“Private copying” tax on refurbished smartphones = organized gang racketeering

Let’s start by explaining what the private copying tax is for substantively latecomers. The latter, which is also called “remuneration” – it’s less unfair – is taken from the storage or recording media. It was created in the days of VHS tapes when movie lobbies were afraid of losing money on film recordings, but it continued on blank CDs, DVD-Rs, USB sticks and then discs. external drives and even the “cloud” ! If you can store a Celine Dion song or a Star Wars that you potentially haven’t paid for, you’re missing out even if your USB drive is just for storing Excel files. The money is paid to the cultural sector at 25%, but the rest goes into the pockets of “creators, producers, whose works are copied”. Booba, David Guetta, Jul, Florent Pagny or Jean-Jacques Goldman need it, it’s true.

Double trouble!

Smartphones are of course taxed, but since July 1, 2021, refurbished devices are also affected. While this booming market is of interest to more and more consumers worried about their carbon footprint, but also in order to save a lot of money on the purchase of a smartphone, the government has decided to tax this entire industry. This tax, introduced by the government, will drastically increase the price of refurbished mobile devices and will make them less attractive than new devices.

A cure worse than the disease…

If this tax only represents €10 including tax for a device with 64 GB of storage, the refurbished device will therefore be taxed twice in its lifetime. French market players who are already struggling to make margins are very impacted by this measure. Worse, the consumer will even be tempted to buy his reconditioned product outside of France where this “remuneration” does not exist. And by buying your product in Poland rather than in France, you have to add the carbon footprint of transport… It is also amusing to note that our dear leaders pretend to ignore that the habits of the French have changed in recent years. There are not many people left to download and burn an album or a film. Most consumers have Netflix or Spotify. And even when they “pirate”, it is more often illegal streams. P2P is so 2008… Do you know people who download movies via BitTorrent to transfer them to their refurbished Samsung? Apparently Roselyne, she knows some.

The fee #PrivateCopy is crucial and makes it possible to remunerate creators, but also to strongly support cultural activities in our territories.
Encouraging the purchase of refurbished products cannot be done to the detriment of culture! #LiveTheCulture

— Roselyne Bachelot (@R_Bachelot) May 27, 2021