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by Benji_San 2345 days ago
The "copying fees" on storage (this includes harddrives/SSDs, phones, CD/DVD/BD or pretty much any storage medium in some countries) is actually a fee for "private copying" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_copying_levy) not pirate copying. Historically these fees were introduces with cassettes as it was possible to obtain private copies by recording radio broadcasts and by copying a cassette. I suppose it did make sense 40 year ago as private copies of e.g. songs wasn't usual before cassettes.

The fucked up part is that these fees still exist today when it is generally not possible to easily create private copies due to DRM. I can only assume that politicians who signed of and keep supporting on these laws are either bribed or brain dead.

E.g. CopySwede(https://www.copyswede.se/in-english/undersida-in-english/the...) is the Swedish lobbying organization which collects and lobbies for the fees in Sweden.

1 comments

Nice explanation, thanks. Nevertheless some countries have just introduced these laws recently and there probably are more countries to follow.