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Originally Posted by rogue_librarian
Not "all" storage media, but close enough. And you know what? It's working fine, by and large. The only problem, really, is that publishers are increasingly trying to take away (by trivial technical means + making circumvention a criminal offense) the very rights (making and sharing of private copies, time and location shifting etc) this blanket tax is supposed to cover; you know, as in having your cake and eat it, too.
You know, there is the normative power of the factual. It's not our job to help the publishing industry to preserver their outdated business models, after all.
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Is it working? So, more work for the politicians. They decide now how to distribute the tax payers money to those artists that are in favor with the party currently ruling the country. If you are fine with that -- then you can say it is working. But don't you think the publishers are getting their share? They are politically well connected and will be having an easier time than they do now. No need to sell the books to the public, just wine and dine the bureaucrats.
I, personally, prefer not to pay a surcharge when I use a DVD, an SD card, or a USB stick to burn personal or business files.
So, you are paying for a bloated bureaucracy that decides who gets your money. How is that so much better? When I buy a book at least I know my money goes to ensure that there will be more books of the kind I like from the authors I like.
I don't live in Europe anymore and the prospect of such a system would horrify me, but the file sharing community may well push us in such a direction.