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Are you forgetting about the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, and the Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada, among others?

There's a Canadian MPAA for that. Or the lack thereof.

They have been collecting the tax on writable CD media for a long time - I was told that out of all the money that was collected so far from that levy, none of it has been dispatched to SOCAN, which would be the appropriate place in order for the artists to be compensated.

Does anyone know if this is true or still true? Or has this money been dispatched to the places that they said they would?

--jeffk++

That link has absolutely no information on the rights/restrictions for an artist to license their own work. Now I did find http://www.socan.ca/jsp/en/pub/music_creators/creativecommons.jsp which has a lot of FUD about CC licensing, but doesn't explicitly say it is disallowed so I will send her that link and see what happens.

http://www.socan.ca/jsp/en/pub/music_creators/MC_FAQs.jsp

I hired an artist to write a song. She is a member of SOCAN (Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada - http://www.socan.ca/). To quote:

"As for releasing it under CC, I actually can't (And releasing things under CC for musicians is a whole neat problem unto itself that's a discussion for a totally different day!). I'm a member of SOCAN and my performing and association rights are already automatically assigned to them."

So basically if you join SOCAN you are barred from using CC licenses on your work, even if you want to, even if it is a work for hire, etc.

Lets just hope the money gets to the struggling artists!

I envy your optimism. It will most likely go the recording industry -- the ones who have to be appeased over the digital equivalent of mixtapes.

The levy already exists. This is merely an extension to it. The money is distributed by the Canadian Private Copying Collective to the various organizations that already handle royalties for everything else in the industry. In the case of songwriters, that means SOCAN.

So, if you're a struggling artist, and you have not handed your copyrights over to a record company, and you're a SOCAN member (membership is free, if I remember correctly), then you are eligible to receive part of this money.

The idea with that is the Blank Media Levy- It's run by the CPCC, which is the Canadian Private Copying Collective. http://www.cpcc.ca/english/index.htm They're an extension of SOCAN, and the money generated from the sales goes back to the artists. It works out great for starving musicians, and in general yeah- Blank CDs are mostly used to copy copy written material. The fact is that Blanket licensing is already in use and in affect almost everywhere. Bars, Clubs, Shopping malls, Radio stations- they all pay blanket licenses to use music. The problem with this idea- letting users get a subscription to all the music they want. It has to expire. As an artist, no way would I let someone download my entire library of songs for a monthly fee. It's simply not fair. Also- if indie bands want to use burned CDs for music- they can get a rebate from the CPCC. I did it when I was starting out- used 500 CDs and got all of the rebate back... Something like 30 cents a disc back then. It really is a great system. For more information visit http://www.socan.ca/

As a professional your brother should be claiming CD-R's as a business expense anyway. I'm a sound tech who goes through 2-3 100 CD-R spindles monthly, entirely on content I record legitimately myself, much of it live demo recordings. I write it all off, so they can levy it all they want as far as I'm concerned. I also write off half my "entertainment" expenditures from every outing where I discus music with anyone, so roughly 45% of my restaurant/bar bills. It's quite an easy subject to bring up!

I also question whether the tax is actually collected on all imported media, since I pay 23 cents per CD-R at a local shop, and the tax is supposed to be 21 cents each, soon to be raised to 29 cents if it hasn't already. I have trouble believing the manufacturing, distributing, and retailing revenues total a mere 2 cents a disc.

As an artist who knows I'll never see dime of any such levy, it's pretty irritating. How the music industry is supposed to benefit by making internet traffic more expensive is beyond me. This is typical of the music industry's back-end approach to combating music piracy rather than the value-added approach which is generally the most successful.

Worse yet is the "SOCAN tax" for live performances. 3% of the pay for an artist or band is collected by SOCAN (Tariff 3A) to be redistributed to SOCAN members. If an artist or band plays all original music, they have to submit a setlist and wait to get that money back. If they play no original or SOCAN member compositions (i.e. all American-written songs) the collected money is basically swallowed by SOCAN. So the organization whose mission is to compensate Canadian songwriters for 3rd party performance and broadcast actually taxes Canadian performers unfairly and profits from the performance of non-Canadian compositions.

Fortunately, virtually no small live music venues across the country cooperate until they are compelled by SOCAN, and of the 200+ small venues I've played I've only encountered two such venues, one has since closed. So just avoid the Boar's Head Pub in Stratford Ontario and you're ok...

For those who aren't familiar with the groups referenced in TFA:

ACTRA: http://www.actra.ca/actra/control/insideActra_what
SOCAN: http://www.socan.ca/jsp/en/about/what_we_do.jsp

They're already getting a chunk of change from blank disc sales

That's what burns me every time I buy a spindle of discs for burning my home movies to DVD and data backups. I used to think it was OK until I read how much the Canadian Private Copying Collective wants to hike the rates. They want the rates to be 29 cents per CD-R, $50 per iPod with less than 10 GB memory and $10 for any SD card with more than 4GB memory, just to pull a few.

