Ludwigsvorstadt, Munich
All the (partially acta-induced) discussion about intellectual property and payments to artists have brought the copy center solution back into public awareness: In these copy centers without doubts a lot of intellectual property gets multiplied without proper licensing. Because it seemed inappropriate to criminalize this business (similarly to the introduction of the music cassette decades earlier), it was decided to introduce a fee on the copiers, depending on size and capacity. A similar mechanism is now favorized by some politicians to solve the problem of filesharing. Without doubt it would interfere less with privacy rights than the comprehensive spying on all internet connections, as it is done currently at least in France.
So, now this begs the question, what happens to the fee? Who gets it? Does the center make note of what’s being copied and send the proceeds to the original author? 🙂
Paul, the system here is a global one: fees are paid per machine, depending on its capacity, and distributed by an association, in which all authors and publishers are members. Payments to these are made according to the circulation of their work. The aim was to avoid a specific accounting system with its administrational overhead and its implications for privacy, similar to the setup for music cassettes, where hometaping was legalized and compensation for the artists was realized by fees on empty tapes.