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Comment by alibarber | Hacker News Reader

I also discovered that I couldn't use my Canon SLR to record more than 30 minutes of video continuously.

The problem however wasn't Canon, but that I lived in a region (EU) that would have imposed a customs tariff on cameras that could do that, but by keeping it under that, the camera would be classed as a 'stills' camera and so was therefore exempt.

Admittedly this is different from the case in the article - but it would appear that owning something that could physically do what you want it to is only half the battle for numerous reasons, and in this case it would have been my government demanding extra money to 'unlock' this functionality.

View on HN

Reminds me of when lawyers successfully argued that X-Men are not human, so that their action figures would be classified as "toys" rather than "dolls" and thus charged a lower tariff.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toy_Biz%2C_Inc._v._United_Stat...

There's also Converse that adds a piece of cloth to the soles of their sneakers to be able to classify them as slippers for "taxation purposes".

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/this-is-why-your-c...

Snuggies are "used" and not "worn" in their promotional materials, because it's better to be taxed as a blanket than a garment.

https://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2017/02/snuggies-ar...

Wonder if you could either sue them for delivering an insufficient product (it does not function as a slipper under the definition for longer than a day after walking) or keep returning them under warranty.

Sounds insane. But what is more surprising to me - is why dolls were taxed differently than other toys. At first glance, it looks like stupid rules force to play silly games.

This. It’s a pretty reasonable answer to a stupid question. Dolls depict people.

Some trade war from the XIX century or something? Or maybe because dolls were historically thought for girls?

Possibly, bisque and china dolls were often imported from Germany.

Probably lobbying from a local doll maker

In India, the pizza base has a different tax rate than the topping and so some restaurants will have two separate lines on your pizza bill - one for the base at 5% tax and another for the topping at 18% tax.

The tax on popcorn is also totally crazy. "Unpackaged and unlabelled popcorn with salt and spices is categorised as 'namkeen' and taxed at 5%. Pre-packed and labelled ready-to-eat popcorn attracts a 12% GST rate. Caramelized popcorn with added sugar is taxed at a higher rate of 18%."

Luxury vs premium vs ‘esssential’ at work eh?

All those make sense and are pretty common: bread is taxed lower than most pizza toppings.

Raw ingredients are taxed less than ready-to-eat or sugar-coated ultra-processed good. And I'm totally ok with that.

But a pizza as a whole is a ready-to-eat good. And a pizza isn’t a pizza without the crust.

What I think is happening is that the place is specifically charging different tax rates for each part of the pizza. That does seem odd but the alternative would be to tax the whole of the pizza at a higher tax rate than the one presented. Example, most countries might put a whole pizza at, say, 10% VAT, while here part of it is at, say, 4% and the rest at 10%. Ideally that's cheaper.

The pizza thing seemed incredibly silly to me. Surely the restaurant has already paid the tax when they bought the raw ingredients? Must any product served in a restaurant be taxed according to the rate of the most highly taxed ingredient in it, regardless of proportion?

So I looked it up. And yes, that is exactly the case, and it's an absurd situation that is causing massive headaches.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-63281037

did you get a second glance? did you figure out why they are taxed differently?

Sadly no..., I browsed quickly and found this post https://slate.com/business/2011/12/are-mutants-human.html which leads to a dead link to the podcast. Did not listen to the podcast (yet).

I also expected somebody from this community to enlight me :)

Or my shirt that has a tiny, useless pocket on the inside of my shirt (down where it might often be tucked inside of your waistband.) It has a tag with a picture of sunglasses on it, and a reasonably sized pair of sunglasses might just tenuously perch inside.

This makes it a jacket, and jackets are taxed at a lower rate than shirts.

The same shenanigans more or less work for most types of taxation. There’s always an angle to reduce or even eliminate taxes, unless you work on salary or for wages. It’s clear who the system is built for lol.

Why would jackets even be taxed differently than shirts. It's so silly.

Freezing to death is worse than looking nice?

5% of a $100 jacket is $5

15% of a $33 shirt is $5

5% of a $33 jacket is $1.65

...it's definitely gamesmanship but if you squint you can see where it comes from.

This reminds me of maybe the worst tax in human history which is also unconstitutional. The Pauschalabgabe[0] in Germany, which also got adopted in other countries, implements a freely decidable flatrate tax on all mediums which can be used to create a pirated copy.

How much tax for a laser printer? Well it depends how fast it prints:

Up to 14 pages/Minute: 25,00 € Up to 39 pages/Minute: 50,00 € From 40 pages/Minute: 87,50 €

For every storage medium this tax has been paid, because of the possibility of making a pirated copy. Technically we all paid already to make pirates copies.

0. https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pauschalabgabe

Isn't this also what allows people to create copies for personal use, and what makes downloading pirated media legally clear, and only producing/distributing illegal? Sounds like a fine tradeoff, as fixing IP laws (and international treaties) is way too hard of a problem.

It’s the other way around the law got created because of the possibility of private copies and their fear of profit loss. A private copy is only legal if the source is legal. Circumventing copy protection makes it illegal. Pirated copies and temporary copies like streaming are afaik grey areas because the difficulty to prove and not a trade off.

It’s a silly world where people who never worked send people who only worked as mobsters to take money from people who work for a living. Then the first two groups share that money in 999999:1 proportion. They call it “taxation”.

It has upsides like having an army for defense, roads and other common things. But don’t forget the primary nature and motivation behind it. They just want your money, and your offspring to please them in various ways.

You ought to see the magic they do when coding medical procedures for billing in the US. It makes these tax shenanigans look simple.

I don't think I've ever seen that on any of my shirts here in the US. Is this in the US?

I believe it was sold into the US market originally. I bought it second hand in a secondary market that sources its used articles primarily from the USA and Canada.

How odd I don't know that I've ever seen one in such a weird position.

It would actually be way to miss. If it hadn’t been marked with a sunglasses emblem, I would have easily thought it was just a gusset. It’s just one of the bottom front corners of the left side of the shirt, with a triangular gusset that is big enough to just hold 2/3 of a pair of glasses, mesh, in this particular case.

This sort of thing happens relatively often; Sony also tried (unsuccessfully) to have the PS2 deemed a personal computer (which would have lead to 0 tariffs in the EU): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yabasic#PlayStation_2

IIRC the PS3 Linux option existed because of this same tariff.

I often wonder what the ROI is on this. How much did Sony have to pay engineers to implement this interesting but seemingly pretty useless functionality vs. what it actually saved them in the aforementioned tariffs? I know the knee jerk reaction is to say it obviously saved them some money or they wouldn't have done it, but I've seen far too much corporate stupidity in my life to take that as a given. I'd love to see the data.

Maybe it was just a passion project for the engineers or even Ken Kutaragi ? See also Net Yarose, Linux For Playstation 2, Other OS & Yellow Dog Linux for Playstation 3.

For sure, they had very interesting architectures. Used even in supercomputers as a number of them in parallel

Well, in the end it didn't save them anything, because the EC didn't accept that having a toy basic interpreter made what was obviously a games console a PC. I can't imagine it was terribly expensive in the scheme of things, though.

If it can run a desktop linux environment it's a PC. That said it probably should only count if the preinstalled software is Linux and not some games OS.

I would say that a PC should be compatible with the software and hardware of the IBM 5150.

Apple mac not a personal computer ?

