The National Court in Spain has ruled that the so called “Digital Canon” is illegal. Oh, surprise.
For those unfamiliar with Spanish regulations, this canon is not exactly a tax, because it’s not collected by the government but by different right management associations. So the consequences of not paying it (ie. you can buy media in a different country, and that media would be canon free) are unclear. It’s not a tax, hence it’s not a legal offence not to pay it (although it’s really difficult to find a reseller in Spain that distributes ‘canon free’ media).
The canon it’s supposed to compensate the authors for revenue lost because of private copy (which is legal in Spain, and means that you have the right to make a copy for your own exclusive use of any copyrighted material you acquire legally). Since 2003 this canon increased the price of CD and DVD first, and later MP3 players, hard disks, CD/DVD writers, etc.
This has been very unfair to free software users, because it doesn’t matter if you’re using your media to make a private copy of copyrighted material or not. Or just think about the pictures of your last holiday trip. Yes, you’re going to pay the authors for it!
What National Court said is basically that the process for collecting and distributing the funds from the canon it’s not right, and thus the digital canon is illegal and must stop.
Now there’s the obvious question: if the canon was illegal, what happens with the collected money? The right management associations say no to refund back the money (which is around 100 Million € only for last year). Oh, oh! Double surprise!
