The left generally supports culture, actors, theatre, writers, Spanish made movies. They see piracy as a threat to the earnings of those people.
The right has historically cut any sorts of subsidies to the "culture creators", but they see piracy as a threat to the publishing, TV (...) industries.

They both support SGAE, which translates cleanly to the General Society of Authors and Editors, who protects their interests by charging fees to everyone who dares look at copyrighted work.

You own a bar and you play TV, Radio, or Spotify? You have to pay SGAE.
You buy a computer, part of the money goes to SGAE.
You buy a blank CD, DVD, Hard Drive, you pay SGAE (because they know you will put copyrighted material there, and if you don't, well, fuck you)

It's a fucked up system and I don't know if things have changed in the past few years as I don't live in Spain anymore. But it honestly feels like a prosecution of the population who is so evil and trying to destroy Spanish Culture.

[–] Freeman@feddit.de 5 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Tbh switzerland has a similar system to the SGAE, where there is a "hidden tax" on all devices that you can load with data. And in turn the downloading of media (with the exclusion of computerprograms and games) is legal. Only the upload of copyrighted material is forbidden.

Not a bad system imo, the tax is so small that you dont really notice it so its a pretty consumer-friendly and piracy-friendly solution. Altho I assume the swiss government gets away with it because it would be too expensive to lobby/legal for a copyrightsholder-favoured system compared with the small amount of people (let alone pirate) who live here.

[–] sneezycat@sopuli.xyz 6 points 8 months ago

That's different, we also have a "canon digital" which means you pay an extra tax on all copying and storing devices. But that has nothing to do with the SGAE, which is a corrupt organization that funnels money to their artist list, instead of giving it to the actual artists that are being played.

[–] hanrahan@slrpnk.net 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I'd actually agree with it IF they also didn't bother harassing piracy. So fuck 'em until then.

[–] Jrockwar@feddit.uk 6 points 8 months ago

Yeah, true. Charging a tax on downloaded copyrighted material can be kinda okay if you don't actively chase it. It's not right to charge people a penalty for doing something but then prevent them from doing it. You can't have it both ways, if it's not right you can chase it, but don't make me pay for doing something I'm not allowed to do! That would be like having to preemptively pay traffic fines before you actually drive over the speed limit, just in case.

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