Blog . Jiboneus

Found this brief Star In.Tech 15, december 2005 article entitle “Levy on CD-Rs would be unfair, say consumers” on one of my favorite blog it-sideways.com.

Here’s the brief summary:

1. Music Council of Malaysia (MMM) will impose a levy on CD-Rs, which can be used by consumers to copy music CDS.
2. Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs Minister Datuk Shafie Apdal said it may be better if something could be done to control the distribution of CD burners, rather than imposing a levy on blank CD-Rs.
3. Two out of three CD-Rs sold in the country are used for copying audio-visual material.
4. Darshan Singh, National Consumer Complaints Committee chairman, said the MMM proposal is unfair to consumers.
5. Software developer, Thomas Yip, said the music industry’s call is absurb because the MMM does not know how extensive such “home recordings” of music pieces onto CD-Rs are.

My first reaction when reading the brief was “OMG WTF?!”

First Music Council of Malaysia imposing a levy on CD-Rs, which can be used by consumers to copy music CDs. If consumers copying music to the CD-R is the main reason behind that, then there should also impose a levy on SD memory cards, Memory sticks because consumer could uses it to put music on them. Then there should impose a levy on hard disk because I rip most of my songs on my computer. What about cassette tape?

Second about the control of CD burners. You seriously could not buy a computer without at least a CD burner this days. Most modern doesn’t come with a floppy drive any more because floppy is already dead. Apart from thumb drive, CD burners is the only way to transfer large chunks of data out from your computer.

Third about two out of three CD-Rs sold in the country are user for copying audio-visual material. Let us see what CD-R is mostly use for. First you can copy your data on it, this could be your documents, pictures, or software. Second you could create an audio CD which you could mix a CD of all your favorite music, just like the old days with mix taps. Third you could put video files on CD-R. Base on that of cause two out of three CD-R sold is use for copying audio-visual materials, because two out of three uses of a CD-R is about audio-visual!

Yes it’s unfair, it’s absurd. As we are getting closer to vision 2020, our government is taking more steps backwards in technology. I do agree with what said on it-sideways blog, education is much better then controlling.

And about the Malaysian music industry or the entertainment industry or what ever you call it, whining and bitching about the drop of local music sales or local movies sales, and are putting the blame solely on piracy is absurd. Didn’t once they think that may be the lack of sales might be because of, lack of quality on the product produce? May be it’s just not what the market wants.

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