Quote:
Originally Posted by speakingtohe
Books are still considered sacred by a large segment of the population.
The tax you propose could be construed as further penalizing people without ereaders, the poor, the less technologically advanced, students and those who live in areas without interent access.
And of course it would be an excuse/incentive for publishers to raise the price of ebooks so that pbooks remain competitively priced.
Making literature less accessible in any form seems distasteful and doing it by taxation is controlling to the point of Big Brother tactics.
Helen
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You still have libraries that the poor could use. Any tax is going to be disportionately negative for the poor but this doesn't mean we should throw out all taxes.
It is possible that the higher demand for ebooks would drive up the price on them. Also, in this new world ebooks are now transferable so there is a secondary market for ebooks. Ultimately, I think the secondary market would likely keep down the new ebook prices as the new ebooks would have to compete with the secondary market.
On one hand, the demand for new ebooks goes up because of the pbook tax but on the other hand the demand declines because of the secondary market.