From: philg@zurich.ai.mit.edu (Philip Greenspun)
Newsgroups: comp.org.eff.talk,alt.censorship,rec.audio
Subject: Re: The Stamp Act and the DAT tax
Date: 26 Aug 92 22:12:09 GMT
Reply-To: philg@martigny.ai.mit.edu
Followup-To: comp.org.eff.talk
Organization: M.I.T. Artificial Intelligence Lab.
In-reply-to: kadie@dante.cs.uiuc.edu's message of 25 Aug 92 17:03:49 GMT


In article <1992Aug25.170349.2740@m.cs.uiuc.edu> kadie@dante.cs.uiuc.edu (Carl M. Kadie) writes:


   p.p.s. What is the status of the DAT bill?

The DAT Bill (now the digital media tax bill) was passed by the Senate
and is waiting for a vote by the full House, sometime after they come
back on September 14.  You can stop passage of the bill by sending a
letter like the following:

August 10, 1992

The Honourable Foo Bar
House of Representatives
Washington, DC 20515

Dear Representative Bar:

Please write to let me know your position on the Audio Home Recording
Act of 1991 (AHRA).  This bill will injure consumers and help
foreigners to compete with American consumer electronics and computer
manufacturers.  Worst of all, by taxing digital audio media that are
used for computer data storage, this bill will discourage Americans
from efficiently using information technology.

AHRA will

1) not "promote the progress of the arts," the constitutional
justification for expanding copyright.  In fact, struggling artists
will have to pay more for media and digital audio recorders, thus
hindering them in their ability to compete with estabished stars.
Will Michael Jackson produce better music if the AHRA increases his
income by 1%?  Or will we be deprived of a future Michael Jackson
because an unknown artist could not afford a "professional" digital
recorder?

2) artificially restrain the American computer industry, which, in the
absence of legislation, would use the same blank media as digital
audio recorders.  DAT tapes, the only currently available consumer
digital audio format, are far more popular for computer data backup
than for copying CDs.  Why should I pay a tax on tapes I use to backup
my Apple hard disk to Apple's foreign competitors (Sony and
Matsushita)?

3) destroy an emerging American industry manufacturing digital audio
products and cause a substantial loss of manufacturing jobs.  We
invented digital signal processing, but to build a digital audio
product, a small company would have to pay thousands of dollars of
legal expenses to review the AHRA and subsequent administrative
rulings to see if it was in compliance.  This bill requires
cash-strapped start-ups to hire lawyers instead of engineers.

4) help create a Japanese monopoly on manufacturing digital audio
equipment.  This bill gives a tremendous competitive advantage to big
consumer electronics companies that manufacture their own microchips.
By mandating SCMS, the AHRA ensures that American companies will be at
the mercy of their foreign competition.

5) injure consumers, especially blind consumers (who do a
disproportionate amount of audio recording), by subjecting them to
price discrimination and taxes on computer data storage and
noninfringing audio storage.

6) increase the trade deficit as Japanese manufacturers and
foreign-owned record companies displace American suppliers and collect
American tax dollars.

7) set up a new government bureaucracy to take money out of the hands
of consumers and feed most of it to a few big private corporations.  I
don't care if the new bureacracy can pay itself with money skimmed off
the top.  I don't want my government involved in this sort of thing.
	
This bill is completely unnecessary.  Firstly, Congress's own OTA
determined that most taping is done of material that the consumer
already owns.  If I pay $15 for a CD that costs $1 to manufacture, is
it really so unfair that I make a copy to play in my car?  And why
should Sony get more money in the form of a tax?  They already sold me
the CD player, the receiver, the cassette deck, the blank tape, and
the car stereo.  Haven't they made enough money?  I think it would be
much more interesting if Congress investigating why CDs sell for twice
as much as LPs even though they cost less to manufacture.  That
doesn't sound like perfect competition to me.

Secondly, we are about to enter into an era of high-bandwidth digital
communications and machines that transparently handle computer data,
video and audio in the same manner.  This legislation will look
ridiculously vague and silly in five years.  Only lawyers will be
happy with the resulting chaos and litigation.

Finally, the idea that we Americans are all criminals doesn't sit well
with me.  We paid $6 billion for prerecorded music last year despite
the fact that we all have cassette recorders.  We paid tens of
billions for publications despite widespread Xerox machines.  We paid
tens of billions for software despite the ease of copying it with
computers.  We gave you the benefit of the doubt by voting for you --
please do the same for us.

Very truly yours,


Joe Constituent
Newsgroups: comp.org.eff.talk,alt.allsysop,alt.bbs.ads,co.general,nyx.mis