!

Reply #66
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the same thing here in canada. EMI and whatever small labels they own are the only ones i've seen nowadays using copy protection on their entire catalogue. EMI canada is trying to have it all -- collect a shitload of money from taxes on recordable media as well copy protect all of their releases and prevent customers from making legal copies for personal use. this is madness. they can't have it both ways and the canadian government must step in and protect the consumers who are being ripped off. the record labels are losing money and customers because of lack of innovation and a shitty economic situation, not piracy

the more they piss people off the more they'll just encourage what they call criminal behavior.  pretty soon everybody will be downloading and sharing for free and giving away thier music on cd-r because they paid for distribution rights in advance.

if the record industries think they've got a problem now, just wait and see how bad it can get. soon they won't have to exagerate how much money they're losing, except since they cried wolf for so long nobody will believe them anymore.  natural selection will pick them off like it does everything else thats not smart enough to survive. they'll  piss off everyone around them and sufer the wrath of the angry masses.

Swedish government goes crazy!

Reply #67
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I agree that the American copyright holder conglomerates have way too much power over national and transnational legislative efforts. It is just plain silly that MPAA/RIAA-like lobbying organisations can influence the laws that are drawn up in Sweden. It makes no sense. When did Sweden become under the jurisdiction of United States of Robber Capitalists?

Just like I think it's silly that a price-distorting cartel like OPEC is allowed to exist while the WTO and EU slaps the US for stupid little trade infractions.

Swedish government goes crazy!

Reply #68
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We (the people of the world) don't need them anymore, they can in turn see their inevitable end coming, and so they're scratching to stay alive by any means possible, moral or not, using their vast money and political power to accomplish the task.

Why can't they take their money, retire and do something nice with their lives instead.

Swedish government goes crazy!

Reply #69
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Sweden is now governed by the RIAA! 

I think they call it RIAS (Recording Industry Association of Sweden) or something liek this in Swedish 

BTW I know about the levy in Canada, but I stil can get dirty cheap CD-rs @ reflagdeals 
still LAME 3.96.1 --preset extreme -q 0 -V 0 -m s at least until 2005.

Swedish government goes crazy!

Reply #70
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I think they call it RIAS (Recording Industry Association of Sweden) or something liek this in Swedish 

STIM (Svenska Tonsättares Internationella Musikbyrå)
If anyone really cares...

Swedish government goes crazy!

Reply #71
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STIM (Svenska Tonsättares Internationella Musikbyrå)
If anyone really cares...

Bureau of Piracy (Piratbyrån)
If anyone cares...

http://www.piratbyran.org/

Swedish government goes crazy!

Reply #72
Quote
Quote
STIM (Svenska Tonsättares Internationella Musikbyrå)
If anyone really cares...

Bureau of Piracy (Piratbyrån)
If anyone cares...

http://www.piratbyran.org/

No, its actually "Svenska Antipiratbyrån"
http://www.antipiratbyran.com/

piratbyran.org leads to a page that indirectly encourages piracy!

Swedish government goes crazy!

Reply #73
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http://www.antipiratbyran.com/[/URL]

piratbyran.org leads to a page that indirectly encourages piracy!

Believe me, it was more or less deliberate...