[pp.int.general] [Cafe] levies

[Carlos Ayala]

----- Mensaje original ----
De: Amelia Andersdotter <teirdes at gmail.com>
Enviado: lunes, 24 de marzo, 2008 19:53:09
> > I see a risk with that approach: merging levies and State role in culture, thus losing the focus.
> Is there a risk? Levies and involuntary fees would create such a merge anyway. You're  extracting a fee/tax/levy by
> legislation so as to compensate culture-makers.State collection of money is better when not used as a restriction on an
> emerging market. Instead, put this levy/fee/tax on a market that you wish to dampen or preferably go away.

That levies and involuntary fees would create a merge between levies and the State role in culture is, at least, questionable; why? Because, first of all, the very existence of levies should be accepted ir order to enter such discussion , and we -and I hope that we all- disagree about accepting their existence to be sustained.

Changing subject, actually PIRATA is as far as one can imagine from extracting any levy from legislation so as to compensate culture-makers.

> Of course, the argument is only valid if you agree that fees or levies to compensate artists is at all desirable.

As I said before -and, though I thought it remained clear from my former mails (inwhich I stated that we think in PIRATA that we should talk about why levies should be, before discussing how levies should be), may be needed to remind it- "we reject the formulas of indiscriminate
compensatory remuneration, also called canon, for private copying" (canon=levy). Thus, we don't find desirable at all the private copying levies to exist.

> > 2001/29/EC talks about compensation for the limits (established by laws) of exclusive author's commercial rights-
> > actions, and if such actions supposedly cause losses to copyright holders so this is not about to tax or not to tax,
> > but to find out if there is something to be compensated.
> If we if were to use 2001/29/EC as a basis for arguments questioning the levies, we don't get much leeway. No matter
> how you look at it, digital material is or will be available for free in a way the artist cannot control. That breaches the
> premise of the copyright owner's control over distribution. _Why_ should we compensate copyright owners? Because
> the their rights are infringed upon (according to the directive). The only thing left the _how_.

I think it's mandatory to know where we are, to be able to know how to get where we want to be. And where we are is defined by 2001/29/EC.

If we reach Strasbourg -and I believe we can, though it's an obviously hard goal to achieve-, what are we going to do there? I think that, apart from introducing new issues in the political scenario, change the communitary laws that oppose our ideas, our goals, our core issues; and 2001/29/EC is one of those laws. That directive allows levies to exist, and if we want levies to not exist anymore, we need to change it properly ... provided that it's included in our common goals; is it included? We should find it out, I think, by questioning first of all why private copying levies have to exist -I gave some answers in my former mails related to PIRATA ideology, though to have a common answer, in a PPI context, it would be necessary for all of us to make a common effort and share every pirate party their stance about this issue-.

Because I believe it's not worthwhile investing time in finding out how to implement levies until we find out if we, as a group, accept or reject private copying levies.

> Of course, it's possible to argue that, say, a broadband levy would compensate for the lack of control over distribution
> rather than the (presumed) loss of income incurred by each downloaded copy. That could be used as an argument for
> involuntary fees: you don't pay to get access to copyrighted material, you pay because you're supporting a medium
> that incurs the loss of control over distribution of that same material. Same 
shit, 
different 
name.

May I guess that you, as well as us, reject levies? That's great :)

> I realise I've picked up a habit from a friend of answering in different ways to different parts of e-mails I've read. The
> above thoughts are actually mutually exclusive: either you want a state tax or levy to compensate artists. In that case
> my first thought of making said tax/fee relate to something else holds.
>
> Or you don't want that, and in that case the directive doesn't hold.

As I commented before, I think we have to know where we are to be able to know how to get where we want to be. Thus, it becomes mandatory to perfectly know communitary laws regarding author's rights. Directive itself doesn't hold, when compared to the thought of those of us who reject levies and, at the same time, defend free non-lucrative sharing of cultural works; the thing is that 2001/29/EC doesn't seem to be fully compatible with that thoughts, so I believe we should invest our efforts in finding out the best way of rewriting it.

> Or you would want the fee to be explicitly tied to the material that's copyrighted, in which case my third thought about
> loss of control would work.

As I also commented before, your guessings will find an answer after reading about our ideology: "we reject the formulas of indiscriminate
compensatory remuneration, also called canon, for private copying", and also "culture is one of the goods that every citizen has right to access;then, not only we do consider that free cultural collective exchanges
and enjoyment are not a crime, but also we do consider it as a fair and
efficient way of promoting culture". 

Hope not only that PIRATA's stance has become clear, but also to know the stances of other pirate parties about this issue; it will help a lot in the search for a common stance about this issue. Regards


                                                                                       Carlos Ayala
                                                                                        ( Aiarakoa )

                                                              Partido Pirata National Board's Chairman




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