I just sent them an e-mail telling them to go fuck themselves (well a bit more polite than that.)

That money is supposed to go to SOCAN which distributes the money among artists but this bloated waste of office space (300 employees) requires over $34 million per year just to operate. They paid out over $180 million last year, probably most to the CBC.

If you treat customers like potential criminals, then that's what they will become. I used to go out of my way to buy the TV shows I watch and music I listen to. But if I'm paying levies on my blank media and to my college or my ISP punishing me for copies I'll never make, or based on the assumption that I'm going to torrent their shit, maybe I'll just do that then.

Well damn, if only there were some mechanism by which independent artists could register to get paid when other people play their stuff...

Alright, I know it's not all that effective..

I don't know about ASCAP, but up here in the great white north, SOCAN performs a similar function, and they use a formula based on a combination of radio playlists and reports from any licensees. I remember that most indie clubs I DJ'ed for were very consistent in filing our playlists so that the indie bands on our playlists would get some of the money...

http://www.socan.ca/pdf/en/pub_HowYourMusicMakesMoney07.pdf

This is a sticking point. It isn't thieving for two reasons: it is a levy to compensate artists directly (in theory) for section 8 of the copyright act, so it is services received for monies paid (I'm confused about your morals here); and, if it were copyright infringement, which it ain't, read the act I linked to above, it wouldn't be theft, as they are categorically different. Cue arguments about digital vs. physical, etc.--particularly relevant to gas vs. music. Is playing music at a party theft as well? In canadian law, and according to most of the industry, it's the same as personal copying.

Alright, so you don't understand what a levy is. It is a blanket fee collected against the purchase of each good or service, in this case CD-R, to compensate for a proposed service rendered. In this case, personal performances of recorded music. It is NOT a tax; the money is received by an industry organisation called SOCAN (Society of Composers, Authors, and Musicians) who are mandated to charge the levy for various circumstances like public parties and copying rights, and redistribute the money directly to artists. It's an indirect method, but a transaction nonetheless, not a tax. If one pays the levy but does not copy any music, one is paying for a legal service not received. One ALSO pays taxes on blank CD-R's in Canada, to the tune of about 13% in most places. It is less than the levy, which makes up about 50% of the price of the CDR, and in fact the levy is also taxed, as a service (significantly, no-one is up in arms about "taxing a tax" with respect to the levy).

These arguments are enshrined in Canadian Law and embraced by the industry association. Copies of music aren't theft, they are personal performances. Steal a CD from a record store, you aren't stealing the music, you're stealing the package and avoiding the performance fees. It's obvious you aren't canadian, and can't wrap your head around the concepts involved. Let's just say that your template of reality in this case is misaligned.

well, we have college radio stations up in canada and up here broadcasters have to pay royalties to composers for play.

canada has an organization call 'socan' that collects royalties from radio stations (among other places) and distributes them to artists. from socan's web page:

"[we collect] licence fees, as set by the Copyright Board of Canada, from anyone playing or broadcasting live or recorded music."

how those royalties get disbursed is a bit trickier, but i do know folks in local bands who have gotten cheques (usually in the sub-ten-dollar range, but hey, they're pretty much unknown local acts).

and college radio does just fine up here.

This is a bit ot but hasn't been reported here and my submission was rejected http://www.socan.ca/jsp/en/news_events/news/Tariff22_07.jsp

I don't really listen to Radiohead but I do like what they are doing with this album. So thanks for the reminder and I just paid 6 pounds (Approx $11 CAD) for the album. Two min later is already downloaded to my computer. So count me in to the 38% who paid.

Now I wonder how my purchase outside of Canada relates to the new Tariff 22

http://www.socan.ca/jsp/en/news_events/news/Tariff22_07.jsp

Similar case in Canada, a few weeks ago, the SOCAN http://www.socan.ca/ (Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada) started to distribute warnings to hair salons, generally businises with low profit and hard time to stay profitable. They can only play the Radio, if they play CD music they have to pay a fee based on the sqwuare footing of the business, just like bars or dance clubs.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070720.whair0720/BNStory/National/home

All this backed up by musicians, including "Daniel Boucher" that I now boycott, as he was unable to answer small hair salon owner barely making it each month, anything else than "Butt, butt, it's our money they should pay, if their business is that bad, they will close soon anyway". How about, if you cannot make it selling shows and t-shirt YOU should go under?

This is really getting out of hand. We need a new global health distribution system in the music industry to still make fitly rich the stars (easily done), and help out the starting artists.

Sign up with SOCAN. Look around there first. Google it if you need more.

I do not see this as having that big of an impact on broadcasters, if it is done right.

