EU Copyright Holders Cling To Old Levies, As New Ones Start To Appear On Cloud Storage

Levies on blank storage media are a relic of older times when copying was a new possibility for copyright works. You no longer needed an LP pressing plant, say, you could copy music in the comfort of your own home, first on analog cassette tapes, then later on digital media like CDs and MP3 players. At that time, it was easy to see each of those copies as somehow replacing purchases, and so the argument for levies was born: people should pay indirectly for the "lost" sales their copying caused. 

On Techdirt.