

Germany Increases 'You Are All Pirates' Tax On Solid State Media By 2000% - DiabloD3
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120601/07161319164/germany-increases-you-are-all-pirates-tax-solid-state-media-2000.shtml

======
linhat
While this is already 2 weeks old[1], being german this still drives me nuts.
It's not only their refusal to explain why exactly they feel the need to
increase these charges, it's their complete ignorance as to the actual use of
these storage mediums. I really hope that Bitkom finds a way to fight back.

But the real Problem here is (as almost always when it comes to digital
rights) the GEMA. They are the reason why Youtube is almost not usable in
Germany (unless you are using some sort of proxying), and that's just the tip
of the iceberg as far as I am concerned. Being a former musician myself, I can
guarantee that any dealing with the GEMA is nothing short of a PITA. Not only
for musicians, but for event managers, shop owners and so on. Their fees are
ridiculously high and getting worse each year while their payout to musicians
is nothing short of a joke.

Their methods resolve to scaremongering and FUD. They are right up there with
the german GEZ, but don't even get me started on those guys.

[1] [http://www.heise.de/resale/meldung/ZPUe-erhoeht-Abgaben-
auf-...](http://www.heise.de/resale/meldung/ZPUe-erhoeht-Abgaben-auf-USB-
Sticks-und-Speicherkarten-drastisch-1583790.html) [GERMAN]

~~~
LinXitoW
To clarify your first point: They've justified this by saying that compression
algorithms have gotten better meaning people can store more on less, which is
idiotic, seeing how files get a lot bigger because of higher quality. Their
explanations are based on a study that isn't even available to the public. The
tax is also levied on SD cards, which afaik no one ever uses for anything else
than as a storage for media you produce yourself, since they are used mostly
in cameras and smartphones.

~~~
Xylakant
I actually use SD-cards for audio files. They're small, sturdy, convenient,
every modern macbook has a suitable slot and lots of car audio systems accept
them. They're kind of like a usb-stick without the clunky connector and
wrapping.

~~~
dmatthewson
OK, but most people use them for their cameras, I never even heard of anyone
using them on car systems, but I'll accept it is true.

Given this, why should the 99% that are taking their own photos pay a tax to
support a record label organization that one of the posts above from a German
says doesn't even pay out to the musicians?

~~~
Xylakant
Could you cite a figure for the 99% figure? Smartphones use them for data
storage,... Fact is: neither you nor I know.

But anyways, the same applies to empty CDs, harddrives, DVD-Writers, ... So
while I may store more audio on my SD-Cards, others store tons and tons of
MP3s on their Harddrives or copy CDs - something I don't do. I still pay for
that. I pay a little for what I don't use but they use and they pay a little
for what they don't use, but I do. I guess such is life, it probably evens out
in the end.

Sidenote: The GEMA is not a record label organizations and it does pay out.
There's something horribly wrong in how they distribute the money among their
members (the rich get richer, ...) and they keep roughly 20% in administrative
costs, but they do pay out.

------
foob
We have similar 3% in the US on blank media cds
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_copying_levy#United_Sta...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_copying_levy#United_States)).
The Audio Home Recording Act of 1992, the same legislation that put these
levies into place, also protected the rights of individuals to make non-
commercial copies of copyrighted works. At least that's my read on it, though
I am not a lawyer.

All of the comments here seem vehemently opposed to the levy mentioned in the
article but if it came with an extension of our rights to non-commercially
copy and share works then I think that it would be a very fair trade. I would
even be relatively unopposed if this was applied to bandwidth usage.
Technologically speaking, there's no reason that a person shouldn't be able to
go online and check out almost any song, movie, book, or television show in
existence. Many, many people are aware of this and with good reason feel that
it should be the case. The barrier to this is in the quagmire of licensing
that is exemplified by what we've seen go on with Showtime, HBO, and Netflix.