Up here in the Great White North, a radio station pays 3.1% of it's gross income to ASCAP http://www.ascap.com/ and SOCAN http://www.socan.ca/. Every 6 months, they must submit a survey of every song played in a given time period. ASCAP and SOCAN then statistically calculate how much each composer gets. The money goes to the composer of the work, not the *AA.

Of course, if the RIAA wants that revenue stream it is just another way to screw the composers and performers who created the artistic work.

What is the distribution methodology?
The distribution process adopted will ensure that royalties are fairly distributed to the tens of
thousands of rights holders whose recorded music is in current use.
Since information is not available concerning exactly what tracks of recorded music are copied,
CPCC has used the two most comprehensive available sources of information - data indicating
the recorded music that is sold in retail outlets in Canada and data concerning the recorded
music that is broadcast by commercial radio stations and CBC. Airplay and sales are weighted
equally.
Internet downloads are not currently used as a basis for distributing private copying royalties as
there are no data available at this time. Airplay and sales data are believed to provide the best
available indication of the titles that Canadians typically copy for private use.

I went to school in Canada to be an audio engineer. I know about the workings of the Canadian recording industry.

SOCAN (the Canadian equivalent of ASCAP/BMI) handles royalty collection and distribution for Canadian music authors. If you're a Canadian composer, songwriter, or lyricist, you must do this to get royalties:
1. Apply for membership with SOCAN
2. Register your copyrighted works
3. Sit back and wait
You don't have to be owned by a record label to get your royalties. Also, SOCAN has arrangements with other performing rights organizations around the world, so if your music is played in the USA, or Germany, or Japan or whatnot, you'll still get royalty payments from SOCAN but on the accounting it states that the money is coming from that territory.

Royalties are only paid to the "writers" and the "publishing company". The "writers" are composed of the songwriter (who does the music) and the lyricist (who writes the words). A songwriter and lyricist can be the same person. Usually it gets split 25% songwriter/25% lyricist/50% publisher respectively, which means that if a composer wants to get more money, they start their own publishing company.

There are simple yet comprehensive materials available on SOCAN's site. Quick links:
*SOCAN Overview for Music Creators and Publishers
*How your music makes money
*Private Copying Royalties update

Up until recently, the money collected from the media levy has sat in SOCAN's accounts while writers and publishing companies fought viciously to get it all for themselves. Seems the writers have won; the "private copying royalties" now go 100% to writers by default. This of course doesn't stop publishing contracts from specifying that lots of money goes to the publisher...

By the way, I finished the audio engineer training, said "I don't want to do this as a job" and have just opened a computer repair shop. I'll be selling those taxed CD blanks soon enough...

I went to school in Canada to be an audio engineer. I know about the workings of the Canadian recording industry.

SOCAN (the Canadian equivalent of ASCAP/BMI) handles royalty collection and distribution for Canadian music authors. If you're a Canadian composer, songwriter, or lyricist, you must do this to get royalties:
1. Apply for membership with SOCAN
2. Register your copyrighted works
3. Sit back and wait
You don't have to be owned by a record label to get your royalties. Also, SOCAN has arrangements with other performing rights organizations around the world, so if your music is played in the USA, or Germany, or Japan or whatnot, you'll still get royalty payments from SOCAN but on the accounting it states that the money is coming from that territory.

Royalties are only paid to the "writers" and the "publishing company". The "writers" are composed of the songwriter (who does the music) and the lyricist (who writes the words). A songwriter and lyricist can be the same person. Usually it gets split 25% songwriter/25% lyricist/50% publisher respectively, which means that if a composer wants to get more money, they start their own publishing company.

There are simple yet comprehensive materials available on SOCAN's site. Quick links:
*SOCAN Overview for Music Creators and Publishers
*How your music makes money
*Private Copying Royalties update

Up until recently, the money collected from the media levy has sat in SOCAN's accounts while writers and publishing companies fought viciously to get it all for themselves. Seems the writers have won; the "private copying royalties" now go 100% to writers by default. This of course doesn't stop publishing contracts from specifying that lots of money goes to the publisher...

By the way, I finished the audio engineer training, said "I don't want to do this as a job" and have just opened a computer repair shop. I'll be selling those taxed CD blanks soon enough...

I went to school in Canada to be an audio engineer. I know about the workings of the Canadian recording industry.

SOCAN (the Canadian equivalent of ASCAP/BMI) handles royalty collection and distribution for Canadian music authors. If you're a Canadian composer, songwriter, or lyricist, you must do this to get royalties:
1. Apply for membership with SOCAN
2. Register your copyrighted works
3. Sit back and wait
You don't have to be owned by a record label to get your royalties. Also, SOCAN has arrangements with other performing rights organizations around the world, so if your music is played in the USA, or Germany, or Japan or whatnot, you'll still get royalty payments from SOCAN but on the accounting it states that the money is coming from that territory.

