Post navigation For the purposes of the EC's InfoSoc Directive 2001/29, should the rate of 'fair compensation' payable by importers and makers of blank recording-media in Holland include the harm right holders suffer from people making, for example, illegal downloads? Facts Companies which either make or import into Holland CDs, CD-Rs and other such blank recording-media are obliged by Dutch legislation to pay a 'private copy levy' to a Dutch collecting society known as the Stichting de Thuiskopie. The law stipulates that the rate of compensation must be fair. And what is 'fair' is set by a different Dutch organisation known as the SONT. Both the Stichting de Thuiskopie and the SONT were made the defendants in an action started by a dozen companies, including Fuji, Maxell, Philips, Sony and Verbatim who sought a judicial declaration that the rate at which the 'fair compensation' was calculated for the private copy levy was in effect incorrect. In support of their application for the judicial declaration, the claimants submitted that fair remuneration was intended to compensate for the harm suffered by right holders from acts of reproduction falling purely within the scope of Article 16c(1) of the Dutch Copyright Act (DCA). That is to say, the compensation was for acts of reproduction that have no direct or indirect commercial ends and are made exclusively by a natural person for their practice, study or use. Accordingly, when it came to setting the level of fair remuneration no account should have been taken of