MP3 Company Refuses to Pay Swedish Copyright Levy

praps writes "Swedish MP3 player manufacturer Jens is to be hauled before the courts for flatly refusing to pay a charge designed to compensate copyright owners whose music is copied to a different format for private use, reports news site The Local. Jens says the surcharge, administered by Copyswede, is unreasonable and that "it's not our problem that the record industry hasn't come up with its own solution". Apparently Apple doesn't pay it on their iPods either."

Comments

Go Jens!

[yotto]

I need some good earbuds, maybe I'll buy some from you.

To take Jens' side.

[Alsn]

The ridiculous thing about this whole deal is that the law specifically states that its supposed to be compensation for "private copies" which before this law was just as legal as it was after. The only difference is that all of a sudden makes of movable media(cds, casettes, dvds, etc etc) was supposed to pay extra to the copyright owners because they felt people should have to pay to be able to use their music how they wanted.

Why can't we let market forces rule here?

[confusion]

Look, if these crazy governments (US included) would stop butting in, the record labels that hold on to their current business models would go out of business, but some other, more creative model would come into being. Hell, one of the big record companies themselves might even be the innovator.

Jerry
http://www.cyvin.org/

Re:Why can't we let market forces rule here?

[Anita Coney]

Yeah, as some brilliant person once said, "P2P won't kill the music industry, only the current one."

Bravo that company

[mrRay720]

Imagine that - not wanting to pay money to a corrupt industry that wants payment from everybody both innocent and guilty, just in case thery do something wrong.

Imagine if the laws the media industry 'buy' were appplied to other products. Knife manufacturers would face life imprisonment (or the death penalty) incase someone buying one of their knives killed someone with it, Ford and Honda executives would be locked up on the off chance that one of their cars was used as a getaway car, and makers of mobile phones would face a free holiday in Gitmo because a nutter could use one of their phones to remotely detonate a bomb.

You go music industry, I love you and your purchased laws and taxes!!

Re:Bravo that company

[Jugalator]

Imagine that - not wanting to pay money to a corrupt industry that wants payment from everybody both innocent and guilty, just in case thery do something wrong.

This is actually not a piracy levy, but a privacy levy. It's a fee taken to compensate artists from the legal rights you have to make personal copies.

Here's the deal: Copyswede's Blank Tape Levy [english]

IMHO, that only makes it even more freaky. It's a legal right we have, and they seek compensation for that right, and the gov't blindly think they can do so? I don't understand how they can have legal support to do this. Note this is not about the gov't collecting levies, it's about a commercial organization. They call themselves a "co-operative economic association".

But regardless the intent, it's ridiculous to put a levy on... blank records... in my opinion. They have no clue what I do with them, which ones I use to backup work on, to send digital photos to my family on, etc. Am I supposed to pay for my own copyright here? Get rid of your hands on my work!

Re:Complete Bullshit

[cronius]

As stupid as it is, I would actually accept it if it means distributing copyrighted material would be legal. But they're getting it both ways (it's illegal, AND we're supposed to pay for those who don't follow the law, regardless what we do ourselves) and that's just stupid.

I'm talking from a consumers point of view, I can see why a company wouldn't like it either way.

Re:Stupid laws still apply, Jens

[sqlrob]

What they are doing, provided they are willing to suck up and deal with the damages under the law, is the essence of civil disobedience.

Re:You cannot tax illegal activity

[Bob3141592]

IANAL, but I thought you certainly could tax illegal activity. Isn't that what they got Al Capone for, tax evasion on the income from his illegal activities?

Re:Complete Bullshit

[Kadin2048]

No, you've got it turned around. You pay taxes so that there will be a police department there if your house gets broken into, a fire department if it catches on fire, an ambulance service if you fall down the stairs, etc. That is to say, you pay taxes because these are all things which you might one day have a need for, and when you need them, you really NEED them. Also they're arguably (and yes I am aware that this point could go either way) not things the free market would adequately provide.

You are paying for the service before you use it -- just like you'd pay for a tech support contract, or insurance, basically.

These copyright "taxes" are completely different in that they place the consumer in the role of the criminal, paying damages for a crime they haven't committed yet, under the assumption that they are either complicit or somehow involved in it. There's not any good natural or common law analogy that I can come up with for it, which makes me suspect that it's probably unreasonable.

Re:Finally!!

[shark72]

" At last, one real-world company that fights back to the MPAA/RIAA/Copyright mongers!"

Know thine enemy. Like similar national copyright collectives, Copyswede collects money on behalf of authors and performers. None goes to the RIAA, not even as an intermediary.

This is vitally important for everybody to understand if they subscribe to the general philosophy that artists are the good guys while record companies are the bad guys.