more Life-support for the Record Industry

On: October 6, 2006
About Michael Stevenson
I am a lecturer and PhD candidate in Media Studies at the University of Amsterdam. I've been a contributor to Masters of Media since 2006, though I now only post occasionally. A short list of papers and projects can be found here

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While nothing is decided yet, it looks like (note: article is in Dutch) consumers will be forced to pay extra taxes on their mp3 players and TiVo-like recorders, a kind of pre-penalty for the copies they will ‘inevitably’ make. These taxes are already added to the cost of blank media (dvdr’s, etc.).

The article says the money goes to the artists hurt by (il)legal copying, but I wonder how much goes into the RIAA’s budget for fighting piracy with lawsuits and technologies that make sure we can’t copy anything anyway (I’m thinking in cool cybernetic loops again, sorry). They expect the law to work for them, and they like to police the law (DRM).

In other news (also in Dutch), conservatives are looking to kick under-25 year-olds off welfare. But surely it’s the record and movie industries who are the real ‘welfare leeches’ of our time?

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