In Portugal we have a new bill implementing a tax on mass storage devices called PL118. I’m not going into the details on how this law is absurd. I want to talk about how to fight this.
I’ve learned about people doing petitions, facebook pages, or what not. The thing is, these people respond to money (being politicians or SPA managers). From what I can tell this bill has bi-partisan support and most likely will get approved. Contrary to the US, here in Portugal, politicians do not respond to petitions or mass calling to their offices, or even website boycotts. In fact, unless you have deep pockets, there isn’t much citizens can do to influence decision making.
So what can we do, as the People? Well I can tell you what I will do. Stop giving money to artist. If you don’t agree with this bill, and in fact gets approved into law, stop buying albums or going to the cinema. Steal the shit of their stuff. Keep stealing until they have so little or none profit from their work. Stop going to their concerts, or summer festivals. Hurt them where it hurts the artists the most. This kind of action can be equated to terrorism, but we need to put the pressure where it can affect decisions. SPA needs to change its stance, and for that we need the artist on our side.
The problem is, no one will do this. Like with every law, Portugal is a country of dull people. We will accept blindlessly this law and accuse the government of hurting them. Summer Festivals will get atendents and people will go to concerts and the movies. There will be no repercussion from this law, only to our pockets.
Comments
10 responses to “PL118 – strike where it hurts them most, or continue not caring.”
Great article 😉
One can also stop buying Hard drives in portuguese stores..
Well, I guess you can still buy directly from artists that are not afilliated with the SPA or similar entities. That should be OK, right?
I also agree with Tiago, I’d stop buying any storage devices subject to such a stupid tax.
Actually, no.
Stop buying mass storage devices will only affect the retailer, and you still give money to the vendor by buying it in another country.
Acting on the authors is acting on the problem.
But the lower sales for the retailler will push them to either cut profit and/or pressure the government to reduce the tax. Either way, by buying in another country you will not pay the tax.
This is a law driven only by greed.
I support you at 100%. I will stop buying storage devices at all and probably move to cloud storage or buy drives online.
Let’s go for a TOTAL BLOCKOUT on concerts, movies, CD’s, DVD’s… media/entertainment paystuff in general.
There are things MUCH MORE IMPORTANT for politicians to be solving right now..
I am just as outraged as you are but there must be something else we can do. When push comes to shove then yes, kick’em where it hurts the most but until I think should try and talk them off it. Any suggestions on what can we do, who should we call?
List of people of signed the SPA petition (or whatever) http://lgrave.blogs.sapo.pt/20941.html We could start by questioning them on why they signed such thing.
I have to differ here, on several fronts.
First of all, politics in the US are moved by money and influence, as they are in any other country (some more than others). So much so, in fact, that it’s out in the open and it is permitted there for the political parties to be financed directly by companies (which inspired this recent, interesting site for the common man to face the lobbies power: http://www.politicianmarket.com/).
No doubt, however, that the portuguese have grown accustomed to corruption and bad decisions by their politicians, and that these are taking the public opinion less and less into consideration — up to shocking extremes. As it is true that the US (like a lot of european countries) have seen a recent strong take action by the people (and a lot of companies) and that these actions have had direct visible effects on politics and political decisions.
Second, I don’t think boycotting artists will have any positive effects. In general, we see that consumer boycotts rarely work; the only one that did that I can remember is the GoDaddy’s case, which is actually related to this, but it’s a product in which branding doesn’t matter, and where there’s several alternatives with no clear disadvantage, and which is easy to change. In this case in particular, the industry would undoubtedly use this to turn it against the consumers and to try and argue, once again, how piracy is bad and how it’s influencing record sales and artists’ lifes. It’s what they’ve always done, even though the evidences for those facts (or the evidence that those are facts at all) is dodgy and incomplete.
But most of all, I think it’s not even the artists that are behind these proposal, but rather the “creative” industries. If you check the comments in the previously mentioned page, for example, you see that SPA has used a lot of artists’ names without their consent: http://lgrave.blogs.sapo.pt/20941.html . And it is the industry that has most to gain from the sales; the margins that they give to artists is ridiculously small (around 5% in records, for example, if they’re lucky!). They’re exploiting their work and now their names.
It’s been much discussed and there doesn’t seem to be any way around it: artists and the surrounding industry have to look for alternative business models. Seems to me that concerts (and arguably movie theatres) are among the obvious alternatives. Let’s not cut them short of that.
Opto por comentar em português. Assim como assim, é substancialmente mehor que o meu inglês, e suspeito que todos (ou quase todos) entenderão 🙂
“Portugal is a country of dull people”. Verdade, mas, como todas as generalizações, apenas parcialmente 🙂 (e sim, eu sei que esta afirmação é, ela própria, uma generalização :).
Está muita gente envolvida no combate (prévio) a este projecto de lei, e tem sido feito um enorme esforço (colectivo e a vários níveis) de sensibilização e informação do grupo de trabalho que está a debater o PL118 na Assembleia da República.
Porque é a Assembleia da República que tem de nos prestar contas, não é a SPA, nem a AGECOP, nem qualquer outra entidade que representa interesses de terceiros 🙂
Quanto ao boicote, já existe esta iniciativa:
http://www.socialphy.com/posts/news-politics/8565/The-Black-March-Boycott—Boycott-the-entertainment-industry.html