Paving the way for a copyright infringement tax on media?
LAST WEEK the customs office in Argentina seized a shipment of recordable CD and DVD media which was smuggled to pay lower duties. Amazingly, local media presented this as proof of music and movies piracy.
Three hundred boxes of recordable DVD-R media, containing 180,000 units and 1,335 boxes of CD-R media containing 801.000 blanks were seized in containers arriving from China. The shipment weight was estimated at 17 tons, and authorities put the value of the goods at around $2.6 million. The container contents were declared as “abrasive discs”, in order to pay lower import duties, authorities claim.
However, the news here is that what could be a simple case of tax evasion and smuggling has been presented as a win in the fight against music and movie piracy. So, in a strange case of “guilty before proven innocent”, most of the local media in Argentina presented the news as near-proof that the shipment was going to end up in the streets, being sold as pirated music CDs and movie DVDs. For instance, one local paper reads “according to a study by CAPIF -the local chamber representing record companies and music producers- the illegal market of music in Argentina reaches 60 per cent of the whole of material that circulates”.
Smuggling of goods and undervaluation of imports with an intention to evade payment of duty and other “tricks” related to avoiding payments was at some point a very common practice down here – perhaps too common, to the point of hurting jobs – suffice to say that even a local Presidential candidate was once involved as a business executive in a scandal and judicial investigation surrounding playing tricks with the import-export regulations in order to earn government subsidies and tax breaks ad-infinitum. Fortunately, undervaluation of imports has been increasingly fought, and in fact, the new authorities at the customs highlighted that this shipment seizure was only possible because of its new “risk matrix” system in place which apparently alerts them of suspect shipments.
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