Imagine if the government would stand up and say that universal access to art,
literature, and educational materials is important enough that the laws need
to be changed to facilitate it. If non-commercial exchange of copyrighted
materials was legalized but in exchange bandwidth was taxed and the money paid
out as royalties to rights holders based on torrent activity or something of
the sort. To me, that sounds like a better alternative than having a country
full of criminals. I'll keep dreaming.

~~~
SoftwareMaven
How could that ever be distributed fairly? How do you determine what
percentage the Gaga's get versus the indy artist down the street? Given this
would cannibalize sales, you wouldn't be able to use sales figures because
there would be no way for a new group to get to the level of sales a Lady Gaga
had.

If the government starts deciding, you make music a communistic business,
which would not be good for music.

(For the record, I think the levies as they stand are wrong for the exact same
reasons; you just replace the govt with groups like the RIAA.)

~~~
wizzard
Are you thinking that the money would be distributed to the actual artists?
What a crazy notion.

------
adrianN
I wonder why the shops that sell these don't put a sticker on them saying
something like 'two out of the seven Euro are a levy'. That for sure would
raise public awareness.

------
mironathetin
Gema is really nuts. I don't understand who lobbies for them, but instead of
producing music that people like to buy, they rely more and more on taxes.
Even back in the 70s they managed to put an extra tax on tape cassettes,
because you could copy vinyl on them. Back then, this might have been the most
likely usage for cassettes. But for CDs and USB sticks this is a rip-off.

There is one more nutty thing that falls into the same category. From January
2012 on, every german household has to pay for public TV, even if the
household does not have a TV set. The reason is, that you can receive TV
programs via internet and thus also a computer is a TV (well - ...).

So also the TV stations, by simply broadcasting their stuff for free in the
internet, managed to get an extra tax. Although, there is no medium like the
internet where it is easier to make users log in and let them pay exactly for
what they use.

(Note: I indeed never owned a tv set. I indeed watch the daily news on my
computer and I'd be happy to pay for this. But only for the news, not for the
remaining crap).

~~~
morsch
The fee pays for public broadcasting, not just public TV. Public broadcasting
includes TV, radio, and the internet presence of the TV and radio media. I
don't have a TV, but I do listen to public radio and I use public news web
sites all the time.

I think the new system is _much_ more reasonable than the previous system,
which had loads of people claiming they don't own any kind of receiving device
when that claim is just patently absurd for almost everybody today. This was
different in the 50s or 60s where not everybody had a radio at home, much less
a video device. Today it's just a system that rewards dishonesty. It also lead
to an expensive byzantine bureaucracy (the GEZ) just for collecting the public
broadcasting fees and snooping (in person!) after people who say that don't
own a TV/radio/whatever.

What _is_ crazy is that they didn't get rid of the GEZ when they changed the
system, but I assume that'll happen sometime down the road. And of course
you're free to disagree with having any public broadcasting system at all, or
that it should be financed differently (I agree). But the previous fee system
was just broken and needed to be fixed.

~~~
mironathetin
I agree, the previous system was bad. It has been replaced by a system that is
also bad. Even worse, this one can be attacked in court because it is
obviously unfair.

This is the only situation I know, where a company distributes their product
for free and then asks everybody to pay for it. This is a special situation of
course, because the public broadcasting has the official task to educate and
report in a neutral way. This is welcome - no doubt.

But the presence in the internet and thus on computers is no excuse to collect
money from everybody. In contrary, the presence of the internet allows to
measure exactly, who is using the services. In a few years from now, perhaps
even today, it would be possible to do the same with the wireless receivers,
like TV.

So it would be easy to charge the households who use the service. No GEZ
needed any more, but a fair system that charges for usage.

~~~
dmatthewson
Why not just get rid of the state owned propaganda channels? Why is that never
an option. It's absurd to have to be subjected to state propaganda and be made
to pay for it. Brainwashing should be free, no?

