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By editorial@silicon.com, 17 January 2001 17:00

COMMENT Consumer organisations breathed a collective sigh of relief and Prime Minister Lionel Jospin and Finance Minister Laurent Fabius went back to debating the budget. Crises diverted. Or is it? France is still going to introduce an artists tax on DVDs, CDs and mini discs - it is just a matter of time before this is extended to the devices from which they can be viewed or heard.
France is the second EU member state to come up with this proposal - Germany is still introducing a E30 (318) per PC tax to help artists recoup losses due to pirating. How long until the British government debates this issue? Steven Vincienne, finance director at Fujitsu Siemens, pointed out yesterday that such a proposal could be against EC regulations and that France should not have planned such a tax until it is a directive. The European Commission is not interested in taxing PCs - at the moment. But for how long? It's an easy way to make a lot of money for governments and to appease artists whose work is digitally reproduced. But it is a short-sighted initiative given the current push by nearly every European government to encourage everyone to get connected, become IT literate and enter the computer age. Computer manufacturers are bringing costs down but schemes such as Tasca's undermine their efforts. For years, governments have been rallying against PC manufacturers for their prices only to thwart them now with extra tax. And technology may well solve this problem anyway. Digital rights management companies are working towards preventing pirating using state-of-the-art watermarking technology, so even if a law is introduced the problem should soon be obsolete. Then where would the money go?