Comment by ErneX
In Spain every device you buy that has some kind of storage is taxed for piracy, the money goes to the local equivalent of the RIIA or book editors associations.
In Spain every device you buy that has some kind of storage is taxed for piracy, the money goes to the local equivalent of the RIIA or book editors associations.
Taxation has overhead. If they were to actually track everyone's use and intention on a case-by-case basis, everything would get massively more expensive, just to offset the amount of extra bureaucracy needed to handle this.
It's the same idea as to why reducing the amount of means-testing and other hoops to jump to get social benefits would save taxpayers money - sure, more people who don't need benefits would get them, but that's more than offset by what would be saved by eliminating the workload of (and government jobs dedicated to) gate-keeping those benefits.
In France it’s called the SACEM and I know a few bands that are affiliated to this association because it’s pretty much mandatory if you want to sell anything.
Those bands are not famous but despite making sales, they only get a few bucks every year, or it’s the SACEM saying "we forgot to send you the check lol, no biggies." It’s the biggest legal mafia I can think of right now.
Most of the money collected is sent to huge artists (like what Spotify is doing), there is nothing indie about it even if they pretend it’s for the glory of French music.
Same in France where the money goes to the local RIAA. Even if it’s a hard drive meant for Linux, or to store public domain stuff. It’s basically a mafia that gets our money despite copying for backup purposes being completely legal.