~~~
morsch
Getting rid of the state owned propaganda channels is not an option because
they're not exactly state owned nor are they propaganda channels.

And I'm not sure why I am supposed to prefer the brainwashing provided to me
free by private channels -- free as in I pay for it once with _further_
concentrated brainwashing in 3 minute segments and then once more when I pay
the obligatory surcharge on everything because the money for those ads has to
come from somewhere.

------
yason
Finland has initial plans to move from levies specific to certain
media/storage products to an annual fee. The fee would be collected as a part
of TV licensing fee which is also moving from a specific "per tv-owning
household" license to cover all citizens, regardless of their TV ownership or
lack of it. So, in effect, the copyright institutions effectively have a way
to tax people.

It will only amount to less than a handful of euros per year and generally
it's more fair than the irrationally random levies (buying an external hard
drive implies levy, buying an external harddrive case and a separate hard
drive doesn't) but there are two problems.

First, the "tax" will undoubtedly increase every year. The copyright mafia has
demonstrated their intention to adjust the levies accordingly to match an
annual 10-15 million euros of income. So, now the "tax" might only be three
euros. Later it will only be four euros, come on! Then only a fiver, come on,
that doesn't hurt anyone! Then only ten euros, it won't make a difference...
and so on.

Secondly, having paid the increasing fee (see first point) it's mostly
undefined what you will get in return. By paying this fee—that is
involuntarily taxed from your income—I think the common attitude will soon
turn into "I've paid for it already, so I can at least decide to pirate some
movies to get _something back_ in return."

Neither the levies nor the annual fee aren't compensation for illegal copying,
just private copying. It's just that the general public already perceives that
private copying doesn't need to be compensated. For example, people don't
generally take well the idea that after buying a cd they would need to pay
again to make copy of it for their car player. Thus, a majority of people will
inevitably attribute this forced copyright tax to an implied, unofficial
license to pirate.

The legislation probably takes ten years to catch up with that. But I think it
might be a good way. Personally, I would probably pay 20-30 euros annually to
legally download content from PirateBay. The distribution of the collected
money could be based on the popularity rank of Finnish artists and movies on
PirateBay, instead of the arbitrary radio playing lists that they use
currently.

The power of peer-to-peer would be worth paying for. The MAFIAA guys can
handle the creation of the content, let the internet people handle the
distribution. That way each party can do what they're good at.

------
beedogs
They all need to start pirating.

Their government is giving them carte blanche.

~~~
daliusd
I'm from other European country but similar things happen here. I disagree
with you here. We should register ourselves as content creators and get our
money back in other legal ways. We should demonstrate how much those taxes are
stupid.

~~~
greyman
I am also from other European country, but I believe that tax is favourable
for me as an ordinary citizen and I am happy to pay it! Really, I don't joke
here.

It is not "You Are All Pirates" tax - this tax allows me to legally make a
copy of a work of art for my private use, even if I didn't pay for the
original - it is enough that the work of art was already presented in the
public [for example, song in a radio, movie in the TV or theatre, etc]. So I
can legally have that stored on my HDD, if I choose so. For that, I have to
pay the tax, and I am ok with that.

~~~
markokocic
But I don't want to do that. I don't want to store anything broadcasted on
radio or tv to disc. Why would I have to pay in that case? Make it optional,
make it opt-in. Allow people to go to GEMA or equivalent and buy one year
subscription if they want to use the "right to make copies of copyrighted
content", but please don't force me, or anyone else to pay for it if we don't
want it.

~~~
greyman
I agree - if you don't want that, it is unfair. Making it opt-in would be more
fair, but probably much more difficult to enforce.

My main point was, that I personally agree with this model, and it is
generally not that disadvantageous as the article and many comments here
portraits it. Moreover, even the term "tax" is questionable in my opinion,
because in this case you are getting rights for private copy of copyrighted
content, it's not that you are paying for nothing specific [like in normal
taxes].

