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.
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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(i) guilty until proven innocent anyone?
(ii) wow, rights holders get money for doing literally nothing...
(iii) I am as ever reminded of this quotation:
"There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute or common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back." (Heinlein, 1939)