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Which Rights Do The Consumers Have?

Monday 16 October 2006

Right now I saw quite an interesting statement of Jim Murray, the Director of the European Consumers Organisation (BEUC): Among others he rightly said that the media industry loves to speak about _their_ rights but never speaks of the rights of the consumers.
Murray understands the situation as onesided: The industry tells the politics what the law has to look like, develops systems that complements to this law and the consumer has to obey basically. If you read between the lines of the statement (sorry - German only) of the German industry association Bitkom you may see this confirmed.

And finally it is interesting to learn that "nearly every DVD" is copyright "protected" today. Nowadays in Germany a copyright fee of 9,21 EUR of every sold DVD writer and 0,174 EUR of every blank DVD is transferred to the GEMA. So what do we pay this fee for if copying is not possible all?

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Comments

Not without dangers

greve

Tuesday 17 October 2006

Making this argument is not without some pitfalls, however. The media industry has been using it for years to push for DRM. Their response would be: Exactly! You are paying twice! That is why these levies should be abandoned and DRM should be everywhere so you only pay for what you actually view/hear/use -- anything else would be unfair!

So you must always point out how the side effects and collateral damage of DRM is so grave that the injustice that follows from this is much larger than that of private copying levies.

Which rights do Citizens have?

michael_kallas

Tuesday 17 October 2006

Thinking / talking about citizens instead of "consumers" makes it even more clear that you ought to have several important rights which the media industry simply refuses to give to you.

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