this post was submitted on 19 Dec 2024
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ
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I don't know about your piracy tax specifically, but there's also a tax on any storage media, printers etc. in Germany.
The "Urheberrechtsabgabe" (copyright duty) is not about paying for pirate copies, but it's a compensation for the loss due to the right to a private copy. A private copy is e.g. a copy of a CD I own in case the original gets destroyed. It's explicitly not allowed to share them.
Sadly the right to a private copy gets canceled as soon as it's necessary to break a "working" copy protection. CD copy protection has been broken for decades, but it still counts as a "working" copy protection. Thus a private copy is practically not possible legally, but we still pay this tax on any storage media... I really hate the copyright lobby.
Sounds an awful lot like a piracy tax... We pay this tax on any device which can store bits, it's not just some storage mediums. If you buy a phone, you're paying this tax to a """non-profit""" org called CopyDan whose sole job is to make sure a few select fat cat copyright holders get paid. If I don't break their copyright, I still have to pay as if I did. Therefore, it's a piracy tax.
It's pretty similar. The difference is that it only exists for legal private copies, not for generally illegal piracy.
That's also the case in Germany (and likely most of Europe). The actual rate depends on the product category.