Consumer Electronics Firms Fighting Against Copyright Levies In Europe
from the how-far-will-they-get dept
While US copyright law has its problems, one path we have not gone down that many other countries have is the concept of copyright levies on various technologies. These taxes on various technologies, consumer electronics and media storage devices are supposed to "compensate" for any copyright infringement that is done on that equipment (though, it should be noted that, even with these levies, such infringement is still illegal). Think of it as a "you simply must be a criminal" tax. In the US, the entertainment industry has mostly fought against these levies fearing (perhaps reasonably) that they would lead people to think that such copying was, in fact, legal -- or much, much worse, convince a court of that fact (by saying "hey, I paid for it via this levy, thus I should be able to do it.") Still, they do exist in many places, and they generally serve to harm the consumer electronics players by making their devices significantly more expensive. In some cases, the vast majority of the price of certain products is made up of the levy, rather than the price of the product.Over in Europe, they've been fighting about this for years. Back in 2006 there was a proposal to get rid of these levies, but it got shot down due to intense pressure from the collections societies who make a ton of money from them. In 2008, there was even an effort to expand these levies. Copycense points us to the news that in the latest "negotiations" around these levies in Europe, the consumer electronics companies have given up trying to reason with the collections societies, and instead are looking to the EU to put in place some regulations to at least get rid of the worst abuses of such levies that massively hold back the ability of consumer electronics companies to sell products at a reasonable price.
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That doesn't make them a good thing. It's not so much the 'assumption of guilt' that bothers me; there is another often overlooked downside to these levies: it only helps the signed, established, successful artists at the expense of the little guys.
say I have a band, I record an album, and I burn it on multiple CD-Rs and sell it. That levy that is being collected on those CD-Rs gets distributed to acts like nickelback and avril. they profit from my work.
I really don't mind having to pay $10 for 50 CD-Rs if it means I get all-you-can-eat access to digital media.
I do mind having the struggling little guy subsidizing the big acts that don't need or deserve it.
I'm an artist too, I archive my work on CD-Rs, why am I not in on this deal?
(ps: how much does a 50-pack of CD-Rs cost in a non-levied country?)
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on the Other hand, US made software will quite frequently render your hardware unable to Use the things...
wonderfully clever, that.
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"Urheberrechtspauschale" in Germany
I am wondering if this will be considered in the next proposals to politicians.
Btw, not every vendor accepts i.e. apple. But these companies will get an invoice by the entertainments with an extra of +25%. Nice one!
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Official motivation: fair use tax
Here in Sweden, and likely more EU countries, the official motivations for these taxes are that they are only meant to compensate rights holders for the fair use like exemptions in the law that give you the right to make a few copies of a copyrighted work for yourself and your closest friends.
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not still illegal
The problem is that the music industry has now said, unofficially but pretty publicly that private copying (e.g. ripping CDs you have bought) is allowed, with or without a levy.
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You're not becoming criminally liable if you did this for private purpose, but companies are able to sue you under civil law. I think this is similar in other European contries.
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Scarce goods
Free content (in practice) are making these goods more valuable (translating into more sales), but none of that benefit goes to the content makers. It doesn't seem like gadget makers would go into a deal with content makers willingly though, if they have nothing to win from the current situation (unless perhaps a highly valuable content could be reliably tied to a specific gadget... DRM anyone?)
Sure, the levies are forcing it, but aren't they somehow addressing the issue?
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A quite fair, but imperfect system of compensation
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Re: A quite fair, but imperfect system of compensation
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Re: A quite fair, but imperfect system of compensation
Are they being compensated for anything other than the fact that they chose really smart lobbyists who were very good at donating to the reelection committees of the politicians who created these laws?
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Why Not Reverse Bill the Collection Societies?
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Wasn't there such a Levy on DAT Tapes?
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Blame Canada.
http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/1004.html
In Canada only music is permited to be copied for private use only.
"Can I make private copies of movies, audiobooks, or software?
NO. The Private Copying Regime only addresses making private copies for your own use of sound recordings of musical works. "
http://neil.eton.ca/copylevy.shtml#other_countries
Albeit technically true that copying for personal use is legal in Canada that copying only applies to one subset of the entire media so is not that comfy.
The good news is that the levy in Canada only applies to blank CDR's so when those go the way of the dodo's ther won't be any levy unless the government enacts another law.
http://excesscopyright.blogspot.com/2009/09/proceeds-of-canadas-blank-media-levy.html
In European countries I see how things got out of control.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_copying_levy
Personally I don't see the fairness or justification to a media tax and would not support such a thing.
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The Private Copying Levy in Canada
Up here, we pay a levy on certain blank media that have been designated by the Copyright Board and, in exchange for that payment, private copying of music (yes, only music) onto those types of media is not copyright infringement. And that's true regardless of where the original comes from. So I can take a CD from the library or borrow it from a friend and make a copy for myself onto a blank CD and it's not copyright infringement.
That part has its benefits (sortofallyoucaneat content!) and its downsides (payments from the CPCC only get to established acts), as kyle_clements says above.
But the ridonculous part about our system is in the approval of music media by the Copyright Board. What is approved? Tapes, CDs and Minidiscs (!). Back when the iPod was first introduced, they also approved portable music players, but it would have added up to $20 to the cost of a 60Gb iPod so the consumer electronics stores fought it to the Supreme Court and won. With that decision, we now have slightly less overpriced audio players in Canada (or slightly richer stores -- hard to know), but it's copyright infringement to copy your own CDs onto them, even if you bought your iPod and use the built-in iTunes feature to copy the CD.
The result of the electronics giants' fight is that they get higher profits from mp3 players, more people infringe copyright, and artists get paid less. IMO, the Copyright Board tried to do the right thing on this one.
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Question
How is it that we have these levies on media that records in the form of movies and audio, but not on, say, a notepad?
Example: If I buy a copy of the NIV Bible from a particular publisher and decide to make notes, on a notepad, copying entire passages for a sermon I plan to deliver to a congregation, does that notepad manufacturer pay a levy for that? Am I infringing on that publisher's product? Will I be required to pay a 'Performance Fee' when I give the sermon?
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