In several countries customers are forced to pay a special tax on empty media (storage) with the intention of proceedings to be redistributed among the copyright owners.

Some of these countries are codified under the Roman law principle, ie whatever is not explicitly forbidden by law, is simply not forbidden (as opposed to common law).

In some countries downloading the published media (eg a film after the official release) is permitted.

And those who download, paid for it in the form of tax.

Directive 2001/29/EC for the EU only (Article 5).

Other countries rely in provisions of WCT, 1996 (Art 10) and WPPT, 1996 (Art 16)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_copying_levy has several countries listed, with examples/extent of these laws

I hope you support downloading books/films/TV shows/music by the customers who paid for this privilege.

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account42 5 days ago | parent [-]

TBH don't think those laws are conscionable because the money collected through those taxes is mainly paid to entrenched copyright cartels instead of being distributed to creators in a fair way.

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subscribed 5 days ago | parent [-]

Paying for media in iTunes store/Amazon Prime, streaming something off Netflix, buying a CD or even going to the cinema is also unfair to the creators.

Looks like the only ethical way to consume the music is to buy it off the creator's website and go to concerts, yes?

You are kind of moving the goalpost.

The comment I replied to was suggesting downloading is unethical because it leads to the loss of sale (which was countered by the study results in another comment).

I replied to it saying that in many countries citizens (residents really) pay special tax (levy) that is compensating for it, at least in the name.

They have compensated the creators in the easy and legal way for the media they now can legally download.

I used to live in one of these countries. I still purchased odd CDs, I was still going to the cinema, I was still buying books and going to concerts, but I also had a very extensive digital library of the media legally downloaded from the Internet.

Because I was taxed so I could do exactly that.

The later story? This is for the creators/copyright owners/lawmakers to argue.

	▲	account42 5 days ago \| parent [-]
		I'm not moving any goalposts, I'm simply stating that I don't like these laws because they are essentially a tax that gets used enrich an arbitrary subset of creators (and other people) that doesn't match their stated purpose. Personally I don't see any moral issue with copyright infringement with or without such laws.