[jgrahamc]

It's a duty that goes back a long way (back to the start of the VCR revolution) because the EU wanted to protect its own manufacturers from cheap technology coming from abroad. So they (we) enacted a bunch of laws that place quite high duty (up to 15% IIRC) on some technologies.

[0x12]

Let's hope that Canon will allow a hack to escape from their labs to rectify this bug after the camera reaches the end user.

A tax on an integer seems to be a bit silly.

[jarek]

Import duties on silly things are a problem the world over. I've recently read about the chicken tax in the USA, it's mildly mind-boggling.

[rdtsc]

Why not just even openly post it and make a note on their website that it is only for non-EU customers and also mention the reason and put a link to the exact law. Would that get them off the hook?

[0x12]

It might, or it might get them in trouble. In their position there is no upside from doing it that way but plenty of potential downside.

For instance, one way in which that could be struck down is to use that message as a pretext to levy the fee anyway on this camera.

[reemrevnivek]

Or why not ask their EU customers to pay the extra 4.9% it would cost to sell it as a camcorder?

That would not only get them off the hook but also encourage their customers to abolish this ridiculous law.

[zitterbewegung]

On the other hand when you are filming something do you really have a scene in a film that is longer than 30 minutes? Realistically your scenes are much shorter so the utility of having a camera that could shoot longer is probably low.

[iaskwhy]

Say a concert? (I don't know anything about cameras, I was just thinking about that same thing and realised there are probably some uses for scenes longer than 30 minutes.)

[connectionreset]

Like a homemade porn? ;) Or documentary of a lecture