Organizations (Kopiosto, Gramex, Teosto and Tuotos) claim that the current situation in Finland, where stand-alone MP3 players, like Apple's iPod, carry a levy upto 15 euros ($19.22), is unfair as the phones that are marketed as "music phones" escape the levy fee.
Considering that world's largest mobile phone manufacturer, Nokia, is a Finnish company (and employs almost 25,000 people in Finland -- a country with a population of just over 5M), it would be interesting to see how this requirement is responded by the consumer electronics lobby organizations who have fought against the extremely draconian levy fee system of Finland for years. Then again, considering how the Finnish government handled the last year's copyright reform, it is quite likely that the recording industry will succeed.
In Finland, labels currently collect levy (a nice word for private taxation) for these items among others:
- blank CDR media - €0.20
- blank DVDR media - upto €1.21 (and yes, the money goes to the record labels not to movie studios..)
- blank VHS cassettes - €1.82 for 4h tape
- portable audio players - upto €15
- digital video players, digital set-top boxes, PVR devices, etc - upto €15
More information:
Teosto (in Finnish only)
Written by: Petteri Pyyny @ 20 Nov 2006 10:53
