VanLUG Email Archive
It's somewhat reasonable to argue that cassette tapes are, in fact,
mostly used for copying music, since they aren't of much use for things
other than audio recording, and there is probably rather little original
recording being done on cassettes. MiniDisc is usable for data, but
such use probably isn't large - how many MiniDisc data drives have you
seen?
But CD-R writers are very common now, and I'll bet that a substantial
fraction of CD-R media that are purchased *are* actually used for data,
or original (legal) audio recording, as opposed to illegal copying of
copyrighted music. If most usage of CD-R is *not* for music, then taxing
all CD-Rs to pay for the sins of a minority of users is certainly unfair.
Does the tax also apply to DAT tape? Again, another medium that is used
both for audio recording and large-scale data storage.
Also, having the tax rate be twice as much per minute for digital media
as analog media seems questionable, unless the musicians actually get
twice as much money for music released in digital form. I'll bet they
don't.
Dave