🚀 go-pugleaf

I thought people should know about this.  The long threatening
digital tape bill was passed under suspicious sounding circumstances...

With a little prodding from the public, perhaps Pres. Bush will
veto this bill.

---------------8<-------------------------8<-------------------
From: rms@gnu.ai.mit.edu (Richard Stallman)
Subject: [phr@napa.telebit.com: dat legislation (ugh!)]
Message-ID: <9209300942.AA23073@mole.gnu.ai.mit.edu>
Date: 30 Sep 92 09:42:45 GMT
Followup-To: gnu.misc.discuss
Lines: 55
Approved: info-gnu@prep.ai.mit.edu
To: info-gnu@gnu.ai.mit.edu, info-gnu-emacs@gnu.ai.mit.edu

Congress has just passed a bill to tax DATs and DAT tape, giving most
of the money to record companies and music publishers.  Of course,
they use poor starving musicians as an excuse.  Musicians do get some
of the money, but it is divided in proportion to sales, which means
that most of your taxes will go to save Madonna etc. from starvation.

You can find a alternate proposal in /pub/gnu/dat.{text,dvi,texinfo}.

I urge everyone to send a complaint to the president, who frequently
says he will not raise taxes.  Urge him to veto the bill.  Here's what
one person sent:


Newsgroups: rec.audio,comp.misc,alt.censorship,uiuc.civil-liberty
From: kadie@herodotus.cs.uiuc.edu (Carl M. Kadie)
Subject: Re: DAT Royalty Tax Bill passes the House
Keywords: DAT, tax
Organization: University of Illinois, Dept. of Comp. Sci., Urbana, IL
Date: Fri, 25 Sep 1992 17:40:41 GMT

[I faxed this to the White House (202 456-2461) today. - Carl

					September 25, 1992

The President
The White House
Washington, DC 20500

Re: HR-3204, Audio Home Recording ACT of 1991

Dear Mr. President:

Please veto this bill. It would establish a tax on blank digital audio
tape (DAT), a medium used to record computer data (as well as music).
The bill would turn most of the tax over to record companies such as
Sony Records. It justifies this by erroneously calling the tax a
royalty.

The bill just passed the House under a suspension of rules whereby
there was no debate and no record was kept of the vote. The House did
not debate or consider:

*	The bill creates a new tax on consumers.

*	The bill establishes corporate welfare with foreign 
        record companies as the largest recipients.

*	The bill injures our freedom of expression by 
        putting a tax on blank media.

Very respectfully yours,
 
Carl M. Kadie
--
Carl Kadie -- kadie@cs.uiuc.edu -- University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign


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