------
freechoice1
Sweden already have this and was lobbied and implemented by an organisation
called Swedcopy like a year ago. Most swedes don't know about this extra
taxation due to popular news media never really brought it up. I found out
about it due to a brief article on a PC magazine.

Those affected and who complained a lot were of course businesses who sell
these things. But apparently they were forced into accepting the new taxation.

As a Swede I'm directly affected by that Germany now implemented this slave
tax, due to I figured I could import products from Germany instead of buying
them in Sweden.

What this seems to imply is that those in power seem to plan this in the EU
behind scenes. Keeping it from public as much as possible and using the you
are all pirates as an excuse for the extra taxation.

------
frobozz
I can't find anything saying where the money actually goes.

One injustice of levies like this is that the money may not actually go to
those who piracy is harming, but instead it lines the pockets of whoever can
already afford to lobby for the fee.

In the Netherlands (IIRC) it is distributed to producers of music and film
(note: not software).

------
mxfh
It's 1850%[1] but still outlandish, also they are taxing external hard drives
yet not internal ones, it's a farce in every way possible.

Just wait until they figure out what dropbox is.

[1]
[http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=en&tl...](http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=en&tl=de&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.heise.de%2Fresale%2Fmeldung%2FZPUe-
erhoeht-Abgaben-auf-USB-Sticks-und-Speicherkarten-drastisch-1583790.html)

~~~
mxfh
Fun fact: One of the shareholders of the ZPÜ is the GÜFA [1] (Collective
rights management for Adult Entertainment).

Of every ZPÜ taxed media you buy 1% [2] of the video associated part of the
ZPÜ-fee goes to the porn industry. This summed up to 1.9M EUR in 2005 and 4M
in 2010 including some cumulative special payouts, but its safe to say that
the GÜFA gets at least a million Euros a year out of that. [3] [4]

I'm O.K. with people buying porn, but that everybody subsidizes this by buying
storage media has just another quality.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%9CFA>

[2] <http://www.heise.de/tp/artikel/7/7586/1.html> [GERMAN]

[3] <http://dipbt.bundestag.de/dip21/btd/16/049/1604914.pdf> [PDF GERMAN Page
16]

[4]
[https://www.bundesanzeiger.de/ebanzwww/wexsservlet?global_da...](https://www.bundesanzeiger.de/ebanzwww/wexsservlet?global_data.designmode=eb&genericsearch_param.fulltext=g%C3%BCfa&genericsearch_param.part_id=&%28page.navid%3Dto_quicksearchlist%29=Suchen)
[GERMAN - Session protected - ZPÜ numbers under 4.1]

click on «Jahresabschluss zum Geschäftsjahr vom 01.01.2010 bis zum 31.12.2010»
and solve the captcha, remember that the Bundesanzeiger is a by-law-open
official publication in Germany, its a farce.

------
tzs
Richard Stallman has suggested something similar, but with the tax being on
internet use rather than media, and with the money being distributed to
artists in proportion to the cube root of their popularity.

[http://stallman.org/articles/internet-sharing-
license.en.htm...](http://stallman.org/articles/internet-sharing-
license.en.html)

It is possible to prove mathematically that a free market doesn't work with
goods that that have a significant cost to create but that are infinitely
copyable, without restriction, at essentially zero cost once created.

The current copyright laws address this by restricting copying. The basic idea
is to intellectual property artificially behave like physical property, so
that the market can work.

There are a couple of disadvantages to this approach. (1) it makes IP goods
more expensive to the consumer than they "should" be, so there will be
underconsumption compared to what people would consume if the price was lower.
(2) people can easily cheat.

The major advantage of this approach is that it leaves the decision of what
works get made up to the market.

The other major way to address the market failure, which is the one Stallman
suggests, is that you do artificially make IP act like physical problem, and
so go ahead and let the market make and distribute copies without restriction,
and address the problem of creation by public funding.

This is arguably fair since almost everyone does consume music, movies, and
other forms of art. Essentially it is treated as a public good.

The advantage of that system is that consumers end up paying close to the
marginal cost for their entertainment (i.e., $0), which is the economically
"correct" price. Another advantage is that it does not rely on people obeying
a legal fiction.

The disadvantage is that if art is being treated as a public good is that you
(1) have to decide on the source of funding, (2) the funding level, and (3)
how to distribute the money.

For source of funding, the most sensible seems to be some kind of tax
specifically for this, probably tied to something that at least vaguely
correlates with art consumption.

I have no idea how one would go about determining the funding level.

For distribution, something based on popularity seems sensible. Note that
under this approach, all copying and sharing would be completely legal so
there would be no need to try to hide it, so it would be feasible to figure
out popularity by sampling network traffic. In fact, since it would be in the
interest of content creators to ensure accurate measurement of popularity, I
suspect that there would be big official free fast download services sponsored
by the content creators, with good search and recommendation features, and
most people would download through those rather than use P2P.

------
veeti
Welcome to the club, Germany. We've had this shit in Finland for ages.

