This Is Crazy

Last week, a state court in Stuttgart, Germany laid down a landmark decision for the music industry. The court ordered Hewlett-Packard to pay fees for every CD burner the company sold to consumers in Germany over the past three years. The ruling falls under a recent law passed to curb music piracy. The plan is to use monies collected under the law to compensate musicians whose hit songs are illegally pilfered from the Internet and distributed through technology like H-P’s burners. The Stuttgart ruling states that H-P will be fined for all the burners it has sold since 1998 and all future sales of CD burners.