Another "YOU ARE ALL PIRATES" levy is being proposed by Austrian rights holders group Autoren. In addition to the fees already paid by consumers on blank CDs and DVDs, IG Autoren is pushing even further. And it's not just interested in physical media.

Consumers in Austria already pay levies on blank CDs and DVDs. Rights holders have been advocating to expand these kinds of fees to hard drives and other forms of storage media as well, and apparently aren’t just thinking about local storage. In its newspaper, IG Autoren wrote:

“We not only want a hard disc levy, we also want a levy for the usage of the cloud.”

Hardware makers have pushed back, calling these proposed levies what they really are: double dipping. Consumers already pay the levy on blank media and now, Autoren wants to tax the computer, the hard drive and the cloud it connects to. With the dropoff in sales of blank media, IG Autoren's got to make up the income somewhere, right? This is what passes for "fairness" in the eyes of rights holders. If one form of media dies out, along with its associated fees, it must be replaced with another. Rather than face the fact that a business model that predicates itself on the assumption that piracy is the main reason people purchase CDs, DVDs, hard drives and cloud storage is a thoroughly flawed model, IG Autoren would rather push for additional levies -- all in the name of the artists, of course.

One would think that if levying taxes on storage was such a money maker, artists would be better off selling blank CDs at their merch tables if they could collect the levy directly, rather than through a third party. In fact, for those further down on the sales chart, it just might be, considering the "trickle down" effect continues to rain dollars on the most successful artists while leaving the other 95% with mere pennies.

Not that IG Autoren is interested in approaching this logically. To defend its rent-seeking, it points to Germany, the country with some of the most screwed up concessions to rights holders' demands.

Rights holders on the other hand point to Germany, where levies are already in effect. German consumers currently pay €13.65 ($17.66) for every PC and between €7 and €9 for external hard drives. However, there is no fee for cloud storage services in Germany.

The European Commission is currently considering reforms to copyright law to better apply it to the digital age. IG Autoren apparently believes means this means it should be able to apply its levies, ones that began back in the analog age of cassettes, to cloud services and any other technology that could conceivably hold an mp3. And it's not just IG Autoren. As reported back in October, a coalition of rights holders sent a submission stating that they were "entitled" to remuneration for personal copies. Fortunately, the commission's paper pointed out that cloud services actually reduced the number of copies made, making a private copy levy "less appropriate."

If the past is any indication, these rights holders will likely be granted a levy on hard drives and other storage devices, but cloud services may be a tougher battle. Considering many services offer limited free accounts and are likely unwilling to foot the bill for a €7-9 levy, this means these services won't be available (at least not the free option) in countries collecting this fee. The end result of this rent-seeking is fewer options for the public simply because a handful of rights holding organizations feel they're "owed" a cut from anything that can conceivably hold copied files.

Not this again. Last year, we wrote about how Austrian police had seized computers from a tor exit node, showing little comprehension of how tor worked, and why the operator of the node was not responsible for the content accessed. We wondered how difficult it would be to teach law enforcement how tor worked. Apparently, those in Austria still need more help, as it's being reported that another Austrian tor exit node operator has been charged with child porn distribution. The guy, William Weber, has a blog post with some photos.

Seven LKA officers, two police offers, and a court-appointed expert witness started a search of the flat, without respecting my privacy or property whatsoever. Paper documents in a cupboard were read, and no care was taken of my cat (who I was allowed to lock into another room later). My storage cubes (HP MicroServers) were confiscated without any regard for the hardware – the power cords were simply ripped out / hard shutdown, instead of properly shutting them down by the operating system. My main PC was shut down normally, as far as i could determine. After finishing the search in my living room, they continued in my bedroom, where they confiscated my legal firearms, as well as my cable TV receiver, and my Xbox 360. Despite my statement that all firearms and ammunition were legally owned and registered, having passed all background checks, this was doubted by one of the LKA officers due to the caliber.

He indicates later that there was at least some knowledge of tor, so hopefully this gets sorted out:

After this, I had them show me the offending IP address, which I identified as belonging to me in the specified timeframe. I explained that this was a TOR exit node under my control at this time. I attempted to explain what TOR is, and they appeared to be familiar with it, as the atmosphere suddenly became more friendly. They probably understood that it was very unlikely they had a child pornographer sitting in their office.

Some questions about my motives followed, which I attempted to answer – but this seemingly failed. I could not make them understand why I would “waste” resources and bandwidth (translating into money) to run a TOR node. I informed them that I was already contacted by the Polish police in May about this IP, regarding hacking attempts originating from it. Back then I had already explained to Polish police that this was a TOR exit node, and that no logfiles were held. After the report of hacking attempts, I shut down the TOR node on this server, but apparently this was too late and they were investigating (and/or wiretapping) already.

Obviously, there are reasons to investigate possible child porn distribution, but it still seems ridiculous that law enforcement still seems skeptical of tor exit nodes and assumes that they must be used for nefarious intent. This isn't the first time of course. Last year, here in the US, ICE seized a tor exit node as well. While it eventually returned the equipment, it warned the guy that "this could happen again." And, of course, just this week, we wrote about a German case where a court actually held someone responsible for the transmission of encrypted traffic on a tor-like system.

British glam-rock band The Sweet (best known for songs like Block Buster! and The Ballroom Blitz) seemed pretty damn bitter five years ago when guitarist Andy Scott sued an Austrian man, Dietmar Huber, for selling a single used CD on eBay at a price of one euro. At first, he claimed it was a pirated copy and asked for a €2000 fee, but Huber refused, insisting it was a legally purchased disc that he had every right to sell. Amazingly, Scott kept pushing, and went to court asking for €36,000. When Huber proved in court that it was his CD, Scott still didn't give up! He changed his claim to say he owned a copyright on the name, and all used sales had to be authorized by him.

