Digital Environment has made us hard to distinguish an original work from its digital copies. Its digital copies are identical to the original work in terms of their quality. In this regard, legal regulation can hardly control distribution of the unau...
Digital Environment has made us hard to distinguish an original work from its digital copies. Its digital copies are identical to the original work in terms of their quality. In this regard, legal regulation can hardly control distribution of the unauthorized copies in digital environment. Also, private copying tariff will help copyright-related industry grow. Hence, most of EU member countries have adopted private copying levy
system. So did Japan. However, what kind of blank media and equipments for recording are subject to
private copying levy varies depending on each country's legal and economic environment. Germany is the first country in Europe which introduced private copying tariff system. German Copyright Act imposes private copying levy on manufacturers or importers, or on resellers in special circumstances. On the other hand, Japan allows collecting societies to collect private copying tariff from users of copyrighted works. But, in reality, private copying tariff has been imposed upon the manufacturers or importers of media or equipments for
recording. In conclusion, this Article emphasizes that private copying levy need to be imposed upon the manufacturers or importers of media or equipments for recordings than upon their users.