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Originally Posted by pilotbob
In the US most illegal income is not taxed, because people don't report it. This is one of the reasons I support the Fairtax since people that have illegal income still go to the store and buy stuff at retail.
BOb
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You do realise that most of the crime is quite "above-board" (see banks, etc.), and that these are the most likely of all to have money left over after buying "essentials"? You might as well not be taxing them at all. Anyway, there is VAT already, so why put all your money in a single bet and only go for sales taxes?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Nate the great
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There's something I've been wondering about for a while now. If you pay a tax to cover your private copying, does that mean the copies you make are legal? Can you distribute them? I see that tax as having paid for the privilege to be a pirate. Am I wrong, and if so, why?
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You are wrong, and for a very simple reason. The law does not specify why anyone is paying those ridiculous subsidies (or if it does, it is "to compensate for general infringement", i.e., created due to lobbying power), and as such, you cannot derive rights from paying them.
The media companies, OTOH, will be able to claim a number of things which are all unverifiable and indisputable because the law does not having anything to say about up/downloading.
In any case, there currently still is a right to download/copy, so you don't need to view the subsidy you pay as some sort of absolution, although the fees are probably paid in part because we have "fair use" rights.
Anyway, to conclude: those companies can claim whatever they want, and because most judges still don't have a solid background in the history of Intellectual Property Rights, they will not recognize the arguments for what they are; as such, they are just as likely to go your way as theirs, and you basically have no guarantees whatever about which way they might lean.
Probably the most important point, however, is that if you are ever sued, you will not be able to afford their lawyers, and as such, you will lose, or they will drop the case before there is a judgement. Not much more to it than that.