~~~
frobozz
Germany has had it since 1965. The news is the massive increase, not the
existence of the tax.

------
tomkin
Problem I have with this is that it is incredibly short-sighted. So we know,
indefinitely, that our songs, movies and other media will exist on USB/CD/DVD
discs, right? Wrong. What about when we all start using anonymous, p2p cloud
storage? What about streaming pirated content to my iPhone from my Mac at
home? Or any of the countless other innovations that may pop up in the future?

------
lamby
A reliable "tell" that a source is attempting to manipulate you is when they
quote any percentage greater than 80%.

~~~
alan_cx
Well, I think you are 81% right...... ;)

------
aw3c2
terrible link bait by the techdirt junk site. flagged, see below for my
explanation.

it is not a piracy tax. Germans have a right to copy stuff for their close
friends. that's not piracy but a lawful right. that the fee is outrageous is
another issue.

~~~
zobzu
That's piracy tax. Other countries have this. It's called "fair use".

In general, and in fact I sort of believe it is also that way in Germany, not
a law that allow you to copy stuff to your close friends.

It allows you to make copies for _yourself_ (backups, etc), and to view/listen
to those copies or the original with your family. NOT giving or copying it to
them.

Anyway, since you're letting your family view/listen, etc. they lose money on
"fair use". Thus they made a tax so you pay for it.

And you know what? That's piracy tax with any name. So the site might be crap,
I don't know. Germany may or may not have this tax, I don't know.

I know some countries do. France certainly do. And calling it piracy tax is
insightful. Its there _because_ of the so-called piracy. It's just a way to
steal money really.

~~~
danieldk
In some countries (I don't know about Germany) it is not the same as 'fair
use'. E.g. in The Netherlands the result of these levies is that you can
_legally_ download music and movies from Usenet for personal use, without
purchasing an original copy. However, you are not allowed to upload music or
movies.

This was a direct translation of how the law worked before: I could not make a
copy of an album for you, but you could borrow it from me, make a copy, and
return the original to me.

~~~
crumblan
In the US it is not against the law (yet) to download but it is a copyright
violation to share.

------
gouranga
Can you just buy from another European country and import? German customs are
pretty rubbish at catching such things from my understanding. AFAIK you only
get screwed on retail purchases.

~~~
rmc
_Can you just buy from another European country and import?_

Yes that's one of the fundamental reasons for setting up the European Union. A
Single Market.

~~~
nickik
I really like the idea of the EU, a single market no more protectionism and
other simular idotic shit. In reallity the EU is just another layer of stupid
regulations and now we get protectionism and interventionsim on EU level too.

Im happy that Im not in the EU (Switzerland) but I belive only getting the
good stuff from the EU (open borders ...) will get harder and harder with the
EU becomming more like a country.

~~~
mtts
And the great thing is that your country, being entirely surrounded by EU
countries, has no choice but to implement all those "stupid regulations" as
well as it won't be able to do business with its neighbours otherwise.

