Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

We have this in Czechia, everyone is kinda expected to pirate even though distributing (seeding & hosting) copyrighted content is illegal.

The tariffs, collected on sale of media/copying devices, are roughly:

• HDDs/SSDs: $2 / unit + $1 / 250 GB
• USB drives, phones: $1 / 16 GB
• Portable audio/video players with built-in storage: 3 % of price
• Printers without scanners: ~3 % of price
• Copiers: ~6 % of price
• CD-R: $0.02
• CD-RW: $0.08
• DVD±R: $0.05
• DVD±RW/RAM, other optical RW media: $0.20
• DVD burner: IDK, likely several dollars
• Analog audio casette: $0.08/piece
• Analog video casette: $0.08 (or $0.06 if under 180 min)

Yeah, the fees are often 10 % or more of the price of an HDD. Moreover, the system does not alleviate charges for the crime of unauthorized distribution, and the fees are collected by a private agency (OSA) that keeps 30 % for “enforcement”, 30 % goes to artists and the rest goes to book publishers, music labels and movie studios. The agency also collects fees for broadcasting and playing music (including live performances).

Piracy is rampant, mostly via the site uloz.to. Every kid can use the site (advanced users can bypass rate limits or “stream” by playing a file that's being downloaded) but I would prefer a decentralized solution. A popular Czech torrent tracker has just been shut down, anyone know any alternatives on the clear or dark net?

Ah, hm, we have this in Germany, plus huge fees by lawyers hired by copyright holders when getting caught file sharing. Win Win

This is a very extraordinarily half-baked idea at best. I think that it shows promise, but the concept of centralizing all of the possible income for artists who are known to be very expressive about their views, political or otherwise, and not always pro government narrative. Seems like a very bad idea to say the least.

I quickly skimmed the video because I don't have 17 min to be talked at right now, but if I recall, this has been done in the past. He may have mentioned it though.

"Music" CD-R's had an additional tax that went to copyright holders. They were the same discs, just more expensive.

I was told by administratiin that a bit of my (and classmates) college tuition went to copyright holders to cover expected copyright use.

And there was a plan to tax ISP's but I think that one failed to launch.