When you ship millions of units of the kit, you only need a small savings per unit for the sum total to become a big enough saving to be noticeable to the financial dept. bean counters.

Which is fucking hilarious when you think that a lot of xmen storyline is about them wanting to be perceived as humans

Which legally probably also makes it a fairy tale

"It's a nice story and the court won't prevent you from telling it, but legally these beings in that story are clearly NOT humans"

Hilarious.

And also, they are an "on your face" depiction of the dehumanization of the Holocaust victims...

Whoa, whoa, wait a minute! I can't have POLITICS in my comics, my comics are apolitical, there's good guys and bad guys, and it's always clear who the bad guys are - those that are not [like] me! /s

And Professor X is Martin Luthor King and Magneto is Malcolm X.

Pretty much fits. It probably wouldn't be such an issue if they were just human.

Thanks, amazing story! I found this nice coverage of the events: https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/92007/why-us-federal-cou...

Sounds like Ford putting seats in the back of their vans so they could pay less tax when importing them from Mexico, then removing them before they're sold. Looks like they've now been fined, but they got away with it for a while.

Technically the ones they got in hot water for were from EU to get around the Chicken Tax.

This was also the reason for the (in)famous BRAT seats:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subaru_BRAT

A bunch of fun articles around these areas in the UK (free to read, think you might need an account though - apologies). Two food and one toy:

https://www.ft.com/content/5af5b182-349a-4a25-b4fb-4551908f2...

https://www.ft.com/content/a6a54008-6059-4052-99ae-282f148f2...

https://www.ft.com/content/a8d6413e-1184-4f89-9bcb-4f6cb8d7a...

FT Alphaville is such an excellent column

Or when the makers of Jaffa Cakes baked a giant 12 inch version[1] and brought it to the court to argue they were cakes and not biscuits to get lower VAT.

[1]: https://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2015/10/time-compan...

I would eat that.

I wish supermarkets would put them on the cake aisle instead and keep the biscuit aisle pure.

That's a mass protest I could get behind

Most UK bikkies are meh, though. I have to import ones from NZ here to survive.

Mallowpuffs are so much better than tea cakes. Squiggles, Tim tams, chit chats, sultana pasties, griffins macaroons, toffee pops, hundreds and thousands, mint slice.

Whereas here it's mostly shortbread or bourbons/custard creams.

The tax system is over complicated! Why the distinction between toys and dolls?

Regulatory capture most likely

The Doll Industrial Complex

When Trump set a tariff on German optics because he was mad at Germany, Leica had a workaround as well.

Most of their equipment is made in Portugal and finished in Germany, with whatever WTO agreed % of value added that allows them to stamp "Made In Germany" on the goods.

So for US markets they issues a series of lenses that were more fully finished in the Portuguese factory such that they could be stamped "Made In Portugal".

I wonder if there is any place where one can look up all these sort of creative legal-tax shenanigan stories. They are so fun and such an interesting lens to see what _is_ via this interlinked, case-specific web of events.

The book is called Daylight Robbery: How Tax Shaped Our Past and Will Change Our Future

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43805741-daylight-robber...

Hoo boy we have some classics in that category in the UK.

My personal fave is when morning TV host Lorraine Kelly successfully argued she wasn’t hosting as herself but acting a character called Lorraine Kelly, with very favourable tax consequences.

I think Steven Colbert hosted a show using himself as the host. I’m not sure about the tax implications though.

I'm pretty sure that was Chuck Noblet pretending to be Steven Colbert.

If there were any tax implications, they were incidental. The show was parody, so the opinions he espoused in character were necessarily ones he didn't actually hold.

And then when he tried using the "Steven Colbert" character on a different show, Comedy Central threatened him because Steven Colbert does not have rights to the "Steven Colbert" character.

That doesn’t seem like that should be possible. He sold his identity for life? Hollywood really does ask for your soul huh.

It would make sense why he’s never even jokingly gone back into that character on his new show.

It's not his identity, though. It's a character that he plays.

Yep- if Pee-wee Herman’s character were instead named after the actor, Paul Reubens, that character could still be licensed/sold. Paul Ruebens could still do interviews, and take jobs under that name, without permission, but he’d better not show up in the Pee-wee outfit.

And others can take your identity. If you happen to have the name Michael Jordan try putting out your own running shoes under your name.

Al Shugart started Shugart Associates and pretty much created the 5 1/4" floppy market. He sold to Xerox. He later started Shugart Technology and was promptly threatened with a lawsuit because he literally had sold his rights to his own name (in the particular context). He changed the name to Seagate Technology and the rest is history.

Yes, you can be enjoined from using your own name.

> Yes, you can be enjoined from using your own name.

This is not that case.

In popular media when "The Colbert Report" was broadcast, Steven Colbert was very open about the fact that he was playing a character on TV who happened to have the same name as him.

In the case of "The Tonight Show featuring Steven Colbert," he is not playing the character from the Colbert Report.

The very specific bit was from after the 2017 election when Trump was elected. Steven Colbert did a bit, in character as "Steven Colbert", with props from "The Colbert Report", and a guest appearance from Jon Stewart. (Because the main focus of "The Colbert Report" was to mock conservatives.) Otherwise, everything Steven Colbert (the person) does on "The Tonight Show featuring Steven Colbert" does not involve the "Steven Colbert" character from "The Colbert Report."

Prior to the Colbert Report, Stephen Colbert was a character on the Daily Show, also a CC property.

Craig Kilborn was able to leave the Daily Show and take bits like 5 questions with him. However, CC was a much smaller network at the time.

To be fair, in Steven Colbert's case, he definitely was playing a character on The Colbert Report. A ridiculously conservative one that asked guests repeatedly if George W. Bush was a great president, or the greatest president. It was very over the top.

And that's when he stopped being funny. As a big fan I was confused by how unfunny his tonight show content was from day one compared to everything we saw upto that point. I can see why legal action when nowhere it's not the same product. Using the same name does cause confusion in the marketplace.

Alex Jones argued this, with the obvious implication, that whoever buys Infowars also owns the character of Alex Jones, and Alex Jones cannot play Alex Jones any more without infringing their copyright. (But I suspect this incoming government doesn't care to apply logical consistency to his case)

Perhaps IP law has jumped the shark.

This is akin to Fox News arguing in court that it is, in fact, entertainment and not news, despite it's name.

It's true though. All cable news is "entertainment news", not "news".

Nobody should have been getting their "news" from Tucker Carlson, Don Lemon, or Rachel Maddow.

IMO they shouldn't be allowed to call themselves news without putting entertainment in front.

Thank you for pointing this out. Carlson and Maddow made nearly identical arguments in court and if both are not mentioned in the same breath, the speakers bias is instantly displayed to anyone who is educated on this topic.

> IMO they shouldn't be allowed to call themselves news without putting entertainment in front.

Agreed but the average person wouldn't understand that Entertainment News was different than News. The problem goes deeper. I despair.

Carlson's texts were wild, they proved that he knew he was spreading lies and did it anyway for views. That's why Fox settled with Dominion for $787 million dollars.

Meanwhile, OAN sued Maddow for calling them Russian propaganda and her lawyers responded by flexing, doubling down with receipts under oath. Signing up for consequences if they were wrong, and receiving none because they were correct.

So no, these are not the same, and anyone who argues that they are immediately reveals themselves to be partisan hacks.

They are not the same because one had text indicating they were aware? While the other claimed to be braindead and no texts to prove otherwise?

