Portugal’s opposition party, Partido Socialista, is pondering a tax on storage media under the flag of copyright protection. Under the proposal, consumers would pay €0.02 for every gigabyte of storage purchased, so a 1TB HDD would cost around €21 ($28) extra, plus an additional levy on devices over that size means a 2TB drive could cost an additional €103.2 ($135). It doesn’t just stop at desktop platters: USB sticks, memory cards and even smartphones would also be charged, with any device packing 64GB of storage facing a surcharge of €32 ($42). A party member defended the idea, saying that the tax is aimed at professionals who use larger capacity drives — but since most consumer HDDs come with a minimum size of 160GB and the legislation is also supposedly meant to tackle piracy, we’re not entirely sure it adds up — except maybe in government coffers.

Update: We’re hearing that the bill titled PL118 has been withdrawn in the face of overwhelming common sense.

[Thanks, Ricardo]

Portuguese opposition party wants ‘terabyte tax,’ voters want a new opposition party originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 13 Apr 2012 08:30:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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