[tjoff]

Oh and on top of that we pay an extra tax (which goes to the artists) on casette tapes, CD-R's, DVD-R's, VHS tapes, etc. After all, we might record songs & movies on those mediums. And before you ask, no, despite us paying that tax, it's still not legal for us to do so.

Isn't that to compensate artists for the right to copy something for private use. At least that's how I believe it works in Sweden. Unfortunately we also have laws that forbids us to circumvent any form of DRM or copy protection and since nothing is sold without DRM today we are paying for something we can't legally do. And this is something that even extends to external harddrives, MP3-players and I believe smartphones as well (not sure on that though).

[orcadk]

That might be, but that begs the question, why? Why do we need to compensate the artists for our own private copying, for our own use? Once we buy their work, ought it not be ours to listen to, however we want?

[tjoff]

Private use includes, if I'm not mistaken, the right to copy it to close relatives. And for that I don't think that it's unreasonable to compensate the artist.

However this is now very obsolete and the current implementation is horrendous. But the idea (back in the day) wasn't that terrible.