They are literally the same with one case having a text message.

They are both not news and if you think that one and not the other is news than you might be the partisan you are trying to label others as.

You may be interested in Young v. CNN going on right now. It probably won’t be a 9 figure judgment, but could be 8.

From https://www.courthousenews.com/ninth-circuit-backs-dismissal...

[Judge Smith] found OAN and its parent company were unlikely to prevail on the defamation claim because the challenged speech was not a statement of fact and the context of Maddow’s show made it likely her audience would expect her to make political opinions.

Putting the details of the court case aside, the judge is clearly saying that he does not believe that Maddow's show was "news" and it shouldn't be treated as such. That's what GP was pointing out: the defense of being "not news", which both shows have in common.

Nope. You paid very selective attention to that article:

> the context provided by Maddow’s commentary before and after she made the statement disclosed all relevant facts and contained colorful language.

If you listen to the clip in question, you'll observe that Maddow explains the facts, makes an exclamation, and then explains the facts. The complaint here only works if you clip chimp the exclamation. Contrast this with the complaint against Carlson, where he engages in what was by his own admission sustained deception.

> the average person wouldn't understand that Entertainment News was different than News

I think the 'average' person thinks of 'Entertainment News' as celebrity gossip, e.g., E! News[0] etc. Telling them the entertainment news/opinion/commentary they watch is not actually 'News' but is entertainment "news" doesn't compute

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E!_News

News Entertainment?

Like WWE is Sports Entertainment.

Absolutely- even as a lifelong leftie, I find the rhetoric on CNBC just as sickening as that on Fox.

I've (somewhat sardonically) wondered if they're both false flag operations. Imagine CNBC started with the idea "we'll parody the left to make them seem radical and unreasonable" but accidentally developed a huge following who didn't get the joke.

Do you mean MSNBC?

What Fox News argued was a bit more nuanced than that all of Fox News isn't news. Rather, "Fox successfully argued that one particular segment on Tucker Carlson’s show could only be reasonably interpreted as making political arguments, not making factual assertions, and therefore couldn’t be defamation."[1]

That feels like a fairly reasonable assertion for anybody watching Tucker Carlson.

[1] https://popehat.substack.com/p/fox-news-v-fox-entertainment-...

I know nothing about the case but isn't that a little like saying "look, we weren't lying, cause we never said we were saying the truth"?

Well, context matters in looking at defamation claims.

Let's say you were involved in a freak hunting accident and shot somebody, but you were never charged with any crimes.

If the Fox News "hard news" program (if such a thing exists) said "skrebbel is a murderer" that is more likely to be understood to be a statement of fact, asserting something in a legalistic sense. [IANAL, but I think even this is unlikely to be defamation, although there is a somewhat similar case where ABC settled with Donald Trump over saying he was "liable for rape"]

If somebody on Tucker Carlson Tonight said "You can't trust anything that skrebbel guy says, he's a murderer!" that is more likely to be understood as an opinion based on disclosed facts, not a fact. That person isn't asserting that you committed or were convicted of a specific crime of murder, but rather that you killed somebody and it might be your fault. On a show were people are arguing and exchanging opinionated views, viewers should understand that these things are opinions. And therefore that's not defamation, because it's an opinion.

> You can't trust anything that skrebbel guy says, he's a murderer!

I am deeply offended and contemplating to sue you for defamation.

Political argument, as such, is worthwhile insofar as it can cause me to reexamine my own preconceptions. Facts I can pick up almost anytime.

Isn't it also how, many years ago, Top Gear got away with a hit job on Tesla by claiming they're just an entertainment show, so they're not obligated to do honest or truthful reviews?

I'm not from the UK, but wasn't there also a cake Vs biscuits thing for tax reasons?

Yes, Jaffa Cakes - minature sponge cakes flavoured with Jaffa oranges. Cakes aren't subject to Value Added Tax in the UK, which allows them to be sold more cheaply to the consumer or have a greater profit margin. A tribunal confirmed that they are true, real and genuine cakes, so you may feel entitled to enjoy your tax-free treat!

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/retailandco...

There is a musical I saw at the fringe about this.

I love strange musicals! Link in case anyone else is curious: https://playbill.com/article/is-it-a-cake-or-a-biscuit-a-jaf...

It's wild to me that anything you can buy in a store, especially something frivolous like cake, might be tax free.

In a way it's not completely tax-free; the embodied costs of producing and selling the cake are still taxed with employee income tax, National Insurance, import duties and so on.

The UK's exemption from VAT covers lots of things, but not an entirely logical selection: cakes are considered staples and are exempt, but drinks (including soft drinks, beer and mineral water) are taxed at the full 20% rate.

In general, I would personally prefer that the UK not have VAT, as it's a regressive tax (people with lower incomes pay a greater percentage of their income on it than high earners do).

I think basic and healthy foods should be VAT exempt. Bread, milk, eggs, vegetables, fruit (maybe not fruit that needs to be shipped from South America or Africa), water etc. Also maybe school books and newspapers and of course medicine. Sugary drinks _should_ be taxed.

Sales tax is horrendously regressive and during a war you will find that things like cakes and biscuits are not actually frivolous at all. We drink a lot of tea.

And windows being covered with bricks for tax reasons.

The window tax features prominently in a visual novel video game (The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles), which also contains a bunch of wildly outlandish historical nonsense and characters like mad-scientist inventors, teleportation devices, and Sherlock Holmes types. I was blown away to learn the window tax was actually a real thing, not something silly just made up for the game.

Taxes were also part of the reason newspapers got so large: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadsheet#History

Fascinating!

And also the reason that houses in Amsterdam are so narrow https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_of_the_Netherlands#Arc...

Daylight Robbery [1]

[1]: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43805741-daylight-robber...

Subway fell on the wrong side of similar tax laws in Ireland - their sugar content in their bread was too high, so for tax purposes, their subs are legally cakes: https://www.npr.org/2020/10/01/919189045/for-subway-a-ruling...

There was also the famous decision in the Jaffa Cake case where the VAT treatment depended on whether or not a Jaffa cake was a cake or a biscuit https://standrewseconomist.com/2023/12/31/let-them-eat-cake-...

The tribunal decided that Jaffa Cakes were cakes because when they go stale they go hard like a cake whereas a biscuit tends to go soft when it goes stale.

I remember hearing about this because the one who wanted it classified as a biscuit proposed the test that determined it was a cake. That is the sole reason I remember this story.

There’s another one about Walkers taste sensations poppadom snacks. Question was, is it a crisp or not? Can’t remember the outcome

The specifics were about whether it required any additional preparation like a traditional poppadom vs being a ready to eat snack like a crisp.

Walkers lost the case.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/jan/19/walkers-min...

Which was a silly case to bring forward because they are clearly a cake. It's literally a sponge cake bottom.

I had a friend that argued that Marshall Mathers (Eminem) could never actually be sued for defamation because most of the defamatory things "he" said wasn't actually him saying it, but Slim Shady.

Hah.

In universe, arguing the X-Men are not human would put you firmly in the villain category.

exactly, that was core to the whole plot; oppressed mutants fighting to have their basic human rights recognized.

So it turns out that the final boss denying mutants their humanity are... the tax authorities.

Capitalists? in the villain category? Impossible!

This has interesting implications for the Marvel canon, as the conflict between average humans and mutants is a primary plot driver for x-men

Was their lawyer William Stryker?

