The Pirate Bay celebrates its 20th anniversary today. Founded in 2003 by a collective of hackers and activists, the small Swedish BitTorrent tracker grew to become a global icon for online piracy. The rebellious torrent site has a turbulent history and clashed with law enforcement authorities on multiple occasions. Despite these setbacks, it remains online today.
It’s similar in Germany and I guess most of Europe. For any device capable of copying copyrighted material the GEMA collects royalties because it could be used legal private copies. It’s currently 0,30€ for USB sticks and 13€ for PC’s. They even collect fees for devices like smartwatches and printers.
This fee is explicitly not for illegal distribution of copyrighted material but only for legal private copies. It’s absurd.