New tax in the Netherlands adds up to one Euro on DVD recordables

Pancras Pouw and StevieB reported to us that the Dutch goverment has put a tax on DVD recordables in the Netherlands. The tax is a compensation for authors and other copyright holders for home copying of their contentand adds up to one Euro on a DVD-R(W) disc and up to 0,50 Euro on a DVD+RW disc. The tax will be valid from 1-7-2003 to 31-12-2004. Here are the rates currently valid in the Netherlands.

DVD related tax: Recordable dvd-r/rw : € 1,00 per 4,7 gigabyte; Recordable dvd+r/rw : € 0,50 per 4,7 gigabyte; Recordable dvd-ram : no additional tax; Earlier introduced taxes: Audio analoge blanco band : € 0,23 per 60 min; Video analoge blanco band : € 0,33 per 60 min; Digitale blanco minidisk : € 0,32 per 60 min; Digitale blanco audio cd-r/rw : € 0,42 per 60 min; Digitale blanco data cd-r/rw : € 0,14 per disc.

Strangely enough the DVD+R(W) becomes a lot cheaper in the Netherlands this way. People have to pay 0,50 Euro cents less tax on these discs. We called the responsible organistation in the Netherlands, Stichting Thuiskopie to explain why. According to the organistation the DVD+RW has a better copy protection mechanism and is therefor likely to be less used as medium to copy copy-protected content. Read the entire press release here.

Dutch customers should keep an eye on the   CD Freaks Shop if they want to keep buying cheap DVD recordables.

Source: Cedar.nl