…but bids to clear up copyright confusion

In two weeks’ time EU Internal Market Commissioner Charlie McCreevy will try to sort out the muddle that the Union’s 25 systems of copyright levies has become.

Around 20 member states impose levies on products like cassette tapes, CDs and DVDs and even MP3 players like Apple’s iPods to compensate rights-holders for home copying.

But the rules vary enormously from country to country both in the size of the levy and what products are covered by it. This makes it more difficult for comp-anies like Hewlett Packard and Apple to sell their products across the EU’s market because of a lack of transparency and predict-ability about what rates of levy will be levied on what products in which member state. McCreevy wants to bring some transparency to the situation.

The plan is for the Commission to present a recommendation on 20 December which would require member states to provide details of their national schemes. The Commission will then assess whether they constitute barriers to doing business across the single market. But McCreevy’s officials insist that he is not planning to get rid of the levies or harmonise different national systems on a single model. The Commission is nevertheless keen to ensure that, where the interests of rights-holders are increas-ingly defended through copy protection mechanisms like Digital Rights Management (DRMs) tools, consumers are not asked to pay twice in the form of levies. In the 1980s the pro-levy music industry used to warn: "Home Taping is Killing Music." History has proved the alarmists wrong. But taxing copying for private purposes could have the same effect.

In two weeks’ time EU Internal Market Commissioner Charlie McCreevy will try to sort out the muddle that the Union’s 25 systems of copyright levies has become.