> Reminds me of when lawyers successfully argued that X-Men are not human

Isn't that true though?

That requirement is reversed in the last five years IIRC. My Sony A7-III doesn't have that, for example. Neither modern Canons, AFAIK.

The funnier thing is, you can't use the videos out of your camera for commercial purposes, because the video codecs inside your camera doesn't come with commercial licenses out of the box.

So if you are going to use your camera for production which you'll earn money, you need to pay commercial licenses for your cameras.

Hah.

That's fine, as long as I can record long movies with my iPhone.

But is it a phone that records movies or a movie recorder that can make phone calls?

[I jest, but these were almost literally the questions being asked by various commissions]

Hilarious. Reminds me of Pioneer CDJs as well, even on the flagship CDJ-3000 models. If you read the user manual it says:

> About using MP3 files

> This product has been licensed for nonprofit use. This product has not been licensed for commercial purposes (for profit-making use), […]. You need to acquire the corresponding licenses for such uses. For details, see […]

Best use an open audio codec instead.

Nowadays, MP3 is an open audio codec. The patents have expired.

The format itself is patent-unencumbered. That doesn't mean I couldn't still write a non-free decoder and license it to Pioneer for use in their CDJs. Due to organizational inertia, I suspect that's what's going on here (e.g., they licensed a decoder from Fraunhofer or another commercial implementer twenty years ago, and have been using the same one since).

In this case, everyone at Pioneer knows their CDJs are used almost exclusively for commercial purposes, and perhaps they couldn't get away with lying about it in the fine print.

> Best use an open audio codec instead.

You will still need a separate license (or multiple separate licenses) for commercial purposes.

Music licensing is unbelievably complicated

That's about the music royalties, the comment above is about the CDJs ability to play MP3 encoded audio.

> The funnier thing is, you can't use the videos out of your camera for commercial purposes, because the video codecs inside your camera doesn't come with commercial licenses out of the box.

Do you have a link? Could only find a 2010 article[1] that appears to have been debunked by MPEG-LA themselves (per the updates in the blog post).

[1] https://www.osnews.com/story/23236/why-our-civilizations-vid...

Of course. Below a selection of some user manuals, with the texts copied verbatim.

From Nikon D500 User Manual [0], page 22:

From Nikon Z6/Z7 User Manual [1], page 236:

Sony has a similar note for A9 [3], but can be grouped under here, which is almost the same:

AVC Patent Portfolio License: THIS PRODUCT IS LICENSED UNDER THE AVC PATENT PORTFOLIO LICENSE FOR THE PERSONAL AND NON - COMMERCIAL USE OF A CONSUMER TO (i) ENCODE VIDEO IN COMPLIANCE WITH THE AVC STANDARD (“AVC VIDEO”) AND/ OR (ii) DECODE AVC VIDEO THAT WAS ENCODED BY A CONSUMER ENGAGED IN A PERSONAL AND NON - COMMERCIAL ACTIVITY AND / OR WAS OBTAINED FROM A VIDEO PROVIDER LICENSED TO PROVIDE AVC VIDEO. NO LICENSE IS GRANTED OR SHALL BE IMPLIED FOR ANY OTHER USE. ADDITIONAL INFORMATION MAY BE OBTAINED FROM MPEG LA, L.L.C. S EE http://www.mpegla.com

From Canon R5 User Manual [2], page 939:

“This product is licensed under AT&T patents for the MPEG-4 standard and may be used for encoding MPEG-4 compliant video and/or decoding MPEG-4 compliant video that was encoded only (1) for a personal and non-commercial purpose or (2) by a video provider licensed under the AT&T patents to provide MPEG-4 compliant video. No license is granted or implied for any other use for MPEG-4 standard.”

THIS PRODUCT IS LICENSED UNDER THE AVC PATENT PORTFOLIO LICENSE FOR THE PERSONAL USE OF A CONSUMER OR OTHER USES IN WHICH IT DOES NOT RECEIVE REMUNERATION TO (i) ENCODE VIDEO IN COMPLIANCE WITH THE AVC STANDARD (''AVC VIDEO'') AND/OR (ii) DECODE AVC VIDEO THAT WAS ENCODED BY A CONSUMER ENGAGED IN A PERSONAL ACTIVITY AND/OR WAS OBTAINED FROM A VIDEO PROVIDER LICENSED TO PROVIDE AVC VIDEO. NO LICENSE IS GRANTED OR SHALL BE IMPLIED FOR ANY OTHER USE. ADDITIONAL INFORMATION MAY BE OBTAINED FROM MPEG LA, L.L.C. SEE HTTP://WWW.MPEGLA.COM

[0]: https://download.nikonimglib.com/archive3/4qUKV00WD5Bh04RdeC...

[1]:https://download.nikonimglib.com/archive5/8Yygr00R9Ojb058Kwq...

[2]: https://cam.start.canon/en/C003/manual/c003.pdf

[3]: https://helpguide.sony.net/ilc/1830/v1/en/contents/TP0002351...

Thanks. Yeah that seems to be the same AVC/h.264 'personal and non-commercial' text the 2010 article I linked centered on. MPEG-LA spoke to Engadget[1] (finally found a working link I could read) and said that a separate license for shooting commerical video isn't required and that distribution of commercial content via licensed providers (Google/Youtube, Apple, etc) is fine.

It seems the one caveat, per the Engadget article, is directly distributing AVC video to end users (I suppose like a direct download link on a personal site) is what requires a license but that license is free to obtain.

[1] https://www.engadget.com/2010-05-04-know-your-rights-h-264-p...

I looked around VIA-LA (which acquired MPEG-LA in 2023), and I can't see any free licenses about H.264. "Request a license" gives you an e-mail address, and that's it.

There are other license models, which is about manufacturers, publishers and TV stations, etc.

But nowhere it says "there's a free license for these cases, just get it from here".

This all looks like a rabbit hole for me.

Can't wait for AV1 to supplant these bureaucratic rent-seekers.

I wonder what the commercial licenses actually cost. I know there was a big movement of shooting movies and events with canons when good video on dslrs first became a thing. I never even thought about codec licenses, because that stuff shouldn't exist. the manufacturer should buy the license so the camera can use it forever, because its just a paperweight without it, and I dont think they should be able to sell cameras with hidden text licenses like that.

This is a problem with 'prosumer' gear in general. If camera manufactures bought a transferable commercial license for everything in it, it would be too expense for consumer use, but the people licensing IP to them want a piece if you are making money with it.

Similar to software that is free or low cost for non-commercial use only, even with the same functionality.

The good news is typically nobody will chase you down on this unless you are making real money. The bad news is, once you are, they will.

Do you need to sign an agreement to this effect before starting filming? I don't see how it can legally hold.

Nominally, yes. These are checked before your movie is being distributed, and you'll most probably face legal consequences if you don't pay for your licenses.

Not getting caught for some time doesn't count either. You'll pay retroactively, with some interest, probably.

Licensing page is at [0]. Considering the previous shenanigans they pulled against open video and audio formats in the past [1], these guys are not sleeping around. These guys call people for patent pools in a format, and license these pools as format licenses.

[0]: https://www.via-la.com/licensing-2/avc-h-264/avc-h-264-licen...

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPEG_LA#Criticism

If you bought a legit licensed product the doctrine of first sale means their patent rights are exhausted.[0] They can't come after you for patent infringement. Those licenses are for manufacturers making new licensed products, not users of licensed products they purchased.

