PP moves to have digital canon quashed before June

The main opposition Popular Party (PP) is putting forward a motion to request the elimination of the so-called digital canon before June 6. The congressional initiative, drafted on April 12, asks for this unpopular copyright tax on blank media, such as dvds,to be "replaced with other, less arbitrary and indiscriminate formulas [...] for remunerating intellectual property, based on the effective use of the works."

However, the motion does not put forward any alternatives to the fee that consumers indirectly pay in compensation to authors for making a private copy of a movie, song or other work susceptible to copyright. What's more, the legal reform that introduced the fee in Spain in 2006 was approved with a majority consensus, including support from the PP.

Yet in 2007, PP leader Mariano Rajoy threw his weight behind a campaign called Todos contra el canon (or, Everyone against the copyright tax).

The president of the internet users association Asociación de Internautas, Víctor Domingo, complained that "every time elections come around, just like in 2008, the PP promises to eradicate the digital canon." Domingo noted that this party nevertheless voted in favor of the informally named Sinde Law, which seeks to sanction illegal downloads of copyrighted material.