Jens of Sweden Won't Pay the Blank Media Tax

[James Fee]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/09/16/swedish_levy/' target='_blank'>http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/09/16/swedish_levy/</a><br /><br /></div><i>"Like many other European countries, Sweden has a 'cassette compensation', which was designed to compensate copyright owners and applies to blank recording media. In 2004 85 million kroner in compensation was collected by Copyswede, an umbrella collecting society for coordinated negotiations and agreements in certain copyright areas. The law now also affects MP3 players. According to Nylander several foreign companies, including Apple, do not have to pay the surcharge. Copyswede is taking legal action only against his company an one other. Jens hasn't paid the surcharge for almost two years. The compensation should be part of the price of the songs, Nylander argues. Likely sanctions for Jens are unknown."</i><br /><br /><img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/jens_logo.jpg" /><br /><br />I don't begin to understand how the tax system works in Europe, but it seems like Jens might be out of luck here. Hopefully public opinion can sway the government of Sweden to change their wacky "blank media tax".

[Filip Norrgard]

The "cassette compensation" is basically a levy on all storage media that the government have put in effect after pressure from the record industry sometimes in the 80's (?). Anyways, the levy (or tax, if you will) is applied to the sales price (as well as the VAT after that) and makes everything that can store something, cost much more. This tax (depending on country) is applied to all media bought within that country no matter if it is for personal or buisiness use. Private customers usually have no chance of refunding that tax charge but businesses can get exemption if they can prove that it will be used strictly for backup purpouses only (or something like that).

Private customers can however avoid that tax by simply buying the storage media from within the EU but outside of their own country, as I have done: I bought a spindle of 50 DVD+Rs from a Finnish online store's warehouse in Tallin, Estonia and got the DVDs so much cheaper! The spindle from Estonia costed only 25€, half of what a 25 DVD+R spindle would have costed in Finland (about 52€)! That is saving a lot! :D

[Felix Torres]

In the US a similar tax applies to music-grade blank CDs...
...but *not* to data-grade CD-R's...

Guess which folks buy? ;-)
(In fact, it is almost impossible to find the music grade CD-R's anymore...)