Portugal Proposes Terabyte Tax To Pay Copyright Holders
Portugal is planning a tax of up to €0.5 per Gigabyte, to pay copyright owners
The Portuguese parliament is considering taxation on storage devices, in an attempt to protect copyright holders.
The proposal would impose a range of charges on storage devices that could be used for sharing copyright, from €0.2 per gigabyte on hard disks, up to €0.5 per megabyte on phones. It has been condemned as the death knell for storage sales in the country.
Payment by the Gigabyte
Reminiscent of the old levy on blank casette tapes which was designed to discourage home copying of music in pre-Internet days, the move suggests a complex set of rates.
It has been criticised by one local media outlet, Exame Informatica, which says it would add €21 extra per terabyte of data on hard drives, while larger devices, external devices and gadgets such as phones face a higher aggravated tax so a 2TB drive would cost an additional €103.2 per unit and a 64GB iPhone would be €32 more expensive.
The proposal also suggests taxes on photocopiers and multi function printers so a 70 ppm MFP would cost up to €227 more per device.
Over to TechEye for the gory details: “This would be enough to singlehandedly stall PC and component sales”
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