How to claim the digital levy

Even though Intellectual Property legislation in Spain provides that all citizens have the right to private copying as long as it is for non-profit purposes, every time you buy a CD, a hard drive or any other type of storage media, you are paying the SGAE a fee that is supposed to offer authors “fair compensation” for private copying. The famous “CANÓN” or digital levy.

The thousands of Euros that we all pay between us are collected exclusively by the SGAE, acting under a legal mandate from the Ministry of Culture, in order to compensate for the royalties that authors and publishers will fail to receive as a result of the (legal) copies that we make. And they collect this money even if your are copying YOUR OWN photos, YOUR OWN documents, YOUR OWN audio files…

Take the CD with your material on it and proof of purchase to your nearest SGAE office and lodge a claim for the return of the part of the cost of the CD that corresponds to the digital levy.

You are entitled to recover this money. They can’t reject your claim
It’s possible: some people have already managed to get their money back!

The Returns of Culture

WE CREATE, WE DECIDE

The (D’)Evolution Summit was a civil society meeting to open the minds of the European Community Ministers of Culture, who had gathered in Barcelona for an Informal Meeting in the framework of the Spanish Presidency of the European Union.

On March 30 and 31 the Ministers of Culture of the 27 European Union member states brought to a close the European Forum for Cultural Industries.

Th€ir focu$ was cl€ar.

So was ours: /(D') EVOLUTION SUMMIT, The Returns of Culture./

Although we weren’t invited to the official event, the creative community and civil society organised three days of activities to show our proposed culture for the digital era: a model of culture that benefits everybody – citizens and creators – a model that stimulates creativity and not just profit, and, above all, one that does not attack the Internet.

We invited Ministers, participants attending the Forum of Cultural Industries, the media and anybody who wanted to come, to participate in the (D') Evolution Summit.