Source: Yahoo! News
Manufacturers of computer and telecommunications equipment could soon be required to pay fees to benefit authors and other copyright-holders under a draft law being considered by the German government. |
A Justice Ministry spokesman Tuesday confirmed that the amendment was part of a government report passed by the Cabinet in July, which foresees an ``appropriate'' fee being applied on makers of new equipment that can be used to duplicate protected works.
The amount of the fee has yet to be determined, he added.
Included would be such things as CD burners, computer printers, hard drives and high-speed modems that make downloading files from the Internet faster, the Berliner Zeitung said in a report to be published Wednesday. Such fees are already levied on photocopy machines.
Industry officials were critical of the government plan, which would raise the cost of such devices by up to 30 percent in Germany, according to industry estimates quoted by the newspaper.
Joerg Menno Harms, deputy chief of Bitkom, a lobby group for German high-tech companies, and supervisory board chairman of Hewlett-Packard in Germany, told the newspaper that many companies would move their operations out of Germany if such a tax were passed.
GO! HP GO! copyright on modems and printers...those Germans have gone crazy!
