Thanks to the amendment to the regulation on reprographic fees, creators will receive PLN 150-200 million annually, Deputy Minister of Culture and National Heritage Maciej Wróbel told PAP. The Ministry of Culture wants the fee to also cover smartphones, tablets, and televisions. The ministry emphasizes that it will not affect consumers, but artists will benefit.
The reprographic levy (also known as “clean media”) is a compensation mechanism that has existed in Polish law since 1994. Despite technological changes, the regulations have not been updated since 2008. This fee is collected from manufacturers and importers of devices and media that allow for personal copying of works. Thanks to this fee, creators receive “compensation” for the private reproduction of their works by Poles.
The current catalog includes an outdated list of devices, such as cassette tapes and VHS tapes, that no longer play such a significant role. It also lacks commonly used devices, such as smartphones, which makes the system ineffective . Therefore, on July 23, the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage launched public consultations on the amendment to the regulation on reprographic fees. The consultations will last 30 days.
“The reprographic fee is a corporate social responsibility. Part of the political scene, due to its relationships with corporations, is trying to push the narrative of shifting responsibility onto consumers. This is absurd, justifying and legitimizing actions that are not covered by the regulation,” Maciej Wróbel, Secretary of State at the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, told PAP.
He stressed that “the list of devices included in the regulation has not been updated for 17 years.”
“It includes cassette tapes and VHS tapes, but not the devices we use every day. The fee for blank media is a key element of a sustainable copyright protection system in the digital age. Thanks to it, we can use works for our own use without additional fees – this is standard in all developed societies. What we are introducing is a simplification of the system and a more realistic fee – for new devices, it's 1% of the production value, and for others, we've reduced it to a maximum of 2%. Thanks to the proposed amendment, creators will receive PLN 150-200 million each year, instead of PLN 35.8 million as before, ” he emphasized.
The Ministry of Culture and National Heritage reported that “with the global average selling price of a smartphone at PLN 1,800, 1% of the one-time reprographic fee is worth PLN 18 – less than the average value of a monthly subscription to streaming services.”
The amendment to the regulation introduces a single table specifying the list of devices and media subject to the fee. The number of items subject to the fee will be reduced from the current 65 to 19. No fees are expected for analog devices and media, except for tape recorders and VCRs, as well as other devices that are no longer available on the market or whose use is becoming increasingly less important (tower systems, radios, fax machines).
The fees for tape recorders and video recorders are maintained, at a symbolic rate of 0.01%, solely for legislative reasons, i.e. because both categories of devices are expressly mentioned in the Act as those that should be subject to fees.
The key new additions to the table are mobile phones, tablets, and computers. In the case of the first two categories, due to the operating system and application software taking up a significant portion of internal memory, the fees will only apply to devices with more than 32 GB of memory.
Televisions and TV decoders with built-in memory or external recording capabilities will also be a significant item. Currently, only televisions with VCRs, hard drives, and DVD recorders are subject to the fee. A flat fee of 1% of the selling price will apply to all items.
There will also be fees for portable audio and audio-video players with built-in memory or external recording capabilities, as well as portable devices for recording audio or video onto optical discs – CDs, DVDs, and Blue-ray discs . A flat rate of 1% of the selling price will also apply.
The hard drive fee will remain unchanged at 1%, while the fee for memory cards will be increased from 0.47% to 1%. This means that all media currently in common use will be subject to a uniform 1% rate.
The levies on CDs, DVDs and Blue-Ray discs will be maintained, with these categories being consolidated to 2 items from the current 10, and the levy rate will generally be reduced to 2% from the current 1.72-3%.
The fee for copiers is being reduced from 3% to 2%, while scanners are now grouped under one heading and all are subject to a lower rate of 2%. The rate for printers will remain unchanged at 1.5%. The rate for A3 and A4 paper will be reduced from the current 1.25% to 0.75%, reflecting the growing importance of digital copying and the consumption of electronic content.
The Ministry of Culture and National Heritage wants to introduce a uniform fee for multifunctional devices that include a scanner or copier, reduced from the current 2.8–3% to 2%. The fee for large-format devices will remain unchanged – 1%, but not more than PLN 100.
The impact assessment states that the amendment will cover 258 entities (manufacturers and importers of devices subject to the fees and related blank media). (PAP)
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