A little bit of extra information in this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36756675
In Sweden it's legal. "Copying for private use" is excempt, and "private use" of such copy includes in the law's own words "family and one's closest friends". Literature is treated differently, allowing only partial copying instead of the complete print.
I would be surprised if this wasn't harmonized across the Nordics, like most laws here are.
In Sweden it is not allowed.
Edit: to be clear:
In Switzerland you can download movies legally without the consent of the copyright holder. In Sweden it is illegal.
https://www.svt.se/kultur/rattsexperten-det-far-du-gora-pa-i....
Actual government-issued writs (as opposed to Googled third-party summaries):
https://www.regeringen.se/rattsliga-dokument/statens-offentliga-utredningar/2022/04/sou-202220/
https://rkrattsbaser.gov.se/sfst?bet=1960:729Please cite what exception to upphovsrättslagen that gives me the legal right to download movies online directly because I could not find the exception for personal use in the 10s of pages of law text you posted.
What you ask for is right at the start of the document in the second link.
Verket görs tillgängligt för allmänheten i följande fall:
1. När verket överförs till allmänheten. Detta sker när verket
på trådbunden eller trådlös väg görs tillgängligt för
allmänheten från en annan plats än den där allmänheten kan ta
del av verket. Överföring till allmänheten innefattar
överföring som sker på ett sådant sätt att enskilda kan få
tillgång till verket från en plats och vid en tidpunkt som de
själva väljer.
...
Framställning av exemplar för privat bruk
12 § Var och en får för privat bruk framställa ett eller några
få exemplar av offentliggjorda verk. Såvitt gäller litterära
verk i skriftlig form får exemplarframställningen dock endast
avse begränsade delar av verk eller sådana verk av begränsat
omfång. Exemplaren får inte användas för andra ändamål än
privat bruk.
The topic is piracy, not right clicking and downloading from your browser.
Do you know whether it's the organisation representing the artists (Coda here in Denmark) or the labels/movie studios that end up being the beneficiaries of the tax?
Because you didn't pay for the content.
Assuming it's analogous to the Dutch law, the tax compensates lost income from you being able to store publicly broadcast copyrighted materials, such as music on the radio or movies shown on TV. That's why it is taxed on storage devices and varies per device type.
You haven't gotten a license on every piece of music, software, and movie in existence. That would be great lol, I'd sign up for that tax. Essentially, that's what Netflix was for movies until Disney etc. decided they wanted not to participate and now we wonder why piracy hasn't died
This money, instead, goes to copyright holders. The amount is set to cover minor household use, like copying from a friend or a broadcast. It's not to absolve you from copyright law as an individual altogether and make you never have to pay for a movie in your life
If that's what you want, parliament is the assembly you will want to talk to, but I'm afraid that they're bound by international treaties and, even if not, the height of the tax that absolves you of all copyright ever would be more than you're willing to pay
I'm just explaining how the law works in my understanding (and, interestingly, not getting any upvotes for it. Usually accurate comments are upvoted but then, usually, people don't disagree with the law. People don't like this messenger!), not saying I agree with it
In some sense, this is a rent extracted by large IP holders, and consumers are getting the short end of the deal just as much as the artists. But arguably it's also a bureaucracy-minimizing and thus cost-minimizing approach at country scale: the alternative to a flat fee paid by some amount of commercial entities (and passed onto buyers through prices of hardware), would likely be dealing with individual-level enforcement, lawsuits targeting individuals and/or some other high-maintenance mess, all ultimately paid for by the taxpayer anyway.
I'm in France and you do actually pay for it through this tax since all the income goes to a private company like the RIAA.
Something I've never done and will probably never do. I also don't know of anyone who ever has. The fee should completely go away in the age of streaming services, but I doubt rights holders agree.
All this to say it was normalized in the US. I don't think it is stigmatized even today. More like we had about a decade of streaming services actually providing good value. But now the product managers and UX designers have their hooks so deep in it that it's becoming unusable.
The "upside" to this is that the surrounding laws allow us to make private copies for our own private use.
Those fees are here just to compensate the fact that you COULD copy your legally owned content and that it COULD represent a loss of opportunity for the rights holders mafia (because that’s what they are). Oh, and that compensation is calculated by an organization representative of … the rights holders.
Why the hell would I pay a fee for something I might do? I mean, what? How is that a thing?
My car can go 140mph. Does that mean I should be in jail for speeding?
And now there is an intense lobbying not to change things.
We can argue whether that's fair and appropriate, and I suspect we share an opinion there, but saying that never paying any artist in the world is fine because your local copyright authority was paid... that's quite dubious
A lot of what is being downloaded has already been broadcasted.
I suspect it'll amount to at least 50€/month (multiply by how many storage devices you buy on average per month) if the tax were supposed to cover all music and movies ever made, let alone software and other copyrighted works
Has an individual in Sweden ever been taken to court over sharing movies with others online? How did that go? I recall the pirate bay's domain was taken at some point and the hosting raided, despite not even hosting any copyrighted content but rather facilitating copyright infringement for the masses, so I presume copyright for individuals is still a thing there
Yes, a handful of times. It almost always ends bad for the pirate, because sharing like that is not private copying for private use.
I still buy albums on Bandcamp because they deserve it, but the rest is free as I already paid for it without my consent.