Dutch Supreme Court Agrees To Let Rights Group Collect Back 'You Must Be A Pirate' Taxes On Mp3 Players And Hard Drives
Its press release doesn't state specifically why its stable of artists are "owed" a cut of every storage device sold, but the word "entitled" is deployed.
Via Techdirt:
For years, Dutch natives have purchased hard drives and mp3 players solely for the purpose of loading them up with purloined mp3s -- or so a recent Dutch Supreme Court decision would have you believe. NORMA, a Dutch collection society, just won its battle against untaxed hardware, which will result in the collection of unpaid "you must be a pirate" taxes being awarded to it, dating back to 2007.
The original "you must be a pirate" tax was levied against blank CDs and DVDs, with those rates being frozen in 2006. NORMA claimed this put the government in breach of the "Copyright Directive," beca...