On 20th of October 2006 the Slovene government imposed an act of self reproduction compensation reproduction for personal use. Actually I don't know the proper English term so I'll describe what it is about.
The government wants us to pay some sort of compensation (tax) for every amount of storage we buy to compensate the damage to the authors done by piracy. This tax is applicable for all sorts of media: CD, DVD, tapes(what's that?) and other. There is more, even devices are included: hard drives, CD/DVD drives, tape recorders, video recorders, photocopy machines, mobile phones(!!!) etc. The tax is valued as €0.033 (or $0.04) per gigabyte of storage (and by some other mean for devices that don't have storage).
I am sure that's beautiful for the authors (or for the greedy government?). However, what does it mean for an user
- that uses licensed software only: Great, I am just buying a new computer with 4x320Gb hard drives and a DVD drive. That roughly means 4*€320*0.033 + €0.8 =~ €43. I am using licensed software only and paying for a piracy compensation. Does this mean I can use pirated software now? I paid for its compensation afterall.
- that uses non-licensed software: User pays for piracy now – is the piracy legitimate now?
Every (stupid – isn't it a requirement for politicians?) politician here has full mouth of e-[everything]. According to them we are going to be the most advanced/developed e-country by 2023 or something, yet they can't care less in reality. I strongly doubt that they even understand what e- means – it sounds nice and attracts crowds though.
So, while they have full e-mouths they keep adding taxes to devices and storage media. Aren't they supposed to lower the tax pressure and as consequence the prices instead of adding taxes to legitimate users?
What is the next step? We could get a stupid politician damage compensation: we would pay a tax when we vote to compensate the citizens for the damage done by elected politicians.
Anyway, since I am an author of my applications I'll apply for compensation…