France : Taxes for video and mp3 playing capacity

[Pietro "m0nt0" Montorfano]

Schmidt András ha scritto:
> Richard Reichenbacher wrote:
>> No direspect or anything but that's probably the dumbest tax I've 
>> ever heard of.
>>
> In Hungary there is tax on every _empty_ Compact Disc and DVD. The 
> concept is that you will store warez mp3 on them. So when I archive my 
> personal photos or software projects I pay tax for the recording 
> companies.
> I don't know the current state but there was rumour about extending 
> the tax on all storage devices (including hard disks and flash pen 
> drives). Inside the EU it is legal to import gadget from any country 
> from inside the EU without paying taxes. So these devices can be 
> bought in the surrounding countries cheaper.
>
> You can disrespect it. It is a really dumb kind of tax :-).
> US people may say it is stupid, but at least there are no software 
> patents here yet :-).
>
> SA
Oh, in Italy there are no software patents but there is a stupid tax 
like that in Hungary, a tax that you pay on each thing which has the 
ability to store datas (empty CDs, HDDs,...), that's because you could 
"potentially" store something like illegal MP3s, illegal videos and 
pirated copy of anything, so that tax is made (if i can remember well) 
to refound the damage that anyone is subject. So, the logic will say 
that if you pay that tax you CAN copy anything and download anything 
legal or not from the internet, you are paying for that, but no, you 
can't. Yeah, it's a stupid tax but hey you COULD do an illegal use of 
the storage media....

Cya

Pietro