Can you show a single court case or even a press release where someone using a legit licensed product bought on the open market was sued for codec patent infringement?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exhaustion_doctrine_under_U.S....

The license doesn't come attached to the device itself, but you as a entity (e.g. movie studio, broadcaster, or solo professional). Transferring the device doesn't transfer the license.

You license the right to use the patent pool for commercial purposes, not the device itself.

My read of parent's link says differently.

Back in the day Kodak had to buy back all their instant cameras after losing to Polaroid. Though I'm not sure if law has changed since then (it has, but I'm not sure if in relevant ways), or just that they did that because no being able to make film made them useless and so buyback was a goodwill gesture.

Could that not have been because they could not sell film for them anymore, rendering them useless? So it was to make customers whole?

Edit: Missed the last part where you said the same

I believe this is why a number of products require you to manually activate a free personal license (by clicking a button and agreeing to TOS) in the settings instead of shipping with it. You are then separately licensing the tech from the software vendor and are personally liable for infringements.

First sale doctrine doesn't exist in my country for anything involving software, as business and business-adjacent software requires compulsory copyright registration and compulsory per-copy government-registered identifier here.

Presumably there's no way of fingerprinting the footage itself as 'unlicenced' so the closest they get is asking the studio what camera serials they used to film.

What about if you're a YouTuber, surely they don't pay?

We need to normalize piracy like we're cheap Chinese knockoff manufacturers. Down with software patents.

Wipe the EXIF data on the images when you make it public and nobody will be the wiser ;)

I’m not sure. Like how color printers write their serial numbers and date and whatnot on every page, these devices might be watermarking every video subtly, and we might not know it.

It’s not exactly watermarking; each encoder works in a different way and it’s readily possible to determine (for one versed in such matters) which encoder was used to generate a video by inspecting the structure of the raw (eg h264) bitstream. This might not work reliably enough for simpler codecs like JPEG but for something as complicated as modern video codec where there are a million ways to generate a compatible payload it is as unique as a fingerprint.

That’s true, but I thought of embedding a serial number and a date into the video, periodically, for example, which can be quantized as noise, but not very visible unless you filter the frame a very specific way, or pass through a tool.

It’s fairly useless since raw footage isn’t typically distributed; it would be re-encoded first which would definitely destroy that watermark. So it would be a scandal that doesn’t necessarily accomplish much.

If your camera is compatible with magiclantern you could lift that limit and add some really cool features:

https://www.magiclantern.fm/

I’ve come across this before and think it’s brilliant. Are you aware of any comparable firmware for Nikon users (not that I really have any complaints about what Nikon has provided, but this is likely a case of not knowing what I’m missing out on)?

I'm not, and that's the reason why I went Canon. There is also CHDK for cheaper Canon cameras. Canon seems to be less litigous when it comes to hacking their firmware.

This vaguely reminds me of the fact that in many countries, pure ethanol sold for industrial purposes is intentionally made poisonous, so you can’t drink it and thus merchants don’t have to charge the taxes on it that they would for spirits.

It's more like "so you can't drink it" without the taxes part. Those taxes play important role in reducing alcohol consumption (though they are of course not the only tool), so making cheap ethanol poisonous and with different color closes the loophole in healthcare policy rather than opens a loophole in taxation.

E.g. study: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3860576/

Couldn't they just make it taste bad, for safety's sake?

In some countries that is allowed, but in others it has to actually be poisonous.

Well, I hope it is both then.

And in some, it's a tourist attraction. Don't drink "White Elephant" in Vietnam unless you want to wake up blind and pissing blood, at least according to a friend!

I don't know exactly what "White Elephant" refers to, but I've had plenty of homemade liquor in Vietnam and am mostly fine.

Methyl alcohol. Bad shit. Not unique to VN, a lot of desperate people drink it.

In some countries it's done so and poisoning is banned. E.g. Finland and Poland got an exemption from the EU to do this because so many people died from the poisonings.

Where can I read more about this? What poison were they using?

Methanol has been used, as has rubbing alcohol and methyl ethyl ketone. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denatured_alcohol for further reading.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denatonium is used to make it unpalatable. Fun fact: the same chemical is also coated onto Nintendo Switch cartridges to discourage children from putting them in their mouths.

We used to use denatonium (Bitrex) in firefighting to test the efficacy of your face mask seal - you'd put on your mask, a filter, and a hood - Bitrex would be aerosolized into the hood and if you could taste it, there was not a good seal.

Nowadays we just measure pressure differentials.

It was specifically about methanol. Methanol wasn't explicitly used as a denaturation agent but ethanol methanol mixture sales were (forced to be) allowed. Can't find much in English but here's a brief story.

Methanol sales were banned in Finland prior to EU and Finland applied for the exemption already in the EU application in the early 1990s. It was finally granted in 2019. Probably around 500 people died and many got blinded meanwhile.

https://yle.fi/a/3-7841018

Addiction is one helluva motivator, and some people will put up with horrible tasting stuff as long as it's a cheap high.

Not that pure spirit is something you drink for the wonderful taste, in the first place.

I live in one of the countries that just made it taste bad (because enough people died of poisoning it was allowed as an exception by the EU). I've drank a shot of denaturated alcohol once - half out of curiosity, half because I was already out of liquor at home for that evening.

If you close your nose the taste is just bitter, but bearable. The additives are supposed to make you vomit, but for me I only had vomit reflex for ~5 seconds after swallowing. I could live with that if I was addicted and couldn't afford a regular alcohol. I'm sure many people do.

Not sure what the moral is. I guess that addiction is a really strong motivator, and tax evasion is not a good enough reason to justify killing people with poison.

Including not checking as one person I know found out after drinking hand sanitizer. (some hand sanitizer is just alcohol that is made to taste bad, some of it isn't even alcohol, she got the later)

That doesn't seem to stop people from drinking IPAs.

I'll save you from them.

Chinese cooking wines avoid alcohol taxes by adding salt. The salt is useful as a seasoning for food but makes the wine undrinkable!

Does remind me when I talked to a chef from a big restaurant about wine and cooking. He said, a lot of people who work in a kitchen have often an smaller or bigger alcohol problem. He said, as soon as wine is opened in the kitchen for cooking, he does add just a bit salt, so people in the team don't even try to drink some cooking wine.

That doesn't seem like a good idea as a lot of people would try to reduce salt intake due to blood pressure concerns, where the alcohol in this wouldn't be a concern for that as it would likely be cooked off

That’s going to be tough. Shaoxing wine and soy sauce both have lots of sodium in them because they’re intended for seasoning dishes without the need to add salt separately. Even dòuchǐ (fermented black soybeans), which offer a similar flavour profile to soy sauce in solid form, have a lot of salt.

Chicago does it: https://malort.com/

Cute, didn't know it was a thing in Chicago!

I suppose wormwood is an acquired taste, but it's one I happen to like. They still put it in many different bitters here in Sweden.

I’m not sure how this is different from what I’m saying?

The thread is about bad things because of tax policy, your post is about a good thing because of health policy - but you don’t say it’s a good thing, or that it’s about heath not taxes.

The post pointing this out has different content to yours, which reads as if your meaning is “this reminds me of another bad thing caused by tax policies” - even if that’s not what you meant.

> you don’t say it’s a good thing

But I also never said OP’s anecdote was a bad thing. (Why shouldn’t countries be able to tax video cameras coming in…). What’s the difference?

