MacBook Neo costs more in Portugal due to copyright levy for piracy compensation taxes — storage costs extra in multiple countries, thanks to draconian laws that pre-punish buyers

Portugal and its 11 million people are a tiny market by most standards, so it's not often that the country comes up in tech news. There are some exceptions, though, like when tech enthusiast @levelsio noticed a line item in an order for a MacBook Neo, displaying a "copyright fee" of 2.05€ that adds to the final cost. As the token Portuguese at TH, my reaction to their reaction is "oh, my sweet summer child."

Before you grab your pitchfork and point it in Captain Cook's general direction, know it's not Apple's fault, so stay awhile and listen. The tax in question targets any sort of digital recording medium in Portugal, harkening back to the internet boom of 1998, when easy media and software piracy were all over the news. Lobbying from the record and movie/TV industries was particularly fervent, reaching the ears of lawmakers worldwide, who imposed laws intent on compensating or protecting rightsholders.

These laws encroached in multiple countries, including Germany, Belgium, Russia, Sweden, and, of course, the USA, with the DMCA. Portugal's case is hardly unique, but it can be considered one of the most egregious, both numerically and in practical application. The tax targets "private copies," as copying original media between persons is legal, albeit under a narrow legal scope.

Portuguese law 62/98, revised by law 49/2015, covers all digital and even analog media and equipment you can think of, including even cameras, printers, and scanners. Many devices pay a flat fee (up to a sweet 20€ for a high-speed laser copier), while computing gear pays per gigabyte of storage. Taxes range from 0.004€/GB for computers and external drives to 0.12€/GB for phones and tablets, with a cap of 7.5€. Phones and tablets get 0.12€/GB, while consoles pay 0.20€/GB, up to a maximum of 15€.

The base rates are arguably exorbitant in an economy where the median wage is just over 1,000€ (around the 10th lowest in the EU), all while its world-leading housing crisis has monthly mortgages and rents exceeding said wages across most of the country. With storage capacities doubling every few years — at least until AI arrived — the effective rates grew exponentially, adding 15€ to most every phone, tablet, and console, and 7.5€ to hard drives. Needless to say, techies in the know routinely order their hard drives and other storage from neighbor countries, namely but not only Spain.

This law and its counterparts in other countries have long received criticism, and contemporary complaints point out that income from this tax went from 600,000€ in 2014 up to 36 million euros in 2022, a 60x rise for the period. The rise of streaming services across the last decade means a minor percentage of users actually copy media to begin with, too.

The situation could be more palatable if Portuguese artists were richly compensated, but that's not the case unless you're a major act. The SPA (Portuguese Authors' Society) acts as a gatekeeper for royalty collection and takes a cut, plus it charges its own costs, particularly but not only for physical media.

The costs can amount to hundreds of euros, meaning that in the case of music, the vast swath of bands don't even bother registering, as they'd never recoup the cost. SPA charges mandatory licensing fees from bars, restaurants, discos, and venues of all types, rubbing salt on the wound.

Even though the law targets "private copies," very few businesses can claim exemptions when buying storage, under the argument that the seller cannot predict that said storage won't be used for piracy.

Furthermore, some detractors argue these laws are tantamount to Minority Report pre-crime control, punishing crimes not committed. Some even say they feel morally innocent for piracy, as the price is already paid. Then there's the matter that person-to-person copying of original media isn't even that frequent in the first place.

Finland went as far as completely abolishing its copyright tax in 2015, and there's an EU-wide call for reforming these laws, but for the time being, they're mostly staying in place. With the rise of AI, it's not like anyone's going to buy hard drives or SSDs anytime soon, anyway.

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