Royalties are only paid to the "writers" and the "publishing company". The "writers" are composed of the songwriter (who does the music) and the lyricist (who writes the words). A songwriter and lyricist can be the same person. Usually it gets split 25% songwriter/25% lyricist/50% publisher respectively, which means that if a composer wants to get more money, they start their own publishing company.

There are simple yet comprehensive materials available on SOCAN's site. Quick links:
*SOCAN Overview for Music Creators and Publishers
*How your music makes money
*Private Copying Royalties update

Up until recently, the money collected from the media levy has sat in SOCAN's accounts while writers and publishing companies fought viciously to get it all for themselves. Seems the writers have won; the "private copying royalties" now go 100% to writers by default. This of course doesn't stop publishing contracts from specifying that lots of money goes to the publisher...

By the way, I finished the audio engineer training, said "I don't want to do this as a job" and have just opened a computer repair shop. I'll be selling those taxed CD blanks soon enough...

In Canada the offending organization is called SOCAN. They collect a tax on every blank CDR/CDRW sold. It doesn't matter if I am using the CD for storing my own photos. They distribute the wealth to record companies.

For the dances you can pay a socan fee and it's all legit. The fees arn't all that expensive for most things.

Why scouts? Read the following for an answer. Remember kids, copyright is valued more than genuine and harmless fun with friends around the campfire.

ASCAP Reaches Agreement With Guides and Scouts

A major collector of copyright fees in the United States is ASCAP - the American Society of Composers and Publishers http://ascap.com/ and in Canada SOCAN - the Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers http://www.socan.ca/. Regional offices are charged with the responsibility of collecting fees and the following article is taken from the Wall Street Journal, July 15, 1997.

"Martinsville, IN. - The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers reached an agreement with the American Camping Association allowing camps to use copyrighted music, including music sung around the campfire, for a nominal fee. The camping association, which is based here, said the agreement calls for it to pay $1 per camp per year for permission to use all ASCAP-licensed music. The association represents more than 2,200 summer camps, including some Girl Scout and Boy Scout camps. Last summer, several Girl Scout camps deleted ASCAP songs from their programs, including "God Bless America" and "This Land is Your Land", after ASCAP notified the Association that camps must pay a fee to use copyrighted songs. Following a front page article in this newspaper, ASCAP reimbursed 16 Girl Scout councils that did pay the fees and exempted the Girl Scouts from paying license fees in the future. But ASCAP ad not clarified the license policy for other nonprofit camps. ASCAP said yesterday that camps that don't belong to the camping association may be subject to license fees, but they won't have to pay "if there is no direct or indirect economic gain from the performance of music".

After reading news like this, please consider the following: stop downloading, stop buying, stop listening to artists that are represented by these organizations. Teach your children that there are free alternatives, and they don't need to listen to Brit or Avril or Dursts new shit to be cool.

I can see SOCAN handing Bryan Adams a big fat check; monies accrued from the greedy hordes of music downloaders at iTunes. Yeah right.

Question is, if they were able to levy these tariffs, where would this money really go? Back to the artists? Into a legal fund? I doubt the artist would benefit one ioda from these taxes (much like Employment Insurance in Canada which is a huge ripoff taxgrab from the middle class worker).

"Do independent and alternative labels get any of the copyright taxes in countries like Germany and Canada, or does it all go to the RIAA equivalents?"

Not sure what you mean by "RIAA equivalents." In Canada it goes to SOCAN, which is the equivalent of ASCAP and BMI -- that is, composers, lyricists and the like. The record labels largely aren't part of the story. So, when reading about tariffs and levies (whether they're in the US, Canada, or Germany), when you see "greedy record label" substitute that with "greedy composers and lyricists."

The money's distributed according to popularity as measured by airplay, I believe. This is a gross generalization, but popular artists tend to be on major labels, and less popular artists tend to be on indie labels (again -- gross generalization!) so the people who write Celine Dion's music for her will get more of the Canadian levy than the people who write the music for your favorite little-known indie bands.

Anyway, the little labels see little or none of the Canadian levy, but then again, neither do the big ones.

Just like in the case of the proposed Tariff 22 (SOCAN, RantRadio) which dealt with web radio broadcasting, the copyright board is misunderstanding (or is intentionally misleading) what the implications of the new technology is. Their payout mechanism is still based on the only two measurable quantities available to them: radio play and record sales. But the new music consuming generation, grown up on MP3s and P2P networks, cares little for such backwards technologies such as radio and CDs, or at least they care less and less as time goes by as indicated by increasingly dwindling CD sales.

Thus, the payout method is based on paying the artists who aren't even necessarily the ones being copied. With this generation, artists are more likely to be have their music downloaded by cause of word-of-mouth advertising, or rating and genre systems built into P2P clients, or similar-sounding-artists suggestion wizards than by what they hear on the FM band or what CD the record store is marketing at the time.