You can’t win arguments on the internet. Best case: they ghost you. Cowards, I say!

Every legal allowance I disagree with is a "loophole", every legal allowance I take advantage of is intended functionality.

I think if it's working as intended and as designed then it's hard to call it a loophole. Loophole would be when dying your spirit purple would change the taxation, because someone codified the color of alcohol instead of it's content.

But of course as you say it's largely semantics.

> I think if it's working as intended and as designed then it's hard to call it a loophole.

This assumes everyone acts in good faith.

A popular one these days is the "gun show 'loophole.'"

Rather than calling it "renegging on an explicitly-legislated compromise", it's a "loophole" that needs "closing."

You're assigning a single mind to a group of uncoordinated actors to create a hypocrisy that probably doesn't exist in any specific individual.

It looks like a loophole, it could be in the textbook describing them. You have a law that establishes a rule, then creates a small exception that in effect opts out of the rule entirely. The people who want this provision eliminated don't know it was intended. That's pretty in the weeds of congress' internal negotiations

>> Rather than calling it "renegging on an explicitly-legislated compromise", it's a "loophole" that needs "closing."

> You're assigning a single mind to a group of uncoordinated actors to create a hypocrisy that probably doesn't exist in any specific individual.

POSIWID

The "gunshow" loophole is really a "private sellers" exemption. If you don't regularly sell guns, then you don't need an FFL to merely sell a small number, and don't have to do background checks (indeed there's no process such that you _can_ do firearms checks).

Now, it might be reasonable to remove this exemption, but the only way it's a "gunshow" loophole is that gun shows are a place where gun fans wanting to buy are going to meet gun fans wanting to sell.

Making it trivial for someone to do firearms checks seems like an easy thing that everyone should support, but alas no one in power seems to actually want such a thing.

It is a textbook example of ex-post-facto re-contracting [1]. Durable agreements and enforcement are a pre-requisite for society.

If we negotiate and make a binding deal, I need to believe you will hold your end of the agreement.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ex_post_facto_law

> making cheap ethanol poisonous and with different color closes the loophole in healthcare policy

I have never seen this as anything other than the death penalty for evading taxes. If the tax were designed to reduce consumption across the population, it needs to scale with income or net worth. Otherwise, it's just a tax on the poor.

FWIW, many countries no longer allow denaturing via poisonous agents, just via extremely unpleasant tasting ones (eg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denatonium).

I heat my house with oil, a truck comes every couple of months and fills a massive tank in my back yard.

This "oil" is basically diesel. It smells and feels identical to diesel. But it's about 70 cents cheaper per litre compared to road diesel. It's dyed red, and you are not supposed to put it in your car, but I reckon it'll be more than fine for older diesel engines.

The red diesel is not taxed like road diesel, and is much cheaper.

> I reckon it'll be more than fine for older diesel engines

There's always the risk of getting your fuel tank dipped if you're on road. Moreso for trucks, but some jurisdictions will set up inspections and check for dyed fuel and tear you an absolute new one when they catch it.

The exit of off road events is a common place to check this. So much so that there is a reputation in the off road community and now they don't even need to check often anymore since nobody is stupid enough to risk driving a truck that has ever had off road fuel in it there.

Here, that's commonly called red diesel (despite them changing to green decades ago) and it's sold for agricultural use. There are a number of cross border smuggling operations where criminals remove the dye and resell it for somewhere between the two prices.

Though primarily done to trucks, there are occasional fuel tests done by police. Even if your tank is currently clean, they'll occasionally pull out the fuel filters and check those for dye.

In Germany, all storage products (e.g. USB sticks) have to pay a canon "because you could use it to pirate media". Now, if I pre-paid the canon for pirating, does it mean I'm authorized to?

In Belgium, the same tax is raised by Auvibel for private copying. It allows us, in theory, to make copies of everything (except sheet music) that we acquired legally, even if we don't have access to the original anymore. So lending anything from a library or a friend, and making and keeping a copy is fair game.

Still not a fan, and probably the EUCD makes most of this useless.

You're expected to! I think we could even calculate exactly how much.

Funnily enough, I have actually used the 30 minute limit as a "feature" on my Panasonic Lumix G80 (the cousin to the unrestricted G85) as sometimes I would want to set up my camera and leave it recording for 20-30 minutes while I walked away to do things but wouldn't physically be able to return to switch it off. It would save me battery and SD card space because it automatically stops after 30 minutes.

That reminds me of https://xkcd.com/1172/

Sometimes there are hidden menus or settings that might allow you to toggle those features. I used to work on TVs and we had a secret menu that toggles various features. Some of those features would be disabled for specific countries (mainly for patents)

That sounds like a relic left over from a bygone era. Like the digital storage levy we still pay despite music and movie piracy only being rampant from 1990s-2000s :)

I love the EU but it certainly has its idiosyncrasies.

This levy is not meant for piracy, but for legal access - like copying the CDs you already bought to your phone. Compared to what we used to pay on blank media it's not so bad. If the alternative is that you are not allowed to keep private copies of anything...

> If the alternative is that you are not allowed to keep private copies of anything

The alternative is that we download torrents pretty much everywhere except Germany which developed a private industry of lawyers extracting money from leachers and seeders alike.

Germans instead have VPNs set up in Poland or Ukraine and use their streaming websites.

Oddities in German copyright or related law don't just have that effect on piracy, they make certain forms of “copyleft trolling” by third parties (who may be in no way linked to the content creator) possible, or at least far easier. This isn't the only route to copyleft trolling, of course.

Refs:

https://doctorow.medium.com/a-bug-in-early-creative-commons-...

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Copyleft_trolling

Fun fact: Stack Overflow possibly violated Creative Commons licensing by putting a Mullenweg-style checkbox in front of downloading the quarterly data dumps. They were notified more than 30 days ago. Therefore, almost all content older than 30 days on Stack Overflow is there illegally. Any lawyers reading? Go nuts.

Um... I am tempted to to file a 5000€ claim in the small claims court against SO in my jurisdiction for violating the licence to my contributions.

Easy money...

I reject this view of the law completely at least in Portugal. The law was introduced to add a tax to every storage media one can purchase with the premise that a percentage of that storage media will be used for what they call piracy. This in effect means everyone is assumed to be breaking the law in advance and paying for it in advance.

As for your point about alternatives, if they add a tax on oxygen you breathe, will you also then say "it's not so bad if the alternative is you are not allowed to breathe at all"?

And the funniest part is that when you buy from Amazon (ES, DE, etc) that tax is not applied further hurting the local shops.

In Spain every device you buy that has some kind of storage is taxed for piracy, the money goes to the local equivalent of the RIIA or book editors associations.

Same in France where the money goes to the local RIAA. Even if it’s a hard drive meant for Linux, or to store public domain stuff. It’s basically a mafia that gets our money despite copying for backup purposes being completely legal.

I wonder if the artists see any share of that money...

In France it’s called the SACEM and I know a few bands that are affiliated to this association because it’s pretty much mandatory if you want to sell anything.

Those bands are not famous but despite making sales, they only get a few bucks every year, or it’s the SACEM saying "we forgot to send you the check lol, no biggies." It’s the biggest legal mafia I can think of right now.

Most of the money collected is sent to huge artists (like what Spotify is doing), there is nothing indie about it even if they pretend it’s for the glory of French music.

