Blank Media

A private copying levy (also known as blank media tax or levy) is a government-mandated scheme in which a special tax or levy (additional to any general sales tax) is charged on purchases of recordable media. more...

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Such taxes are in place in various countries and the income is typically allocated to the developers of "content". (A distinction is sometimes made between "tax" and "levy" based on the recipient of the accumulated funds; taxes are received by a government, while levies are received by a private body, such as a copyright collective.)

Such a tax may be linked to a corresponding relaxation of copyright law, by permitting the recording of copyrighted works on media for which the tax has been paid. It may operate in principle as a system of collectivisation, partially replacing a property approach of sale of individual units.

A difficulty that immediately arises is the practical impossibility of devising a mechanism for distributing the proceeds to copyright holders that is considered "fair" by all copyright holders. Implemented systems are typically restricted to music and may distribute the proceeds proportionally to a measurement of sales of CDs in music shops or amount of air-play on radio or the like. This will ignore other distribution channels such as the Internet. Fairer methods would arguably involve extensive sampling of purchasers to determine actual recording behaviour, or alternatively paying all musicians at a simple flat-rate (the preferred method will depend on ones political views).

An implementation question that arises is whether the tax applies to any type of copyrighted work or is restricted to a limited field such as music. If it is restricted then the issue arises of how to collect the tax on media which can also be used for other purposes. The options include:

Collecting the tax on all media, regardless of the end use, and ignoring the injustice to purchasers with non-covered uses; Allowing taxed and untaxed media to be sold, but with only the taxed media providing the copyright-relaxation benefits.; Collecting the tax on all media but allowing purchasers to claim a refund for media applied to non-covered uses.;

Examples of countries operating such schemes:

Australia

Australia does not have a private copying levy. Although legislation to create one was passed in 1989, it was declared unconstitutional in Australian Tape Manufacturers Association Ltd v Commonwealth.

Canada

A blank media levy was introduced in Canada in 1997, by the addition of Part VIII, "Private Copying", to the Canadian Copyright Act. The power to set rates and distribute the returns is vested in the Copyright Board of Canada. The Copyright Board has handed the task of distributing the funds to the Canadian Private Copying Collective, which is a private organisation. The Copyright Board has retained the task of setting the rate of the levy.

Read more at Wikipedia.org