The CCPC is extorting money from users of the new technology and using it within the framework of the old. This is, of course, a method by which to ensure its own survival as a bureaucratic entity and grow ever bigger by ensuring that its corporate backers are not hurt by this new technology. Remember, the CCPC is not a government entity but a non-profit corporation "run by copyright holders" - copyright holders who are so intent on getting paid that they work a full-time job to collect royalties.

To those Canadians who say they would rather have the tariffs and be allowed to "pirate" music, remember that the tariffs only cover you for private copying, which is covered under Canadian Fair Use law. The courts are still deciding what "Private Copying" actually means, and it is still uncertain whether many digital distribution systems are actually covered under "Private Copying" or not - or what you can and cannot do on a P2P network.

"While the rest of your statemenent may or may not be true(the fee being waived online or whatever)"

Go look for instance at this page and you can find out what's true. This is pretty easy to do. Then you can cut the innuendo and deal with the facts. But if you or anyone else doesn't want to be bothered, here's what it says:

For those music creators (composers, songwriters or lyricists) who apply online, membership is free.

For those music creators who apply on paper there is a one-time $25 (plus applicable taxes) processing fee.

To be fair, I should point out that if you are a publisher (i.e. one of those nasty people or organisations who screw over musicians) you have to pay a $50 one time fee.

I'm sorry you didn't do your homework and thus didn't get your royalties. Television broadcast royalties are among the highest paying, so that's too bad.

"going with SOCAN was my only option. The contract was void in any other case. Unless you happen to have a copy of the SRC's policies and my particular contract with you?(if you do, give it back, thief). "

I never said that the SRC would accept any terms, I just said it was within your rights to negotiate. Just as it is within the SRC's rights to say take a hike if you didn't want to deal with SOCAN. And if you don't like that you can take your creative work (or skills, if you were negotiating a contract that covered production) and go elsewhere. The right to walk is the right that both parties have. It's only in fantasyland that you always get everything on your terms.

Now it is true that at the moment there are many situations where you have to agree to royalty payments through SOCAN if you want the opportunity (just as I have to agree to payment by direct deposit in my job, just as a store may not accept the Discover card, whatever), but consider the alternative of no central rights society, with each and every individual creator having to negotiate on a case by case basis. The administrative overhead would increase exponentially, which would mean less money for things like creation.

As well, having to deal through SOCAN is not much of a burden. They DON'T charge creators for membership, and they actively work to track performances of your work. That's an advantage, not an inconvenience.

They are admittedly the only option in some cases, but if you don't like the way they work you still have the options of running for the democratically elected board, lobbying the existing board for change, or starting your own performing rights society. There used to be two in Canada, as there are in the US, as there are in some other countries. Under certain circumstances you may even be able to join the society of another country.

So it's not a perfect world, you can't always have everything on your own terms, but you do have options. Unfortunately, you chose the option of waiving your royalties when it wouldn't have cost you a penny.

Looking at their site, they already have numberous tarrifs approved by the Copyright board of Canada See section 15A Background Music: Annual fee: $1.23 per square metre or 11.46 per square foot; half the annual rate for establishments operating less than six months per year. (In all cases, minimum fee of $94.51)

"Maybe, but like any worker's union, this association DOESN'T work for the worker, but work for itself... and profit..."

SOCAN is not a union. You are not obligated to join it. You may be thinking of the Musician's union, which does control certain working opportunities.

SOCAN does not make profits. Everything above operating costs goes to its members. Any unclaimed royalties go to the Foundation, which gives the money to, you guessed it, composers and authors.

SOCAN is not like the record companies, which attempt to get money for themselves, and keep it from composers and authors. SOCAN fights to get the largest possible portion of royalties for composers and authors. In this sense at least, it is the 'good guy'.

If people want to discuss this, why not go at least look at their website so that you at least have some notion of what you are talking about.

That depends, are you in Canada? If you are, then yes, you must pay. See the press release from SOCAN here.

Here are some of the other tariffs charged by SOCAN.

Strolling Musicians and Buskers; Recorded Music - Fee per day: $32.55 for each day on which music is performed

Skating Rinks (Roller & Ice Skating) - 1.2% of gross receipts from admissions exclusive of sales and amusement taxes

Comedy Shows and Magic Shows - Fee per show: $36.60 where use of music is incidental.

Aircraft - Fee per quarter, based on seating capacity:
a) Take-off and landing music - ranging from $40.50 to $82.50 per aircraft
b) In-flight music - ranging from $162.00 to $330.00 per aircraft

Telephone Music on Hold - Fee for one trunk line: $94.51, plus $2.09 for each additional trunk line.

