From: philg@zurich.ai.mit.edu (Philip Greenspun)
Newsgroups: misc.legal
Subject: US Congress votes to subsidize Japanese electronics industry
Date: 17 Apr 92 19:40:35 GMT
Reply-To: philg@zurich.ai.mit.edu
Distribution: misc.legal
Organization: M.I.T. Artificial Intelligence Lab.


To the best of my layman's knowledge, for the first time the US
Congress is considering a direct tax on American citizens that will
primarily be paid to foreigners.  This is indeed a surprising turn of
events and it is one that you can do something about.

In the decades to come, every American computer user who purchases
floppy disks will pay a tax.  Most of the money collected will go to
record companies owned by foreigners, notably Sony, Philips and
Matsushita.  Congress, after receiving substantial campaign
contributions from the recording industry, has decided that Americans
are criminals who don't want to pay for CDs.  Therefore digital audio
media such as DAT tapes and writable optical disks will be taxed and
the money handed over to record companies and artists.  Just as
consumer DAT and 8mm video tape have become the standard high-capacity
backup media for workstations/minis, it is likely that writable
optical digital audio disks will replace today's magnetic floppy
disks.  Sony and Matsushita own two of the largest record companies in
the US and would get the most money from this bill.  Two years from
now, every time American users of IBM computers make a backup, they'll
be paying a tax to help out IBM's Japanese competitors.

Additional reasons to dislike this bill are varied.  It will be
illegal to sell consumer digital audio recorders in the US that can
make digital-to-digital copies after one generation.  You'll pay a tax
on your shiny new Japanese machine, you'll pay a tax on the tape and
when you try to assemble a recording of your own music, all you'll get
is a big flashing "you are a criminal sign."  You'll have to spend
$5,000 on a "professional" machine in order to gain any real benefit
from the new products.  Congress is creating a new government
bureacracy to administer the tax collection from Americans and
subsequent distribution to foreign-owned record companies.
Manufacturing digital audio equipment will now require hiring a lawyer
to wade through over one hundred pages of legal requirements and
technical specifications, thus hindering small American companies in
competing with large foreign ones.  Finally, now one seems to have
considered whether this will "promote the progress of the arts", which
is the constitutional justification for expanding copyright.  Since
the money is distributed linearly according to sales, only the biggest
record companies and most popular stars will get any significant
money.

You can stop this bill from passing.  Congress is sticking it to
us because the recording industry paid them and they don't think
anyone will notice.  CSPAN and most newspapers haven't covered this
issue at all because the bill has dozens of co-sponsors and is
therefore considered non-controversial.  If a Congressman gets even a
few letters regarding this bill, which he's probably hardly thought
about at all, it might be enough to make him think that subsidizing
Japanese computer vendors isn't such a great idea.  The bill is going
to be voted on in about two weeks.  It is called the "Audio Home
Recording Act of 1991" and is S-1623 in the Senate and HR-3204 in the
House.  You can write to your elected representatives this way:

Senator Foo Bar
The Capitol
Washington, DC 20510

Representative Foo Bar
The Capitol
Washington, DC 20515

If you want any more information, please feel free to contact me
(philg@altdorf.ai.mit.edu).  I testified before the relevant Senate
subcommittee last Fall as the "nerd witness from MIT."
Newsgroups: misc.legal,alt.society.civil-liberty