~~~
nickik
Not sure why this is a great thing.

Yes it has to do that to some regard but it can not be forced to and we still
hold democratic control over the most importend of these things. Joining the
EU would be spitting on the democratic system that Switzerland has built up
over the last 200+ years.

~~~
freehunter
"Great thing" is sarcasm.

------
seclorum
This is a not-so-subtle way of saying "we own culture" by the elites who
'finance' the 'entertainment of the masses'.

Anyone who can get their bony fingers so far deeply entrenched into the fleshy
government/tax-/levy bureaucracy and demand "fruitful payoff" in the form of
public taxation is probably working for the Mob, not the Artists, and not
content Creators, in general.

Entertainment industry, ruled by the Mob? Big surprise.

------
dmatthewson
ARGGGGGGGG. As someone who doesn't pirate, I really resent having to pay money
to media companies just because they feel entitled to it.

I remember years ago there was a tax on cassette tapes, so every tape we made
and of our own band we had to pay Michael Jackson and Madonna for the
privilege. Completely absurd and infuriating.

------
kayoone
Why dont they also put taxes on bags, after all one could carry alot of usb
sticks or cds with it...

------
hef19898
What concerns me, beyond the broken system we have, in Germany taxes are here
to stay. So when this comes through it WILL stay like forever. And not even a
world war will get rid of it, we have taxes that survived two of them and we
still pay them...

------
linuxhansl
Great, since I then pre-paid my fine, I can use my memory stick to pirate to
my heart's content.

In fact, since I already paid for it, I will _want_ to use it for pirating,
otherwise I paid this money for nothing.

~~~
rplnt
It's not payment for pirating. The title (and article) is misleading. This is
for _legal_ music you are assumed to put there. It's basically the same
payment (to the same organization) as radios, concert organizers, and so on
have to pay. Royalty fee. It's still stupid though as sellers of the music
have to pay as well, so it is double "taxed" (at best).

------
hussong
The real problem IMHO is not how high the charges are, but how the money is
distributed back to content creators. Ask a German musician or writer how much
they get back from the system. Often, the answer is "zilch".

------
wazoox
France has a similarly ridiculous high tax on blank media. The tax level was
mostly reasonable when a blank CD used to cost 1 euro, but nowadays, it's a
large part of the price. Moronic.

------
carlob
Meh, I guess I'm fine with it, they probably just updated it to reflect higher
capacities of flash storage. I believe in Italy we have something of the order
of 10 cents per CD, so a little more than 10 times that for something that can
be rewritten and has a 100 the capacity doesn't seem like a 2000% hike
(terrible choice of units if you ask me, they could have said 20 times more).

I'd be willing to pay even more than that if some of it went to public
financing of cultural projects that have little commercial viability, such as
art films, public space art, preservation of traditional music…

~~~
VMG
Who is stopping you from financing cultural projects now? Why force me to do
the same?

~~~
carlob
Usual libertarian argument. Then you go on by saying the same of scientific
research, healthcare, education…

The reason I believe public funding is a superior option is that the process
that decides what is worthy of being financed is democratic (as in one vote
per person), while the libertarian argument of everyone does charity with
their disposable income is plutocratic (as in one vote per dollar).

------
fauigerzigerk
I wonder when we'll see the first copyright lawsuit go down in flames because
the defendent claims to have compensated the copyright owner through this tax
:-)

------
rsanchez1
So instead of adapting to music streaming, the German music industry has
developed a new business plan: demand compensation from the government for
"lost profits" due to piracy.

What is "lost profits" anyway? Is that like "jobs saved"?

I hope the RIAA isn't paying attention.

~~~
toyg
The RIAA is paying attention, but this would never fly in the Land of the
Free: it's a "social market economy" approach.

Personally, I'm thorn: if this would mean the MAFIAA boys drop their guns
forever, I'd be almost happy to have it. Unfortunately, they'd never do that,
they'd just keep gunning _on top_ of collecting their racket money.