Taxation has overhead. If they were to actually track everyone's use and intention on a case-by-case basis, everything would get massively more expensive, just to offset the amount of extra bureaucracy needed to handle this.

It's the same idea as to why reducing the amount of means-testing and other hoops to jump to get social benefits would save taxpayers money - sure, more people who don't need benefits would get them, but that's more than offset by what would be saved by eliminating the workload of (and government jobs dedicated to) gate-keeping those benefits.

The alternative should be that you can backup the stuff you own for free.

> If the alternative is that you are not allowed to keep private copies of anything...

That's of course not the only alternative. But the recording media levy isn't that bad at least in Finland. The income from those is distributed directly to authors and artists, skipping the labels and publishers altogether.

> This levy is not meant for piracy, but for legal access

Backups are already legal in France. It’s pure greed. Why should we pay twice? Also this levy goes to major labels, why should I fund the local Taylor Swift if I want to backup my computer?

> blank media

But we still pay that levy on blank media, phones, tablets, computers, hard drives, and USB keys. They even wanted to put that tax on refurbished items.

> the alternative is that you are not allowed

But it was already legal for the past 50 years. They added this tax, it’s not a gift for us, it’s yet another restriction on what was previously legal.

> I love the EU but it certainly has its idiosyncrasies.

This issue does not appear weird.

There is some legally technical difference between a video camera and a still photo camera. Probably different tariffs or something. Not weird at all and it is not uncommon anywhere in the world for different classes och products to be classified differently, infallibly because of industry lobbyism to reduce their costs or to reduce their prices for their specific product.

The manufacturer chose to limit the product for the consumer for their own economic benefit. Nothing is stopping them from playing ball except their own profit motive.

So American and Asian consumers can pay the same price for the same device that can do more, but to protect me, the European, my device must do less?

It is I the customer who will pay the tariffs (they are always paid by the importer) - the manufacturer gets the same amount per unit.

Tariffs aren't to protect you. They are to protect domestic industry.

https://www.reuters.com/article/technology/eu-to-hit-some-di...

And "domestic industry" in EU means German :)

Don't be too jealous. Your industry won't win with German anyway, but at least German industry won't lose to China like the rest of the world, so as long as you're in the EU, you're still ahead :).

> but to protect me, the European, my device must do less?

No, I think it's to protect the European producer of devices that can do more from being out-competed by imports.

All countries have tariffs. All tariff systems classify goods in some way. On top of the fact that this is by necessity not ever absolutely accurate even initially, these classifications also lag technological development and consumer behaviour.

If there is one thing the EU has absolutely achieved it is to massively reduce and harmonize tariffs and trade rules, and make the rules less susceptible to the whims of political favor and lobbying of local industry.

Yeah, once upon a time I lived in the mountains in Canada and bought a lot of stuff from the US because at the time the Canadian dollar was more or less at par and far cheaper down in the US. I randomly came across the fact that mountaineering equipment was tariffed at 0% because back in like 1920 Canada, like many countries, thought being the first to climb whatever mountain would bring us national glory. Anyways, I would drive down Blain, WA to a parcel shop and collect the stuff I bought online and had shipped there, drive back up and claim it was all "mountaineering" equipment. Nope, those ain't ski boots, they're mountaineering boots, and etc.

I'd still have to pay tax on it, though. IIRC there wasn't any personal exemption amount if you'd left Canada for under 24 hours, unlike they have now. Sometimes they'd just wave you through even when trying to declare something, which was always a nice little bonus savings.

>> If there is one thing the EU has absolutely achieved it is to massively reduce and harmonize tariffs and trade rules, and make the rules less susceptible to the whims of political favor and lobbying of local industry.

To a (considerable) extent yes. But it appears to be going backwards - from 2021 online shops have had to know and apply VAT for a product to the buyers country, not the country in which they are based, and thresholds for charging and submitting this VAT were eliminated. Basically handing over more online retail to the likes of Amazon.

Different products have different VAT rates in each country, the only thing that can't be discriminated on is the (EU) country of origin. This is still absolutely susceptible to the whims of political favour and local industry lobbying. A recent example from Finland: https://yle.fi/a/74-20087643

[Admittedly I'm unlikely to be buying chocolate and crisps online from Germany, but if I were a German seller needs to charge the correct rate of VAT for each, which will likely be different from Germany and every other EU country]

It was just a outdated import fee from a time when it made sense to protect the domestic industry - due to technological developments the import duty was removed. In fact it was removed almost 10 years ago.

https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/E-8-2016-00127...

> I love the EU but it certainly has its idiosyncrasies.

That is an acceptable position and you will likely nor require further investigation as long as the criticism remains vague and is offset by positive sentiment. I too love the EU.

I have a family member of retirement age who got into the habit of anonymously expressing their love of the EU in the comments section of a local newspaper.

After a few months of this they received a phone call on their landline warning them that such public expressions are inappropriate and that there could be consequences should they not find a new hobby.

I too love the EU but I loved it much more 15 years ago.

Someone at the newspaper, or someone in state security?

Not 100% sure as they didn't introduce themselves but whoever called was able to get the phone number that the IP address was linked to and I assume both would have to have been involved in order to do that.

Creepy. If you don’t mind me asking - eastern eu?

Yes; former communist but not former soviet union. Old habits die hard I guess.

Not sure if we’re talking about the same situation, but the last time I was in Bulgaria, there was massive brain drain and a lot of, eh, ‘false nostalgia’ for a very different past.

But tons of money coming in from the EU. I can imagine a lot of public quiet, private ‘angst’ about the kind of situation you’re describing.

Wild guess - Romania? (If not Bulgaria)

Your guess is correct. However I've not personally witnessed any nostalgia for communism in Romania though.

If this story is true then I'm suddenly in favor of brexit while before I thought it was worse for everyone. Of course I live in the US and so my opinion should be of zero interest on anyway. Still if you live in the EU I would hope you are concerned.

What is this load of BS, nobody from the EU called because of facebook comments, your family member lied.

I never said someone from the EU called, we think it was someone from the national government. Or it could just be someone from the newspaper who knows someone at the telecom company and they decided to have a laugh.

More or less all tariffs and sales tax systems are like this; the rules are _always_ kind of all over the place.

My personal favourite example is when the Irish Supreme Court determined that Subway bread was not bread: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/01/irish-court-ru... (Bread had advantageous treatment for VAT purposes, but Subway's 'bread' has too much sugar to qualify.)

There's also the famous Jaffa Cake case, of course: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaffa_Cakes#Legal_status , but I think the Subway one has an extra element of absurdity because it went all the way to the _Supreme Court_.

> My personal favourite example is when the Irish Supreme Court determined that Subway bread was not bread

Because it is not. Cola is not water either.

Importantly, Subway bread is not bread for tax purposes. For food standards purposes, it is.

The very raison-d'être of the EU is to remove all tarriffs between 20+ countries.

Without the EU, there would be a worse patchwork of rules and exceptions.

Patchworks of rules and exceptions can be beneficial. It allows for experimentation and/or competition as well as the fact that regulations can often enough not keep up with change and they can be more entrenched if done at a higher level. Where, when, and what is better harmonized across a whole market VS allowing variation is a matter of debate.

> I love the EU but it certainly has its idiosyncrasies.

Tariffs around the world have weird stuff like that. Very little to do with the EU itself. Expect a lot more weird things like that to happen in the US now with the new US government implementing new tariffs.

