Finland has initial plans to move from levies specific to certain media/storage products to an annual fee. The fee would be collected as a part of TV licensing fee which is also moving from a specific "per tv-owning household" license to cover all citizens, regardless of their TV ownership or lack of it. So, in effect, the copyright institutions effectively have a way to tax people.
It will only amount to less than a handful of euros per year and generally it's more fair than the irrationally random levies (buying an external hard drive implies levy, buying an external harddrive case and a separate hard drive doesn't) but there are two problems.
First, the "tax" will undoubtedly increase every year. The copyright mafia has demonstrated their intention to adjust the levies accordingly to match an annual 10-15 million euros of income. So, now the "tax" might only be three euros. Later it will only be four euros, come on! Then only a fiver, come on, that doesn't hurt anyone! Then only ten euros, it won't make a difference... and so on.
Secondly, having paid the increasing fee (see first point) it's mostly undefined what you will get in return. By paying this fee—that is involuntarily taxed from your income—I think the common attitude will soon turn into "I've paid for it already, so I can at least decide to pirate some movies to get something back in return."
Neither the levies nor the annual fee aren't compensation for illegal copying, just private copying. It's just that the general public already perceives that private copying doesn't need to be compensated. For example, people don't generally take well the idea that after buying a cd they would need to pay again to make copy of it for their car player. Thus, a majority of people will inevitably attribute this forced copyright tax to an implied, unofficial license to pirate.
The legislation probably takes ten years to catch up with that. But I think it might be a good way. Personally, I would probably pay 20-30 euros annually to legally download content from PirateBay. The distribution of the collected money could be based on the popularity rank of Finnish artists and movies on PirateBay, instead of the arbitrary radio playing lists that they use currently.
The power of peer-to-peer would be worth paying for. The MAFIAA guys can handle the creation of the content, let the internet people handle the distribution. That way each party can do what they're good at.
It will only amount to less than a handful of euros per year and generally it's more fair than the irrationally random levies (buying an external hard drive implies levy, buying an external harddrive case and a separate hard drive doesn't) but there are two problems.
First, the "tax" will undoubtedly increase every year. The copyright mafia has demonstrated their intention to adjust the levies accordingly to match an annual 10-15 million euros of income. So, now the "tax" might only be three euros. Later it will only be four euros, come on! Then only a fiver, come on, that doesn't hurt anyone! Then only ten euros, it won't make a difference... and so on.
Secondly, having paid the increasing fee (see first point) it's mostly undefined what you will get in return. By paying this fee—that is involuntarily taxed from your income—I think the common attitude will soon turn into "I've paid for it already, so I can at least decide to pirate some movies to get something back in return."
Neither the levies nor the annual fee aren't compensation for illegal copying, just private copying. It's just that the general public already perceives that private copying doesn't need to be compensated. For example, people don't generally take well the idea that after buying a cd they would need to pay again to make copy of it for their car player. Thus, a majority of people will inevitably attribute this forced copyright tax to an implied, unofficial license to pirate.
The legislation probably takes ten years to catch up with that. But I think it might be a good way. Personally, I would probably pay 20-30 euros annually to legally download content from PirateBay. The distribution of the collected money could be based on the popularity rank of Finnish artists and movies on PirateBay, instead of the arbitrary radio playing lists that they use currently.
The power of peer-to-peer would be worth paying for. The MAFIAA guys can handle the creation of the content, let the internet people handle the distribution. That way each party can do what they're good at.