[LINK] France to tax I.T. devices to raise copyright levy

[Danny Yee]

Chirgwin, Richard wrote:
> Horrible it may be, Damien - but it might be a "lesser of two evils".
> 
> Evil 1: Hollywood successfully lobbies computer who put "optional" copy
> protection inside hardware; what's optional today becomes compulsory
> tomorrow; and little by little we lose our liberties;
> 
> Evil 2: We pay a levy; some fairly, some unfairly; but at least that's less
> intrusive than Evil 1.
 
Who says they're exclusive?  We could pay a levy here in Australia,
then watch as Hollywood goes ahead and puts copy protection into
hardware anyway.

And businesses in SE and East Asia doing massive illegal copying
will almost certainly never pay any levy on blank media anyway -
which could leave us in the situation where a blank CD costs more
than a Microsoft Office CD, at least on the street :-)

Danny.