Huber, as the victim of an utterly ridiculous string of legal attacks, continued to fight back, and now Austria's highest court has confirmed that he did nothing wrong and the band must pay his legal fees to the tune of £50,000.

This isn't really surprising—most jurisdictions recognize that it's always okay to re-sell something you legally purchased. Of course, we do see some companies pushing back against this, most notoriously video game developers. But even they'd (probably) be smarter than to engage in such a Quixotic legal quest. And that's the surprising part here: that the guitarist kicked off this circus and forced it to keep escalating. Used records have been a much-loved part of the music world for decades—did he think he was going to change all that? More importantly, does he think this is going to help him sell more albums? In reality, I'd guess people are going to be a lot more reluctant to buy a Sweet CD in the future, since they know they might get sued if they want to re-sell it later (because, given his dogged pursuit of this dead-end lawsuit, I am not optimistic that Scott has learned his lesson).

I've expressed my skepticism in the past about the ability of The Pirate Party to make a real dent long-term in politics, but I'm beginning to wonder if I've underestimated the effort. While we've seen some successes in Germany, it appears that the party has now become the third most popular party in the country, surpassing the Greens. That's fairly surprising. Equally interesting is that in nearby Austria, a Pirate Party member won a seat in a local city election... which actually made front page news:

These are still small steps, of course, and I still doubt that the party will become a "major" political party -- but its success in Europe is already driving other parties to pay much more attention to the issues that have attracted so much attention for The Pirate Party: internet freedom, free speech, civil liberties, copyright law, patent law, privacy and much more. If the Party's one major accomplishment is to bring those issues into the mainstream of politics, I'd consider it a pretty big success.

Javier points us to the news that the police in Austria have seized a bunch of computer equipment from the home of someone running a tor exit node. The email is not entirely clear, but it sounds like someone used tor -- via that exit node -- to access a porn site. Seeing as the equipment was seized, I'm assuming that this wasn't just a standard porn site. It seems like this is a risk that many people running tor exit nodes may face -- but the big question is how difficult is it to explain to the police what tor is, what an exit node is, why such things are perfectly legal, and why this means they're looking in the wrong place? Or will law enforcement just avoid all these details and assume that running a tor exit node is proof of guilt?

techflaws.org points us to the news that seven different collection societies in Austria are demanding a private copying levy on all hard drives (Google translation of the original German). Since seven different collection societies are involved, and each needs to get a cut, when you add all their fees up -- it means that all hard drives under 500 GB have 21.60 euros added to the bill, while hard drives over 750 GB get a whopping 43.74 euros added (it's not clear what happens between 500 to 750 GB). There's also some weirdness where hardware vendors who give up their right to sue can have the levy reduced by 2/3 -- which makes the whole thing seem even more sketchy. Apparently, similar plans have been rejected in the past, but the collection societies have claimed "times have changed." And, the response should be: so it's about time you learned to change as well.

Bas Grasmayer points us to the claim that the Austrian town of Frauenkirchen has apparently tried to patent the fact that it represents the geographical midpoint of Europe. Apparently, there are a few nearby places that have also made claims to being the geophysical center of Europe, and someone decided to go that extra kilometer and try to patent it. Unfortunately, the details are really sparse. Wikipedia notes that it holds the Austrian patent AM 7738/2003, but navigating the Austrian patent website didn't work very well (um... language barrier...). The only source cited by Wikipedia is a speech from a few years ago, which mentions in passing that a woman's church the town had patented it (Update: the name Frauenkirchen apparently means "woman's church" so this is a bit of a translation error -- the guy was referring to the town). I don't quite see how such a thing is even remotely patentable, and I do wonder if they actually mean trademark -- so perhaps someone who's a bit more familiar with this can fill us in. Either way, it sounds pretty ridiculous to apply for (and potentially get) any sort of "intellectual property" monopoly privilege on the claim of being the geophysical center of Europe.

It looks like politicians worldwide have decided to step in to try to stop rude mobile phone behavior. Just after we pointed to US politicians looking to ban the (already banned) use of mobile phones on airplanes, the mayor of the Austrian city of Graz, has said that commuters must switch their mobile phones to silent mode on public transportation. From the sound of it, this isn't so much a law, as a voluntary suggestion. The mayor says that police won't be going after anyone who fails to follow the rule. It's a little unclear from the AP article whether or not this is only supposed to prevent phones from ringing or if it's also meant to keep people from talking on the phone as well. Either way, it's unlikely to work. As the article also notes, Sweden recently did away with special "cell phone free" zones on public transportation because "it didn't really work." Meanwhile, New York City had pushed for mobile phone etiquette laws years ago, but it's not clear if it's ever enforced.

This does raise some interesting questions. Clearly, plenty of people are quite annoyed by the way others use mobile phones in public. In fact, there was an amusing study a few years back that showed nearly everyone gets annoyed at others for rude phone behavior, but when asked about their own behavior insist that they are never a problem. However, it does seem that even when people recognize the rudeness of others on mobile phones, if they're told to stop using their own mobile phone, it sets off a bit of mobile rage from people who feel unfairly restricted. I used to think that rude behavior on mobile phones was mostly due to people who were mobile phone "newbies" and didn't quite realize that there were better ways to use the phone, but that doesn't seem to be the case either.

So, is there a solution? Do we need laws to stop people from "rude" mobile phone behavior? Would they even work? Would education about mobile phone etiquette work instead? Or, should we all just learn to deal with the fact that sometimes, when we go out, there will be mobile phones ringing and people talking on them? My guess is that that last scenario (i.e., we just get used to the way it is) is most likely.