Background Music - Annual fee: $1.23 per square metre or 11.46 per square foot; half the annual rate for establishments operating less than six months per year. (In all cases, minimum fee of $94.51)

SOCAN isn't poor. SOCAN has LOTS and LOTS of cash.

The reason being that every artist and label in the country pays into them, and they charg for radio play of members' music pretty much everywhere.

In fact, I remember a lawsuit with a local restaurant who was playing CDs over the stereo system and got the stick from SOCAN because he wasn't paying his royalties (not that there was much sympathy in the community for him, since that guy was a raging asshole).

I could be wrong on the details, but I'm sure that SOCAN has a lot of agreements that allow them to pull in the cash. Not on the scale of American record industry groups, granted, but in Canadian terms, they ain't broke.

Here's a link to their "Tariff" system, which details how they charge whom, and where: SOCAN Tariffs

The info you want is hard to find but here's what I've found so far.

The Canadian Private Copying Collective, CPCC is a non profit umbrella group overseeing distribution of funds.

The CPCC's has handed out $26 million CDN and will hand out a further $28 million CDN.

Depending on the year it has distributed funds as follows
66% to eligible authors and publishers, 18.9% to eligible performers, 15.1% to eligible record companies.
and in other years; authors and publishers 75%, recording artists 13.7% and record companies 11.3%.

So the (13.7%, 18.9%) distributed to artist from CPCC to SOCAN is around ($3.5, $5.2) million CDN depending on the year etc.

Now lets see what SOCAN (Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada) has to say.

Slightly off topic.. Look at the list of fees they collect (besides the tariff). Specifically "Strolling Musicians and Buskers; Recorded Music" Damn! No wonder most buskers who sing for their supper don't have a portable stereo accompanying them. SOCAN wants $32.55 per day for the accompanying music!

The moral on the above story is that the $0.21 for CD-Rs and CD-RWs is peanuts, and (in light of the legitimate purpose of backup) is already reduced from $0.77 tariff on CD-R Audio and CD-RW Audio. Specifically in this link, grep 'I buy blank CDs regularly to store data from my computer'

Okay so what does SOCAN have to say about distribution of money from the tariff... well nothing. They have forms to fill out, and they give you the option of paying with Visa and MasterCard.. but I can't find a damn thing about outflow of cash.

The closest thing I can find is in their Summer 2004 newsletter 381 Kb pdf. Which is vague at best

On the charts ... British industry .. 10 percent of the artists were Canadian. Nickleback, Avril Lavign, Nelly Furtado, Lynda Lemay and Lara Fabian ... These successes don't happen spontaneously. They are the result of talent ... and an industry infrastructure that supports the development of Canadian creators.

They "develop the artist" and are into advertisement/payolla to get foreigners to buy CDN music.

So my one last search was in the Canadian Copyright Act. Specifically Subsection Subsection 83. (13) (b).

... require a collective society to file with the Board information relating to payments of moneys received by the society ...

So SOCAN has to tell the Copyright Board how it spent the money. Great, two levels of bureaucracy.

I have no intention of filling a FOI request as I don't really care enough. I'll let someone else try that. This is the furthest I can get in "following the money". :(

While you're at the copyright Act site look at subsection 84, which says only collectives/societies can collect the tariff. So, you personally cannot fill out a form and get your $0.21 back. If you want that you'll have to write Sarmite and make a good case for how the Act should be amended and how it would not be abused.

The only exception to the levy is subsection 86 (1) which exempts societies for people with perceptual disabilities. So you if you have a perceptual disability you could ask, say the CNIB, to purchase blank media for you.

FWIW: Upcomming tariffs for 2005., for private copying shows there will be no increase ($0.21, $0.77) and the distri

The info you want is hard to find but here's what I've found so far.

The Canadian Private Copying Collective, CPCC is a non profit umbrella group overseeing distribution of funds.

The CPCC's has handed out $26 million CDN and will hand out a further $28 million CDN.

Depending on the year it has distributed funds as follows
66% to eligible authors and publishers, 18.9% to eligible performers, 15.1% to eligible record companies.
and in other years; authors and publishers 75%, recording artists 13.7% and record companies 11.3%.

So the (13.7%, 18.9%) distributed to artist from CPCC to SOCAN is around ($3.5, $5.2) million CDN depending on the year etc.

Now lets see what SOCAN (Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada) has to say.

Slightly off topic.. Look at the list of fees they collect (besides the tariff). Specifically "Strolling Musicians and Buskers; Recorded Music" Damn! No wonder most buskers who sing for their supper don't have a portable stereo accompanying them. SOCAN wants $32.55 per day for the accompanying music!

The moral on the above story is that the $0.21 for CD-Rs and CD-RWs is peanuts, and (in light of the legitimate purpose of backup) is already reduced from $0.77 tariff on CD-R Audio and CD-RW Audio. Specifically in this link, grep 'I buy blank CDs regularly to store data from my computer'

Okay so what does SOCAN have to say about distribution of money from the tariff... well nothing. They have forms to fill out, and they give you the option of paying with Visa and MasterCard.. but I can't find a damn thing about outflow of cash.

