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Austrian Rights Holder Group Wants To Hit Cloud Services With A 'You Must Be A Pirate' Tax (Techdirt)

Another "YOU ARE ALL PIRATES" levy is being proposed by Austrian rights
holders group Autoren. In addition to the fees already paid by consumers on
blank CDs and DVDs, IG Autoren is pushing even further. And it's not just
interested in physical media.

> _Consumers in Austria already pay levies on blank CDs and DVDs. Rights
holders have been advocating to expand these kinds of fees to hard drives and
other forms of storage media as well, and apparently aren't just thinking
about local storage. In its newspaper, IG Autoren wrote:_

_"We not only want a hard disc levy, we also want a levy for the usage of the
cloud."_

Hardware makers have pushed back, calling these proposed levies what they
really are: double dipping. Consumers already pay the levy on blank media and
now, Autoren wants to tax the computer, the hard drive and the cloud it
connects to. With the dropoff in sales of blank media, IG Autoren's got to
make up the income somewhere, right? This is what passes for "fairness" in the
eyes of rights holders. If one form of media dies out, along with its
associated fees, it _must_ be replaced ...

Techdirt

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Testing the Current (Shelf Love)

On the surface, seven-year-old Tommy MacAllister appears to have a pretty good
life. He has the freedom to run around the neighborhood and get treated to
Cokes and funny stories from the neighbors, his parents buy him wonderful
gifts like … Continue reading ->

Shelf Love