~~~
_delirium
We already have a tax like this in the U.S. on blank CDs and cassettes, passed
in 1992. Despite the rhetoric, the U.S. is not really against "social market"
type policies in general. If I'm being cynical, my take is that socialism is
only unpopular when it might help anyone poor. :)

~~~
toyg
blank CDs are one thing, SSD memory quite another.

------
dakimov
It's very remarkable to see how that totally absurd law violating all
principles of justice is accepted by governments both in developed countries
such as the USA and Germany, and not so developed such as Russia. Does it mean
that governments around the world are equally ignorant and unprincipled,
regardless of a country's wealth, culture or democratic freedom?

------
kvnn
EDIT: I was wrong.

 _Your diatribes would be much more effective if they either had a bit more
research behind them or did not succumb to poe's law._ \- saulrh

Good critique, thanks.

\- <http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Poes_Law>

~~~
jsilence
German native speaker here.

Sadly the basic facts of the article are correct.

There is a levy on different media and also on machines capable of copying
content (yes, there is a levy on computers in Germany). The height of the levy
is negotiated with the producers of the product, represented by Bitcom, and
the respective "Verwertungsgesellschaft" which in this case is the ZPÜ.

The "Verwertungsgesellschaft" negotiating the levy for (paper) copying
machines would be the VG-Wort.

Negotiations for USB-Sticks failed, so the ZPÜ made a unilateral move and
simply set the new levy to said price.

Bitcom states in the original article (on heise.de), that one part of the
underlying law has not been properly respected, namely §54a, Absatz 4 which
stated that the levy has to have a sane relation to the price of the media.

They are expecting a lengthy lawsuit with the adverse effect that the
producers of sticks have to set aside some money for the case of losing. In
addition to that they expect the european market to become skewed since there
is no such levy in switzerland and other neighbouring countries where
consumers can easily order sticks.

~~~
jsilence
Personal comment:

Most of the people in Germany don't seem to be aware of the situation, simply
not knowing that there is such a levy. Most of them also don't even know that
they are allowed to make private copies (aka Privatkopie), and fall for the 'U
r all pirates' propaganda of the content industry.

Friends are often astonished when they joke about pirating while we swap music
and when I subsequently tell them, that what we are doing is absolutely legal.

Those tech savy of us who are aware about the situation are massively annoyed.
Basically because THEY are taking our money as compensation for the
Privatkopie while spreading propaganda that copying is illegal. WITH THE MONEY
WE GAVE THEM.

Head of the ministry of justice, Mrs Leutheuser-Schnarrenberger, recently made
a move and suggested a reform of the Urheberrecht and copyright in Germany
([http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Justizministerin-
fuer...](http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Justizministerin-fuer-mehr-
Nutzerfreiheiten-im-Urheberrecht-1588232.html))

While she is member of the dreaded neoliberal FDP, she is actually one of the
very few politicians acting in favour of the developing information society.
For example she is taking a stance against the EU data retention laws
(Vorratsdatenspeicherung).

PS: whishing the term "Privatkopie" would become part of the english spoken
world just like "Zeitgeist", "Gestalt" or "Kindergarten".

~~~
keithpeter
Good luck with all that, in the UK, 'format shifting' (i.e. ripping a CD to
mp3 to put it on your phone) is still a criminal offence, copyright act has
not been changed despite undertakings from both recent governments.

I'm quite interested in what happens in Germany with second hand computers.
Many computers end up in recycling or landfill when they could be used for
some further time. Do the small computer shops/people on ebay still have to
pay a levy? Is the levy a percentage of the asking price or a flat fee like
the original article points out is the case for media?

~~~
jsilence
AFAIK the levy on computers is only for the first retail, not on subsequent
second hand sales. It is a fixed rate for a category of products.

