Juha has posted up with a link to an article in the Swedish press (sorry, no translation but you can probably get the gist of it). Basically, someone is entertaining the notion that we should tax broadband with proceeds going to copyright holders. The discussion follows a raid of of a torrent tracker on piracy claims.
The idea of introducing a tax on the entire broadband user population to pay for the actions of a subset of the population who are doing illegal things seems somewhat crazy to me. But beyond that there would be serious administration questions.
- How is it decided who gets a slice of the revenue?
- How do you ensure that content providers don’t slap a premium above and beyond the tax?
What it really comes down to is that I don’t really trust the government to spend my entertainment dollars for me, thats why they are my entertainment dollars. I am willing on the other hand to pay for my digital content if I agree with distribution mechanism.
I’ve all but given up on buying CDs because the risk of it not playing in my laptop is too high, and some of the rights management stuff on downloadable formats is a bit dodgy if you ask me.