The fee for private copying already had a certain difficulty in being accepted by different manufacturers in the world of electronic consumer products, but its application to multimedia mobile phones seems even more subject to tensions between the government, terminal manufacturers and operators. After an initial appeal of Siamese (union industries electronic audiovisual material) against the decision of the Commission said Albs taxing certain multimedia mobile phones is now Afom (French association for mobile operators) who actually even. His goal? To avoid that fee, which applies from 1 May 2008 and an amount of about ten euros depending on the memory capacity of mobile phones, and extends more directly impact the purchasing power of consumers.
“The action of the intervention Afom before the Council of State relies on the judgment, July 11, 2008, by the State Council, which cancels the decision No. 7 of 20 July 2006 the Commission Albis on memories and hard drives and portable devices exhibition dedicated to digital recording. This ruling Council of State invalidates the calculation method adopted by the Commission and it has kept in its subsequent decisions, and in particular for the taxation of multimedia mobile phones, “said the association in a press release.
If Afom “considers as legitimate fair compensation for having rights,” she said nevertheless that the framework in which the tax on private copying has been decided is not conducive to an application on the mobile. Indeed, no prior study has been conducted to determine whether the mobinautes actually use the internal memos mobile market to store works protected by copyright, this induces fixing an amount of compensation “manifestly excessive and out of proportion with the reality of the injury suffered. ” As a result, Afom calls for the establishment of a Joint Commission with “a fair system of governance, transparent and legitimate.”