Nadat Donner in de Tweede Kamer heeft aangegeven dat de heffing op MP3-spelers er voorlopig niet komt, bereidt de Europese Commissie een volgende slag toe. Eurocommissaris McGreevy heeft aangekondigd met een aanbeveling te komen over heffingen. Dat dit een negatief oordeel wordt voor heffingen mag wel blijken uit zijn meest recente toespraak.
“On-line content is increasingly sold by using digital rights management devices (DRMs) that protect the work being sold and often ensure direct payment by the consumer. Consumers download music on to portable devices in a protected format and, while doing so, pay for it. The 2001 Copyright Directive states that fair compensation must take account of the use of DRM. In practical terms, this should mean that as the use of DRMs increases, the use of levies should decrease. This does, however, not appear to be the case. This effectively means that consumers who use legitimate on-line services to download music against payment, pay twice.”
“I am also concerned that levies are being increasingly deployed on multi-function devices such as personal computers, hard disks and even printers. We are now carrying out an impact study and collecting empirical evidence on what needs to be done to give both the new technologies and their producers a fair deal in Europe. In the course of 2006, we will come forward with proposals to determine when and how the availability of DRM should trigger the phase-out of equipment levies.”
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