Levies are a way of compensating copyrights holders for the fact that people copy music for non-commercial purposes in their homes, a phenomenon known as “private copying.” For reasons I’ll discuss in a minute, licensing or preventing private copying is problematic. So instead of allowing copyrights holders to extract licence fees from actual private copiers, some countries authorize a tax on blank media and/or recording devices to generate compensatory revenues. As the internet and p2p are transforming private copying into public sharing, many commentators have advocated a greater role for levies.
The levitation of copyright can be a heavy topic. I want to offer a little grounding on one aspect of the debate—the relationship between privacy and private copying levies. Private copying has never been a purely private activity. Decades ago people were making mixed tapes for their friends, families and sweethearts. Still, privacy issues are deeply entwined with levies. Concerns about privacy are among the primary reasons for replacing current copyright laws, digital locks, end user licenses and litigation practices with broader levy schemes. But levies are not a privacy panacea. They could create an equally troubling set of privacy-related problems.
It is often believed that levies were simply a response to the practical difficulty of preventing or licensing private copying. Simple, cheap and popular home audio recording equipment made private copying impossible to prevent. Transaction and enforcement costs made private copying impossible to license. Moreover, laws were often ambiguous about whether private copying should or could be controlled. Policymakers have addressed these problems by expressly legalizing private copying and generating revenues to compensate copyrights holders by allowing them to tax blank media and/or recording devices.
In fact, however, policymakers were concerned not just with the interests of copyright holders but also with the privacy rights of private copiers. A copyright does not entitle its holder to control all possible uses of a work. Reading books, watching movies, viewing artwork or listening to music are not things that copyrights holders may legally prohibit, especially when these activities take place in private. Reproducing works for private non-commercial purposes is allowable on similar grounds.
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- CRIA and Private Copying
- French Court – Private Copying is Not a Right
- Did the RIAA Already Lose? In Canada?
- Canadian File Sharing Legal Eh?
- European Artists Defend Copyright Fees
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