NickSTAR used our newssubmit to tell us that Germany is poised to enforce a 3-year-old law and impose a copyright levy of $13 plus 16 percent in value added tax per new computer sold in the country.
The levy is based on the recommendation of Germany's patent office and fierce lobbying by an association of German composers, authors and publishers. The money will be used to reimburse copyright holders for unauthorized copying thought to weigh adversely on sales:
This is the non-binding outcome of a one-year mediation effort by the patent office between VG Wort, Fujitsu Siemens Computers, Germany's largest computer manufacturer and other makers. |
VG Wort initially sought a levy of $33 per unit sold. But Fujitsu and the German Association for Information Technology, Telecommunications and New Media, known as Bitkom -- including Microsoft, IBM, Alcatel, Nokia, Siemens and 1,300 other member firms -- intend to challenge even the more modest fee in court.
They claim that it will add close to $80 million to the cost of purchasing computers without conferring real benefits on the levy's intended beneficiaries. They made similar assertions in a letter they recently dispatched to the European Commission.
Blank magnetic media, especially CD-R's, are already taxed in more than 40 countries, including Canada and the United States. According to the article 55% of the 486 million blank CDs sold in Germany last year were used for illicit purposes.
Source: UPI
