[TriLUG] "taxation without representation"

[Sinner from the Prairy]

El dia Friday 01 February 2002 11:15 am, no tenies res mes que fer i vas i 
m'envies aquest mail:
> ...and they recognize Linux and xBSD as Operating Systems?

Yes, of course. 

If you provide a proof of a valid license acompaining the OS, it's a valid 
and legal OS.


> What constitutes a "full" computer?  That meaning will change faster than a
> politician's term in office.

IANAL, but a full computer would be a stand alone system that can function as 
a computing system by itself. 

So, computer parts are not a computer because they cannot function by 
themselves. 

A "clone" PC is a computer.

Butm then, again, Spain has this law that puts a tax on blank CDs that 
effectively have raised thier price ~50% . This is a tax that goes to the 
organization of authors and publishers, SGAE, also known as "the 40 thieves" 
in the internet world. 

They claim that this money goes to the authors because blank CDs are used 
mostly for music piracy pourposes (they claim a figure of 70% of blank CDs 
are used for this pourpose).

Now, a movement has started to challenge this law.

See those links here (in Spanish) on a "Slashdot(LANG=es)" kind-o-site and on 
some newspapers:
http://barrapunto.com/article.pl?sid=02/01/30/1411219&mode=nested&threshold=
http://sincanon.hispalinux.es/
http://www.spain.cpsr.org/
http://www.elmundo.es/navegante/2002/02/01/esociedad/1012553405.html
http://www.larazon.es/noticias/noti_esp01.htm

And also, there's a "de facto" censorship law on Spain. This means, that if 
the Government cannot get taxes about the contents on your website, they can 
close down the site. The Government claims that a website is owned by 
someone, and it is providing a service, so it is taxable. If it is free, it 
can be taxable as well... or go down.

http://www.elmundo.es/navegante/2002/01/31/esociedad/1012493615.html


But, then, of course, the Spanish Government is a dear friend of a 
successfull American businessman. This guy acts as aa "special counselor" to 
the Government in technological matters. See Mr. Aznar with this guy:

http://www.elmundo.es/navegante/2001/12/03/empresas/1007381142.html



So, all in all, nothing comes as a surprise.



Salut,
Sinner
-- 
"I fart in your general direction! Your mother was a hamster and your father 
smelt of elderberries!"
RedHat QA Test Engineer  --  Running RedHat 7.2 on i386smp
http://www.ibiblio.org/sinner/