These levies are the compensation for the exception for private copy.

If this levy exists, we should recall first that it is because one of the basic principles of the rights of authors, performers and producers is that any use of their works or services deserves remuneration.

The great strength of the law of 1985 creating this levy is to take into account technological developments and their impact on French cultural modes of consumption.

In the middle of the 1960s, there was a rapid increase in broadcast media (television and radio). Consumer electronics also developed considerably, boosting people’s ability to record films and music: by 1964, the first analogue cassette tape recorders appeared, followed in 1976 by the first VHS video cassette recorders.

Analogue cassettes, both audio and video, then greatly facilitated private copy from these many sources.

Because technological developments no longer enable rights holders to control all the actual reproductions of their services, the law provides for their benefit a right to remuneration considered to be compensation for such reproduction (Art. L 311-1 CPI). This right to remuneration is to benefit authors and performers of works on phonograms and videograms, as well as the producers of such phonograms or videograms. This list was completed by the law of 17 July 2001, which also recognizes “authors and [...] publishers of works recorded on any other medium” as the beneficiaries of remuneration “for their reproduction made [for private copy purposes] on digital recording media” (provisions targeting in practice the authors and publishers of books, the press and visual works of art).

In order to find a balance between the public’s natural aspiration to have access to works and the need to preserve remuneration for creators, performers and producers, the law of 3 July 1985 creates new rights to remuneration.

More specifically, this is a lump-sum levy on black media, and memory storage devices or hard drives in equipment making it possible to make private copies of protected works: a specialized commission is entrusted by the law to define which media are concerned and set the amount of the levies, which varies with the type of media and their recording capacity (Art. L 311-4 CPI).

For reasons of convenience, the remuneration compensating copies made by the public is withheld at source, with manufacturers and importers of blank recording media. They, in turn, usually pass on the levy in their prices: consequently, consumers are the ones who end up paying for the copies they make.

This approach is quite logical: recording media and devices provided in the market by industrialists enable the public to make more copies of works of the mind and the public purchases these devices and media (representing a very large market) because they also have rich diversified cultural content and the possibility of copy it. Without music or videos, no portable players or recording devices would be sold, and quite certainly much fewer television sets, radios, hi-fi systems...

This is therefore quite natural for the industrialists to participate in financing the cultural industry, and more specifically, through private copy, the remuneration for artists and creators whose works help sell their equipment.

It should be noted that the adoption of the DADVSI law (law nº2006-961 of 1 August 2006) adapting the European Directive of 2001 on the harmonisation of certain aspects of copyright and related rights in the Information Society introduced something new in French law with the obligation from then on to take account in the remuneration level of the degree of use of the technological measures defined in Article L 331-5 and (...) their incidence on uses related to the private copy exception. There can be no remuneration for private copy acts that have already given rise to financial compensation.”