Germany extorts royalty payments from Fujitsu-Siemens

CNet is reporting that Fujitsu-Siemens to pay per-machine fee for piracy. Jake thinks they should move to the US. Actually similar fees exist in the US for VCR's, tape recorders, blank tapes and audio CD recorders and blank audio CD's (CD-R's that are marked as Audio CD-R's). When you buy one of those items a small fee is paid to the RIAA/MPAA because you may use it to copy a property they represent. It isn't so much a piracy fee as a copy royalty fee.

When you use something that this fee was paid on to make a personal-use copy then you actually paid a license to do so, and there for you are perfectly legal. During the Napster case it was pointed out that no royalty fee was paid for computers to the RIAA.

When RIO introduced the first portable MP3 player the RIAA tried to extort a royalty fee from them as well. That didn't happen though. It is interesting how they distinguish digital copies from analog copies at a legal level.