> music and movie piracy only being rampant from 1990s-2000s

Huh? It may have dipped at the time Netflix had everything streamable, but there's been a resurgence in the now years since it hasn't.

It may have been a customs and taxation issue here, but manufacturers are constantly adding costs of their own onto software before often reversing track.

Examples: Leica (for Fotos) charged a princely sum for various trifles before removing these fees.

Naim: charged £35 for the control app - which I paid - before going free, and now the app is the only way to control whole swathes of their increasingly-execrable hardware.

These two companies’ kit is expensive, luxury, premium, however you want to refer to it, and so they probably felt comfortable wringing their customers a little more. Probably understandable in the case of Leica owners who will pay £250 for a viewfinder dioptre correction lens (puts hand up again) but less so for hifi owners.

It is not that audiophiles haven’t been shown to spent inordinate sums on the dumbest, snakiest, oiliest tat this side of an Oxford Street souvenir shop, but it has to be material and palpable.

It’s somewhat subjective, but I disagree it’s easier to fleece photographers than audiophiles. There are professional art photographers that use Leica cameras because they’re great, and $250 is pocket change for a lot of serious optical equipment. Look at the Canon L lenses and the like. Lots of people that buy that stuff don’t need it, but it’s not expensive solely for the sake of being expensive.

I have yet to find a professional sound engineer, producer, or artist that calls themself an audiophile or uses the insanely overpriced gear marketed to them. Lots of that stuff is demonstrably bullshit and only valuable because it’s expensive.

That tariff difference between "video" and "stills" cameras having a 30 minute cutoff is funny. If you think about the vast majority of the time when shooting moving video with a handheld or tripod mounted camera it does not involve 30+ minute long continuous takes. You could have a professional movie camera with that restriction and it wouldn't be a problem in the vast majority of cases.

So the restriction ends up being between things like security cameras, vtc cameras, and traffic cameras vs all other times of cameras. The relatively shitty camera in a doorbell or on your dashboard end up being more expensive to import than the fancy DSLR just because it is used in a different application.

There was a custom ROM for canon available quite a few years ago... Now all I can find is https://www.magiclantern.fm/ but I believe the previous one was called CHDK or something like that

Got it only in German here: https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canon_Hack_Development_Kit and on fandom.wiki there's a page ... But I used it like hundreds of years ago so not sure if it still works...

CHDK is what came to mind for me too. I used to make great time lapses with it. 10/10 software.

It looks like they have firmware for the G5 X, but not the G5 X 2. :/

From my memory CHDK was a project for Canon's consumer/point-and-shoot cameras, and Magic Lantern is for the DSLRs.

>I also discovered that I couldn't use my Canon SLR to record more than 30 minutes of video continuously.

My (now ancient) Canon 5D mk2 is limited to ~28 minutes of video due to file system limitations.

Is the limitation the same regardless of quality, format, frame rate, etc? That would make me suspicious.

No, 4GB equates to around 28mins of encoded video with their bitrate settings.

There's the well-known case of Spain in 1985, that would impose a tariff on computers with 64 KB RAM or less. At that time, Amstrad launched the CPC 464 with 64KB worldwide, but for Spain launched the special model CPC 472, wich had a daughter board with an additional 8Kb chip not connected to the main RAM and thus unusable, but enough for circumventing the tariff. That tariff was short-lived.

I wonder if 3rd party camera firmware will become more of a thing - e.g. https://www.magiclantern.fm/ or https://chdk.fandom.com/wiki/CHDK

Do you know of anything equivalent for Nikon?

The problem wasn't canon? Sounds like the problem was canon...trying to make more money.

I think the time limit is because of the way the imports are classified.

I believe that under 30 minutes, allows it to be a digicam, but over, requires it to be classified as a video camera.

Most pros generally take scenes as groups of short runs, so that doesn't matter (Canon is used extensively in professional entertainment).

This happens even outside electronics and software. I ordered some tevas recently to replace my old ones and discovered they now have a light felt layer over the rubber bottom. If I had to guess its like the converse reason of adding a similar felt layer: to classify them as slippers.

I seem to recall that there is a special button sequence you can use on Canon cameras that disabled the restriction. It’s. Been many years, but Google should have something for your model.

> I couldn't use my Canon SLR to record more than 30 minutes of video continuously

Large sensors optimized for still photography overheat when operating continuously for video, so they feature safety limits. Sensor heat dissipation is a big problem and a major differentiating feature of top end cinema cameras.

My Sony doesn’t have this length limit, but will readily overheat and turn off after several minutes of highest-bitrate recording. So no, overheating is trivially protected against via temperature sensors, not some arbitrary timeout.

Taxes Rule Everything Around Me

One of the obvious "wtf?" things about this regulation is that regulators believe 29 minutes of video doesn't qualify as video?

It would likely overheat anyway hah. Old Sony cameras have the same restrictions.

No, this is not the reason. If the camera records video for more than 30min, then it is a video camera, see the question answered here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34640107

In short, there is no good reason anymore, but originally this was because of EU import tarifs.

GP didn’t claim that’s not the reason. They’re making a joke that if the camera kept recording past 30min, it would overheat.

It’s a joke.

It's not a joke, older DSLR cameras would often overheat when recording continuously. My good old Canon 6D would overheat once in a while when used as a webcam with v4l2loopback.

Even as recently as the Canon R5 Mark I mirrorless camera (which you can still buy new), overheats within 15 minutes if you're recording 8K30 or 4K120.

Some cameras do overheat from extended recording sessions, so depending on the model it's not entirely a joke.

It's a joke, but it's also the truth. Many cameras won't even get to 30 minutes before overheating.

Yeah I knew what you meant. I have one :)

IT's not a joke. When filming for more than 30 minutes the cameras at the time (10-15 years ago) would warm up and eventually shut off automatically to cool off.

FYI many modern cameras still do this.

Silly restrictions aside, I feel that most use cases don't have takes longer than 30min anyway (I mean, on cameras that you actually start and stop recording manually)

But yeah technology evolves and the taxes remain. (Though don't complain too much or they will just pick the higher taxes for the newer cameras)

Camera manufacturers can just enable the functionality as an easter-egg.

So they just publish some activation code on some consumer forum somewhere and from then on it's the consumer's responsibility.

I think they did the same thing with DVD region restrictions.

Streaming is a major use case where the camera may be recording continuously for several hours at a time. Another one is for video meetings, though in that case I’d prefer it if my camera forced the end of the meeting after 30 mins.

I can’t see why you think there’s a usecase for 25 minute videos but not 35 minute ones.

Speaking as an amateur photographer with multiple DSLRs: I’ve certainly needed longer than that for a number of gigs.

Reminds me of the Indian public discourse when the government wanted to tax caramel popcorn in movie theatres at 18% when the normal ones were taxed at 5%.

But the EU doesn’t do tariffs? I thought that was exclusive to the incoming US administration, because it’s stupid.

Yes it does. You have a customs desk at every entry port, complete with a “goods to declare” sign. If you buy stuff online, you’ll also have to pay up if the products are taxed.

You can learn about those here: https://taxation-customs.ec.europa.eu/customs-4/calculation-...

We also have VAT (sales tax) which is levied on top of the import duties (so the tax is taxed).

There are even restrictions on the quantities of some products you are allowed to carry between member states, such as alcohol and tobacco, mostly because taxes on those vary by jurisdiction.

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