The closest thing I can find is in their Summer 2004 newsletter 381 Kb pdf. Which is vague at best

On the charts ... British industry .. 10 percent of the artists were Canadian. Nickleback, Avril Lavign, Nelly Furtado, Lynda Lemay and Lara Fabian ... These successes don't happen spontaneously. They are the result of talent ... and an industry infrastructure that supports the development of Canadian creators.

They "develop the artist" and are into advertisement/payolla to get foreigners to buy CDN music.

So my one last search was in the Canadian Copyright Act. Specifically Subsection Subsection 83. (13) (b).

... require a collective society to file with the Board information relating to payments of moneys received by the society ...

So SOCAN has to tell the Copyright Board how it spent the money. Great, two levels of bureaucracy.

I have no intention of filling a FOI request as I don't really care enough. I'll let someone else try that. This is the furthest I can get in "following the money". :(

While you're at the copyright Act site look at subsection 84, which says only collectives/societies can collect the tariff. So, you personally cannot fill out a form and get your $0.21 back. If you want that you'll have to write Sarmite and make a good case for how the Act should be amended and how it would not be abused.

The only exception to the levy is subsection 86 (1) which exempts societies for people with perceptual disabilities. So you if you have a perceptual disability you could ask, say the CNIB, to purchase blank media for you.

FWIW: Upcomming tariffs for 2005., for private copying shows there will be no increase ($0.21, $0.77) and the distri

This tax benefits mainly folks like Celine Dion and Brian Adams and whomever sings those beer commercial songs. It doesn't benefit the artists of the rest of the world.

First, it's not a tax. It's a levy, tarrif or royalty, depending on who you talk to.

Second, it is imposed by international convention just about anywhere you would like to live. http://www.socan.ca/jsp/en/resources/around_world. jsp. It is infact well-distributed around the world.

Third, they succeeded in imposing a very similar system in the U.S., it happened twelve years ago. The RIAA http://www.riaa.com/issues/licensing/default.asp is a member of the AARC, who admisters the royalties in the U.S. http://www.aarcroyalties.com/.

AHRA requires manufacturers of digital audio recorders and blank digital discs and tapes to pay royalties to the United States Copyright Office ("Copyright Office") for the benefit of eligible artists and sound recording copyright owners. This is to compensate artists and copyright owners for lost revenues because of the displaced sales caused by home taping.

I don't really understand this stuff myself, but just check out the websites. They have lots of info up there about what they're doing and why.

One thing I really don't understand, is why "Happy Birthday" can demand royalties direct through AOL/Time Warner, when systems like this are in place. Urban legend?

gotta go through the Canadian ripoffs of it... like PureTracks

It's no wonder that people are starting to refer to PureTracks as "PureCrap". It really is as bad as you've described. Unfortunately, we don't have any other choices (except to use P2P clients or get our American buddies to buy music from iTMS for us) until Apple completes its negotiations with the organizations that oversee music licensing in Canada. One of those organizations is the Canadian Musical Reproduction Rights Agency (CMRRA) and the other is...

...the Canadian version of the RIAA (whatever the hell they're called)...

...the Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA). So, far, the CRIA hasn't been doing all that much about music piracy. Most of their efforts have been half-hearted, at best. For example, see this Globe And Mail article covering the way that the CRIA has been dealing with music piracy (or not dealing with it, as the case may be). Some of their efforts are just plain silly.

Perhaps the folks that we should be more worried about are SOCAN (which was recently mentioned in this Slashdot thread related to the responsibility of ISPs in regards to the transmission of copyrighted music) and the CPCC (the rat-bastards that instituted levies on recordable media in Canada, and are now trying to get levies put on MP3s players here (as described in this Slashdot thread)).

D.

it's like putting a tax on balaclavas and giving the tax money to banks that had been robbed. i agree. however, there are other bad things about this. consider:

• who gets this money? the blank cd levy is distributed via socan, the same people who cut songwriters cheques for airplay. all fine except that only canadian artists can be registered with socan - and, uh, "copyright theft knows no nation". you get the picture. of course i'm not opposed to canadian musicians getting a bit of cash, but this is a harsh mechanism.
• the chances of the levy actually being collected effectively are slim. maybe this is a good thing, but it leads to beurocratic fat. with the cd levy, if a retail outlet demonstrates that they sell cd's for "data only" purposes they are exempt from the levy. essentially, if they're a computer shop, they don't have to pay - this is why there are still supercheap cd's available in canada.
• is this whole thing contrary to the wto anyway? i know that "cultural" subsidies are exempt from most trade agreements (notably in the ftaa so that the crtc can keep on setting cancon quotas), but this is getting into a grey area when things like hard drives wind up on the list. i mean, will sheila copps (or whoever the hell the minister of culture is these days) decide to put a levy on bandwidth next?

as a side note - and this is important for all you canucks out there - the blank cd levy means that canadians can legally copy sound recordings for personal use. the details are here. please go easy on my server.

