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by tassl 3731 days ago
Oh, at least thirds. Spain is even in worst situation; Google News closed Spain service[1] since they considered unacceptable to pay for providing links.

Spain has had a bunch of "interesting" laws for copyright protection. Like having to pay a tax for any HD, DVD (whatever thing you use to store stuff and per MB) as a preemptive pirate protection. And I think that other European countries shared this strategy[2].

[1] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/enrique-dans/google-news-leavi... [2] http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/digital-tax-opposed-sp...

2 comments

Oh, yeah, Sweden got that too. A "nice" organization called copyswede that tries to claim that all digital media is used for storing music, so we must pay a tax, per MB, for all storage media. The irony of it all, since Spotify, a Swedish company, we're not even storing music anymore.
There are various countries with that kind of tax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_copying_levy .Somehow Austria is missing on this List but I'am pretty sure they already have it ( http://futurezone.at/english/there-is-no-right-to-private-co... ).
Lots of countries, including the US, have a similar tax on certain blank media The tax collected by the govt, and distributed to content producers. What a racket.