SAA submit Spanish private copying complaint

The Society of Audiovisual Authors (SAA) today submitted a complaint to the European Commission against the recent adoption of new Spanish legislation on the private copying remuneration system. The new law puts an end to the levy based system which previously provided 115m€ remuneration for rightsholders and replaces it with 5m€ taken from the stretched state budget.

For years the private copying remuneration system has been falsely accused of being a tax.  In their never-ending quest to avoid being part of a scheme that pays fair remuneration to creators the ICT industries have convinced the Spanish government to turn it into a real tax, paid by all Spanish citizens whether they copy or not.

With this submission the SAA is supporting Spanish rightsholders organisations who submitted their own complaint on DATE.  The new legislation clearly fails to respect the 2001 Copyright Directive and European jurisprudence in this field by failing to link the remuneration to the act of private copying and by clearly failing to satisfactorily estimate the degree of harm suffered by rightsholders.

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Cécile Despringre,SAA Executive Director said: “The levy system has been removed from the Spanish legislation for a year now, yet there has been no reduction in the price of devices or blank media in Spain.  The whole legislative revision amounts to a 110m€ Christmas present for the ICT industries.”