Of course Apple will not pay the taxes, the user will. We always do. This time, though, new users only.
> So, in France, since one must pay a tax on all blank media, it's OK to pirate music and movies?
I guess the case is similar to Spain's. Here a sick law states the concept of "private copy", by which it is explicitely assumed that each time you copy an audiovisual piece that you legally acquired and own (for example in order to hear a CD you just bought in your iPod), its authors loose one possible additional sale. Because of that, users, although legally entitled to make copies of audiovisual pieces they have BOUGHT once, have to pay a tax to the Spanish SGAE (Association of Authors and Editors at
http://www.sage.es ) in the concept of author's rights, when they buy the equipment and media they are going to make the copy with. What is more sick is that the law explicitely states that copying foreign works is also taxed in favor of an association of Spanish authors.
The law, though, is very vague on expliciting the support to be taxed. I read once in an article describing the law (not in the law itself), that basically, the law's definition of taxable media covered every susceptible media of being destined to copy audiovisual works. Photocopiers, VCRs, tape recorders, audio tapes, videocasettes, etc have that tax. Only until some months ago, optical media was free of that tax (because it was considered, I believe, that it primary use was not that of copying copyrighted audiovisual media, except for Audio CD-R). Now CDs and DVDs are being taxed also, prices have rosen considerably and the debate has exploded. But if that interpretation of the law is correct (which I do not know), they are not adding tax into paper and pencils because they do not want, not because they cannot. There are other media (not exclusively) used to make legal "private copies" of audiovisual media that do not have a tax yet, such as hard disk drives (mp3 players, though, have that tax I believe), but SGAE has publicly expressed the intention to push for those too.
) but I've already done my taxes for this year. Oh well - there's always next year, right?
