As in many other countries around the world, downloading music and movies is hugely popular in the Netherlands.

A massive 30% of the population is said to do so.

Presently, the Dutch see downloading and copying movies and music for personal use as “fair use” and not punishable by law.

In return, copyright holders are compensated through a “piracy levy” on blank media such as CDr’s and writable DVDs.

Starting next year, this levy will also apply to other media storage devices such as tablets, smartphones, USB-drives, PCs and Laptops

iPod’s to be levied

The money that’s collected, up to 5 euro per device, will be distributed to copyright holders.

The good news is that the levies on cassettes, minidiscs and video tapes have been abolished, because these are rarely used anymore.

An overview of the levied media and the applicable rates is available below.

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Cd-R

€ 0,03

DVD

€ 0,03

External Hard Drive

€ 1,00

Audio-/Video player

< 2 Gb € 1,00 > 2 Gb € 2,00

HDD Recorder/Settopbox

< 160 Gb € 2,50 > 160 Gb € 5,00

Phone with Mp3-player/Smartphone

< 16 Gb € 2,50 ? 16 Gb € 5,00 Tablet < 8 Gb € 2,50 > 8 Gb € 5,00

PC/Laptop

€ 5,00