[LINK] FC: Recording industry wants to scan .au university computers (fwd)

[Chris Maltby]

> > A cheap way to generate publicity and put pressure on governments to 
> > bring in a blank CD tax.

On Thu, Feb 20, 2003 at 03:02:44PM +1030, Glen Turner wrote:
> Has anyone seen the fine print for this proposal.  I went
> looking for it but couldn't find anything more than
> media releases.

It's more of a threatened big stick with a spike than a serious
proposal I think. There would be big corporate opponents to the
idea amongst many other objections.
 
> It's not the CD tax which worries me, but that such as tax
> would be a precedent for a hard disk tax and a flash memory
> tax as music players move away from CD formats.  If they
> want $1 per storage for 20 songs, then buying a hard disk
> in the future will be very expensive (about $500 for the
> largest hard disk now).

Exactly. It would be a tax on people who are doing lawful things such
as copying their own creations - the very people the IP industry
claims to be protecting... to say nothing of the many people who
back up their computer data to CD.