The world's creators are owed billions. The infrastructure to pay them does not exist.

Read carefully, it is not a policy document.
It is a damage assessment.

What private copying is, and why it matters more than most people realise

Every time someone saves a song to a smartphone, stores a film on a tablet, downloads a playlist for offline listening, or backs up purchased content to an external drive, a private copy is made. In most places, this action is fully legal. It is legal on one condition: that the creator whose work was copied gets fair payment.

That compensation is collected through private copying levy systems, charges levied on manufacturers and importers of copying-capable devices, collected by dedicated rights organizations, and distributed to authors, musicians, and other rights holders. The principle is simple: because monitoring individual acts of private copying would be both technically difficult and an invasion of personal privacy, the system estimates copying behavior at the device level and collects accordingly.

It is a practical compromise with a long history. Germany introduced the first private copying law in 1966, followed by most of continental Europe. The system has paid millions of creators for decades.

The problem is that the system was built for a world that no longer exists.

The number that stops you cold

Private copying revenues in 2023–2024 are the same, in real terms, as they were in 2007–2010.

Not adjusted for the explosion in smartphone penetration during that period. Not adjusted for cloud storage, which has shifted the main focus of private copying from physical media to remote servers. Not adjusted for the fact that 752 million people now hold streaming subscriptions with offline download capability, a form of private copying that was commercially irrelevant in 2007 and is now the dominant way to consume music.

The copying has multiplied by orders of magnitude. The compensation has flatlined.

When adjusted for inflation, revenues from private copying have not increased since the mid-2000s. Device manufacturers and importers are paying levies based on a copying economy that existed before the rise of the modern smartphone. The difference between what the system collects and what it should collect, based on actual copying volume, amounts to billions in creator income that the current infrastructure isn't designed to capture.

The geographic picture is a structural failure

The study's country-by-country analysis highlights the magnitude of the problem.

Out of the 48 Asian countries and territories studied, 30 permit private copying, meaning it is legal, but none have a compensation system. Copying is allowed, yet no payments are made. Ten countries in the region have no exceptions at all, meaning their legal frameworks are completely absent.

Across Oceania, covering sixteen countries including Australia and New Zealand, two highly developed, high-income economies, private copying remuneration systems are essentially absent.
Copying is legal.
Creators receive nothing.

In North and South America, the situation is fragmented, and these divisions tend to worsen over time. The United States uses a levy system based on laws from 1992, which were designed for a world of blank audio cassettes and early digital audio tapes. It has not been updated to accommodate modern devices. Canada's system covers blank audio media, a category that now accounts for a decreasing share of actual copying behavior. Most of Latin America has copyright exceptions without a corresponding remuneration system.

The figures on unrealized potential are striking. Japan, one of the few Asian countries with an active private copying system, has not updated its device list to include modern copying technology. If updated to account for smartphones, tablets, and personal computers, Japanese private copying fees could total about €212 million annually. Nigeria, if levies were applied to just three basic device categories, smartphones, computers, and tablets, could generate over €12 million annually for its creative industry. Both countries currently collect only a small fraction of those amounts, or none at all.

These are not minor discrepancies. When multiplied across dozens of countries in similar situations, they reflect a fundamental failure to compensate creators for the constant copying that occurs on devices their work helped sell.

The cloud problem no one has solved

The study documents something that deserves to be stated plainly: as of 2026, no country in the study has introduced a levy on cloud storage.

Cloud copying, the act of storing protected content on remote servers for personal retrieval, has been confirmed as private copying by the Court of Justice of the European Union. The case is settled law. The legal basis for compensation is established. The economic case is clear: cloud storage services now hold a larger share of personal copied content than all physical media combined, and that share increases each year.

Yet, the collection infrastructure is lacking. Liability frameworks are debated. Levy models based on device manufacturers and importers do not align well with cloud service providers operating across multiple jurisdictions.

The result is that the fastest-growing form of private copying, which has most significantly increased the size and value of the copying economy, generates no compensation for creators in every country worldwide. Not because it is not owed, but because the infrastructure to collect it has not been established.

Why the existing system cannot fix itself

The study carefully and fairly analyzes why these gaps persist. Levy tariffs require empirical evidence of copying behavior to set rates. Gathering this evidence takes time and resources. Device lists need legislative updates to expand. Such updates require political will and industry cooperation. Political will is challenged by device manufacturers, importers, and cloud service providers, whose financial interests favor lower or no levies.

The result is a system that is always lagging behind the technology it aims to regulate. By the time a jurisdiction has collected empirical data, built political consensus, drafted legislation, and implemented the updated levy framework, the copying behavior has already moved to the next platform.

This is not a criticism of the organizations and collecting societies that manage these systems. Many of them operate with genuine expertise and commitment. It simply highlights the core challenge faced by any levy-based system that relies on slow legislative and administrative processes to keep up with rapidly evolving technology.

The infrastructure issue can't be fixed by simply speeding up the current model. It calls for a different approach.

What the infrastructure layer actually needs to do

The 2026 study highlights, across all its regional findings, a consistent set of features that distinguish effective private copying systems from ineffective ones: clear legal frameworks with flexible device lists, strong cooperation between governments and collecting organizations, transparent rules for collection and distribution, and the ability to update based on empirical evidence and technological advancements.

What it describes, in infrastructure terms, is a system that needs to be real-time, platform-agnostic, legally precise, and capable of routing compensation directly to the specific rights holder for the specific work that was copied, rather than pooling it into a collective fund distributed months later based on survey data and statistical sampling.
That system does not exist today.
Building it is what CopyrightChains was designed to do.

Where NIM fits

CopyrightChains continuously monitors usage across hundreds of digital platforms. It detects where compensation is owed, licensing gaps, unlicensed commercial use, private copying at scale, and routes it directly to the rights-holding corporate entity for the specific work. Not into a collective pool, not through an intermediary chain with quarterly reporting cycles and 18-month distribution timelines. Instead, it delivers directly and in real time to the legally defined vehicle designated for that purpose.

NIM's one-company-per-musical-work structure ensures legal precision in routing. Each commercially significant work can be held by its own EU-incorporated company, with a dedicated income statement, a defined distribution waterfall, and a legal standing to receive and distribute compensation. When private copying levies are collected, whether from device manufacturers in Europe, cloud service providers as frameworks develop, or from other sources, there is a specific, audited, legally structured entity to handle them.

This matters because the study's main point isn't really about rates, tariffs, or legislative timelines. It's about the gap between what creators are owed and what the infrastructure can actually provide. Closing that gap requires infrastructure that is as precise, fast, and legally secure as the copying behavior it aims to compensate.

The world's creators are owed billions.
The infrastructure to pay them is what NIM is building.