Last week, the Estonian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, along with the Estonian Traders Association, the Estonian E-Commerce Association and the Estonian Association of Information Technology and Telecommunications, sent a letter to the Ministry of Justice arguing that raising the private copying or so-called cassette levy — the blank media levy paid on every device capable of recording — is unreasonable.

At present, manufacturers and importers must pay a fee of €3.50 for every laptop, tablet, desktop computer and smartphone, €4 for televisions with recording functionality, €3 for hard drives and MP3 players, €0.50 for memory cards and USB drives, and €0.03 for blank CDs.

Under the proposed changes, the fee would rise to €6 for every smartphone, €4 for computers, €4.50 for televisions and €3.50 for external hard drives. The remaining rates would stay the same.

The business organizations said in the letter that while authors should receive fair compensation because their work may legally be reproduced for personal use, the compensation system must also be fair to the market.

"Raising the rates is neither fair nor justified toward the market or consumers because surveys on private copying habits clearly show that people are making fewer and fewer copies of music and audiovisual works," they wrote.

The letter said the increase cannot be justified by changes in the consumer price index, since the decline in the share of people copying music and audiovisual works has been of a similar magnitude to the rise in the CPI.

According to the business groups, the new rates would primarily affect honest market participants because oversight of the levy on electronic devices is insufficient and online platforms selling devices to Estonia from abroad do not pay the additional fee.

The letter also revealed that the business organizations have been seeking a meeting with the ministry since April 14, but have yet to receive a response.

Authors' Society after even higher rates

According to Mati Kaalep, head of the Estonian Authors' Society, the blank media levy should be increased — and by far more than is currently planned.

"At the moment, the plan is only to raise the smartphone portion, but the fees for tablets and laptops should also be increased more substantially. There are several reasons for this, ranging from the rise in the cost of living to changes in consumption habits," Kaalep said, adding that studies also support the move.

Kaalep rejected claims that raising the fees would create an unfair competitive advantage for foreign companies operating online.

"If you look at the overall volume of e-commerce and compare it with the share made up by consumer electronics and then in turn the share represented by devices subject to the private copying levy, we arrive at roughly 2 to 3 percent of the total e-commerce market," Kaalep said.

He said it cannot be assumed that the volume of foreign e-commerce in the product groups subject to the private copying levy significantly affects competition among local importers.

The Estonian Authors' Society and other creative unions have previously criticized the current levy system and have taken the matter to court several times.

In 2016, the organizations won a case against the state and were awarded €831,416 in compensation. Four years later, in 2020, the unions sought more than €50 million in compensation from the state and ultimately received €3.4 million under a court ruling.

In 2025, a total of €2,276,737 in blank media levy payments was collected in Estonia.

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