Comment by alibarber
1 day ago
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.
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...
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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.
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.
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.
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This is akin to Fox News arguing in court that it is, in fact, entertainment and not news, despite it's name.
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I think Steven Colbert hosted a show using himself as the host. I’m not sure about the tax implications though.
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I'm not from the UK, but wasn't there also a cake Vs biscuits thing for tax reasons?
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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)
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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.
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.
Some trade war from the XIX century or something? Or maybe because dolls were historically thought for girls?
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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%."
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This. It’s a pretty reasonable answer to a stupid question. Dolls depict people.
did you get a second glance? did you figure out why they are taxed differently?
Probably lobbying from a local doll maker
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.
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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 wish supermarkets would put them on the cake aisle instead and keep the biscuit aisle pure.
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I would eat that.
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.
Pretty much fits. It probably wouldn't be such an issue if they were just human.
And also, they are an "on your face" depiction of the dehumanization of the Holocaust victims...
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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.
This was also the reason for the (in)famous BRAT seats:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subaru_BRAT
Technically the ones they got in hot water for were from EU to get around the Chicken Tax.
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
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...
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".
The tax system is over complicated! Why the distinction between toys and dolls?
Regulatory capture most likely
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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.
You ought to see the magic they do when coding medical procedures for billing in the US. It makes these tax shenanigans look simple.
Why would jackets even be taxed differently than shirts. It's so silly.
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I don't think I've ever seen that on any of my shirts here in the US. Is this in the US?
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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.
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Capitalists? in the villain category? Impossible!
Thanks, amazing story! I found this nice coverage of the events: https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/92007/why-us-federal-cou...
This has interesting implications for the Marvel canon, as the conflict between average humans and mutants is a primary plot driver for x-men
> Reminds me of when lawyers successfully argued that X-Men are not human
Isn't that true though?
Was their lawyer William Stryker?
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.
> 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...
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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.
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> 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
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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
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We need to normalize piracy like we're cheap Chinese knockoff manufacturers. Down with software patents.
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]
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.
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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/
Every legal allowance I disagree with is a "loophole", every legal allowance I take advantage of is intended functionality.
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> 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.
I’m not sure how this is different from what I’m saying?
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Couldn't they just make it taste bad, for safety's sake?
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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.
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.
> 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.
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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.
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_.
Importantly, Subway bread is not bread for tax purposes. For food standards purposes, it is.
> 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.
> 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.
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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.
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.
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> 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.
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...
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"?
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> 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.
> 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.
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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.
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> 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.
The alternative should be that you can backup the stuff you own for free.
> 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.
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 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.
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?
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).
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?
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.
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.
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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%.
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)
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.
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.
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.
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.