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Originally Posted by Bob Russell
Imagine if the book industry were to act like the RIAA... they would post observers at every location with a copy machine. They would ask for copy machines to track copies made. They would supoena local copying stores for video records of patrons that are suspected of making illegal copies. They would sue the heck out of everyone they can find. So my question becomes whether they could actually elminate the illegal sources we are talking about (no!), or if they would actually make more money (no!).
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In Spain, for some years now (at least 6, I remember my first year at Uni), photocopying up to 10% of a book for educational purposes (i.e., not for making profit) has been perfectly legal, because the shop (that means the users, of course) already paid a canon for copies.
Last month a law was passed in Spain by which for every CD/DVD (they have been trying to include hard disks, memory cards, PMP... and even scanners/printers -interestingly enough, only for copying disc covers, not for books-, but I am not sure whether they succeded) you buy, you pay a good percentage to the local RIAA / MPAA (SGAE). It's not like you are actually allowed to copy anything, everyone pays in case someone copies. You want to burn a Linux distro? You pay anyway. You want to burn your own music? You pay anyway. Everyone seems pretty upset about all this around here, but it looks like no one knew we were already paying extra for old AV tapes. It's just updating the law.
All this laws just exemplify how much we Spaniards read, anyway. You can copy books partially, say a short story / article, but do not even think of copying an album partially, say a track. No one cares, basically. I guess the situation will change when ebook devices go mainstream.
The French government tried to pass a similar law, by which you paid a canon for CDs/DVDs, BUT you were allowed to copy stuff as long as it was for private uses (the law did not direcly said this, of course, it was just a loophole). Of course, the local RIAA / MPAA hurried to lobby the government into paying WITHOUT being allowed to copy.
However, the finally-passed French law hides a little surprise. It forces all DRM systems to be open. Not the content, of course, just the systems. Say, you have an iRiver, but want to listen to your iTunes tracks there. The result: Apple has threatened to leave their French users to rot.
It's so much fun
