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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."
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.
Last year, 85 million kronor in cassette compensation was collected and redistributed by the copyright organisation Copyswede.
FYI, 85 million kronor is appx. 11 million U.S. dollars.Bradley Holt
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/
Jens is commonly known as being one of the few public figures in sweden standing up against the swedish equivalence of RIAA/MPAA, Antipiratbyrån ("The Antipiracy Bureau").
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.
Life is Reality
A statement from CopySwede: "As the law stands, people have the right to make copies for private use, so the copyright owners should be fairly compensated."
:-)
Isn't that what they pay for when they buy the music?
Or is he saying that Swedes only pay for the right to have a single copy of the music on the medium supplied, and must not transfer it to any other medium?
Does copying it in electronic form to stranded copper count?
Predictive text is shiv!
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.
You just can't say it more clearly than that.
If the activity is legal, there can be taxes imposed. One might argue "this isn't a tax." Okay, so technically, it's not, but it is in many respects. Further, somewhere along the line is an assumption of unlawful infringement by the users sponsored by the makers of media players. This 'legal' assumtion circumvents the free-world's notion of due process under law.
I have been an opponent of preemptive copyright infringement compensation since I first heard of it. It flies in the face of presumed innocence and due process that we, the people of the free democratic societies have always expected. The only "approriate" way for this to be legally established is for the **AA's to lawfully SUE all consumers in every country in a tremendous class-action suit against infringement activities. I'd love to see them try that too. They'd loose and people would more directly hate them for it.
The biggest problem with all of this is that the public at large is still unaware of how this affects them. So as long as the costs to consumers are hidden (by charging the media and hardware makers) consumers will pay the price on the label and move along as if nothing wrong has occured.
So people can discuss with some more information, the actual law is "Lag (1960:729) om upphovsrätt till litterära och konstnärliga verk" available (in Swedish, sorry 'bout that, I'll try to translate the relevant portion as a reply to this) here. The relevant paragraph is chapter 1, 26 k .
Has it ever occurred to you that God might be a committee?
--- Jubal Harshaw
Here's a site with thousands of pro bono lawyers, each one intimately aware of every subtle nuance of international copyright law. They'll be glad to help.
1. Inciting illegal music copying via hypothetical questions.
2. Inciting thought.
Ehm... It was not Piratbyrån, but Antipiratbyrån.
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.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Ok, what idiot modded this overrated? It is clearly informative.
Piratbyrån ("The pirate bureau") is an anti-copyright, non-profit organization. Antipiratbyrån ("The anti-pirate bureau") is the MPAA and BSA's face in Sweden. They do not represent the music industry, a common misconception.
Piratbyrån's name is a pun on Antipiratbyrån. Piratbyrån is also against software patents, and has often figured in Swedish TV.
The incident refered to by the Grandparent was in March. Antipiratbyrån made a raid on the Swedish ISP Bahnhof, which incidentally happened to be in the same building. Four servers were confiscated by the police, they were thought to contain copyrighted material. The disks were encrypted, so no luck there. Later it was revealed by a group of hackers that an employee of Antipiratbyrån had planted the material on the servers. FYI, we're talking a few hundred gigabytes. Email conversations between the employee and Antipiratbyrån were published on antipiratbyråns webpage, which was hacked.
Bahnhof later published a report (not available in English) about the incident, claiming that Bahnhof had nothing to do with it, and that Antipiratbyrån themselves were guilty.