Nate Hoffelder is reporting on his Digital Reader blog that France is going to be lowering taxes on DRM-free ebooks:
Hardly anyone likes DRM on their content, and its various opponents respond in various ways, whether by public advocacy or by voting with their pocketbook. And then there is France, which decided to express their displeasure with a new tax law.
France has amended their tax laws with a new lower tax rate for DRM-free ebooks (or a new higher rate for DRMed ebooks, depending on how you look at it). The new law won’t go into effect until 2015, but once it does Amazon, Apple, Kobo, and all the other major ebookstores will all be penalized for selling DRMed ebooks to French customers.
Under France’s new tax laws, DRMed ebooks will be taxed at a higher rate (currently 19.6%), while DRM-free ebooks will be taxed at the lower 5.5% rate.
You can read the whole post HERE.
You should really visit Nate’s blog; it’s chock full o’ useful eBook information! You can visit it HERE.
I recently read a diatribe by an author about how great and wonderful DRM is. And how it saved the music industry. And how they believe they “added something unique to the market, and I believe I deserve to be paid for my work.” And how ebooks are in decline. And how “a lack of DRM decimated the music industry.”
c|net Australia has just put up an article “