Officials decided to charge the author’s fee from smart watches, since music can be copied onto them

Apple Watch Nike + is on hand with Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov. Source: Evgeny Razumniy / Vedomosti

Yesterday it became known that in six months, Russia will begin to charge a designer fee from smart watches. On September 30, the corresponding amendments were made to the government's decision on the author's collection. The final version of the resolution was published on October 3, as reported by Vedomosti. It is interesting that at the same time it was decided to exclude from the list of digital cameras and camcorders.

Copyright tax levies the Russian Union of owners(RSP), headed by Nikita Mikhalkov. The collected contributions, according to representatives of the RSP, are in favor of the authors and performers. The fee is charged at 1% of the customs value of devices that allow you to copy music and video. It is known that in 2015 deductions amounted to 2.2 billion rubles.

The watches are included in the list because they allow you to copy music directly to the device’s memory, and you can listen to it without connecting to external sound sources. RBC CEO Andrei Krichevsky reports this, citing the response of the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Association of Trading Companies and Manufacturers of Household and Computer Equipment (RATEK).


Source: Vedomosti

The same organization proposed to exclude video cameras from the list, which was done. RATEK spokesman Anton Guskov says that this is good, but collecting from smart watches is an excessive measure.

Smart watches are quite popular in Russia. So, according to Svyaznoy, in 2015, 124,000 smart watches were bought in Russia, and sales in terms of money amounted to 2.3 billion rubles. In 2016, this figure increased - users purchased 137,000 hours for 3.3 billion rubles. The most popular manufacturers are Apple, Samsung, Sony.