Posted 12:46 by Beorn
Norway's Ministry of Cultural Affairs has proposed extending the tax on recordable media to include CD-R's and DVD's. Looks like we'll be following the rest of Europe, then. Their justification for fighting piracy at the recordable media level is interesting:

En samlet vurdering av de hensyn som gj�r seg gjeldende tilsier at det b�r innf�res et vederlag som kompenserer rettighetshaverne for det tap de lider som f�lge av den private eksemplarfremstilling som finner sted fremfor et forbud mot privat eksemplarfremstilling. Hensynet til vern av den enkeltes private sf�re og manglende muligheter for kontroll i denne sf�ren tilsier at det ikke b�r innf�res et generelt forbud mot privat eksemplarfremstilling.

And, somewhat less priceworthy, (but in traditional social democratic spirit):

I tillegg foresl�s det at en tredjedel av samlet oppkrevet vederlag fordeles kollektivt. Et sentralt form�l med slik kollektiv fordeling av oppkrevet vederlag er � sikre nyskapende og mindre kommersiell kunstnerisk virksomhet.

This law will be irrelevant by the time it is passed. It might have served some purpose a few years ago, as most digital piracy until today has involved CD-R's at some level, but there's no guarantee that removable media will continue to be the primary storage of pirated data. By the end of the year I'll propably have houndreds of gigabytes hard disk space, why bother with 700mb CD-R's, or even DVD's? The tax will succeed in annoying some people, and possibly subsidize a few accordion players, but if the music industry can be compared to an overweight dickensian factory owner thrown out of a plane without a parachute, (and I think it can), then a CD-R tax is the cushion placed on the ground beneath him.