EU—Copyright

The court had accepted that, given the practical difficulties connected with such a system of fair compensation, it was open to the member states to establish a levy for the purposes of financing fair compensation chargeable not directly to the private persons concerned, but to those who might pass on the amount of that levy in the price charged for making reproduction equipment, devices and media available or in the price for the copying service supplied, the burden of that levy thus ultimately being borne by the private user who paid that price.

Further, it was apparent from Recital 31 in the preamble to Directive 2001/29 that the levy system introduced by the member state concerned had to safeguard a fair balance between the rights and interests of authors, who were the recipients of the fair compensation, on the one hand, and those of users of protected subject matter, on the other.