And in the Netherlands those used to make sense. As downloading copyrighted material was legal for personal use

https://mashable.com/2014/04/10/downloading-pirated-content-...

Introduce levy to cover for people copying stuff, then introduce copy protection and anti-circumvention laws so copying becomes illegal. Continue to collect levy. Ingenious.

I think the basis is that you're still allowed to make private copies of CDs/DVDs/etc pretty much throughout EU.

Not when you'd need to circumvent DRM, thanks to EU Copyright Directive Article 6.

In the Czech Republic you need to pay this levy on blank media (see point number 1 & 6 on https://www.mkcr.cz/frequently-asked-questions-953.html?lang...) to a shadowy state mandated cartel of "designated rightholders" where the money preaty much disappears from the face of the Earth.

AFAIK there is no way around it, even in professional environment - we build a couple hard drives for a an internal company server and this levy was clearly marked there.

Same thing for all the other extortion money they extract from music festivals, pubs, hotels, radio stations, etc. - they do use some of it to bribe the most prominent and vocal old school artists to basically do advertising for their cause but the rest safely hits their coffers.

This reminded me of the Russian/ROMS/AllOfMp3 saga. That was a service way ahead of its time... Even now it is difficult to find such a good catalogue of music in lossless format.

Some countries including the USA, for those who haven't bothered reading the link.

This is why decades ago you could buy blank CDR media designated for "music" at a slightly higher price. They are identical to "computer" CDRs, but the seller pays a fee to the copyright office.