hits
250% Intelectual Property tax
Guess what happens in Spain when you go to a computer shop and you pay an unfair, and I would dare to say, illegal tax?
You get a few blank CDs for a little extra charge!! Check this out:
- Intellectual property tax: 6,10€
- Blank CDs: 2,40€
By the way, I don't know whether you have though of it, but this twisted tax has helped to increase the black market quite a lot: Many shops declare just a little fraction of the CD/DVDs that they import, and therefore they pay this tax only for the declared quantity, but they always charge the tax on the media that they sell.. otherwise, they would not support the abuse.
A unfair tax collected by an association is a damn bad thing; but when the tax is more than 250% of the price of the item it becomes insulting. Someone should stop this intellectual property madness right away.
Comments
well. do like everyone else is doing... order from germany :-)
You think that's insulting? Isn't it odd that this IP tax is taxable? Madness I tell you.
This happens not only in Spains. Check Hungary for example... Madness.. it is.
The worst with this tax is that it doesn't actually give you the right to download copyrighted contents from the internet. I mean, if downloaded copyrighted contents is still illegal, why pay a tax on it ? Do you have to pay a tax to compensate "car stealing" or "bank robbery" ?
- Yes it is. - No it's not. - Yes it is. - No it's not. - Yes it is. ... No, it's not illegal to download copyrighted material, as this is protected by a "personal copy law". Some judges in Spain finally said that, even when SGAE[1] pays some courses to judges to indoctrinate^Wteach them about new technologies. [1] SGAE is the private organization that is collecting this public tax. An organization with a bast and complex relationship with other companies which sell services to it. Casually, owners of this orbiting companies are the same directives of the SGAE, or people closely related to them. Of course, SGAE only wants to protect the musicians' and editors' rights... by imposing such taxes, as well as going to everywhere were music and TV is publicly broadcasted (town parties, bars, radio stations - even the non-commercial ones -, ...) to politely ask them for their part, even if the authors are not associated in SGAE.