1. Go to France and learn how to protest

   What if university and college students in Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal etc. shut their cities down when things like this happened?

2. Join the NDP or the Green party and get involved

   The New Democrats and the Greens are the only parties in the country that don't have the "yes sir, no sir, may I please suck your balls sir?" attitude towards industry.

3. Write to SOCAN and demand a refund for all the CDs you've bought

   Send SOCAN your receipts and tell them what you've done with your discs - burned Linux ISOs, saved photos, etc. Also, tell them that you wouldn't pirate their music, since it's all slop anyway.... OR

4. Run a "music exchange"

   Really rub the private copying decision in SOCAN's face by having a "music exchange". Get a bunch of computers with fast CD-burners, then invite a whole bunch of people and tell them to each bring 10 of their favourite CDs. Then give everyone free blank discs. As long as the person who's keeping the copy actually MAKES the copy (i.e. puts the discs in the provided computer, clicks "copy", collects discs), it's all nice and legal.

This isn't the only thing going on in the world of media, if you look at the copyright board of Canada, most of the upcoming issues are all dealing with SOCAN, CMRRA and the NRCC.

Let's see... SOCAN, CMRRA , SOCAN/NRCC, CMRRA, SOCAN, NRCC

Included issues are: radio stations, pay audio services, radio, radio, ringtones, background music, and tariffs tariffs, tariffs

Isn't this a bit insane? I mean, tariffs on ringtones...? Looking at the recent news page you would think that the copyright board only deals with audio issues...

Yes, it is time for music producers to learn some new tricks, and stop milking the consumer.

If you want a brief description of each organization and various others, go here

Write to SOCAN and tell them (nicely) what you think about this.

Then write to the Supreme Court and do the same.

Remember, these have to be sent through the post - they think that each snail mail letter represents ten people!

Finally, here's a good guide on how to write a professional-looking letter.

Even if SOCAN just got 20 negative letters, they'd flip out!

Don't spread FUD.

From the FAQ:

Q: Where does the money go?
A: SOCAN collects licence fees and, after its operating costs are deducted, distributes the revenue as royalties to its members (songwriters, composers, lyricists and publishers) as well as to affiliated international societies for their members. More than 80% of the monies received from fees are distributed to the music creators and publishers entitled to it.

I know many small independent artists that regularly get checkes from SOCAN. You register your music with them, and they do sweeps of radio statiosn (CBC, College Radio, etc..) When they see your song is beind played, you get PAID. They really -DO- pay the artists, this is NOT the canadian RIAA.. that would be the CIAA, and they already tax blank CD-Rs, so they're pretty happy.

SOCAN is the Canadian copyright collective for the public performance of musical works. We administer the performing rights of our members (composers, lyricists, songwriters and their publishers) and those of affiliated international societies by licensing the use of their music in Canada.

I definately don't agree with this. While yeah, they may inflate the price artifically a little bit, it's still expensive to produce a high-quality album.

Consider that studio time in a professional studio is expensive, and it takes a while to record an album. Plus you have to pay a sound engineer, plus time for mastering. Then you have to produce CD's, including artwork, and pay for all the copies you initially print. Although it's possible to do a lot of this very cheaply with modest computer hardware nowadays, it's not the same quality. Studio's are not cheap to build. And I think pitch correctors are expensive, too, and come on, half the people on the radio now couldn't be there without one ;)

There's also a lot of other expenses. A music video can easily cost $500k to produce. There may also be other advertising. You also have to pay the band, manager, promoters, etc (and record company exec's..).

and they get to deduct all the costs from the artists' shares.

Well, this is the paying-back part of the 'loan' ('advance', in industryspeak). They put up the money and help you make the album, then your album sales pay back that investment, and eventually you start actually making money off it. Like I said, there's nothing wrong with this system, in theory. Do you think as a band, if you failed, and had gotten the loan from a bank, they're going to say "oh, well, your music didn't catch on, don't worry about paying back that $1 million we lent you"?

The problem I have with the US media tax is that the money goes to the RIAA members, not the artists, not smaller music labels.

In Canada, the tax goes to a non-profit organization called the Canadian Private Copying Collective. They distribute royalties based on radio airplay and retail sales data, which is pretty fair, since it should at least somewhat closely reflect what's being copied.

SOCAN is the non-profit agency that distributes royalties based on public performance (radio, tv, bars, clubs, malls, etc), similar to ASCAP I guess.

I'm not as familliar with the situation in the US, but it seems like it's controlled by the wrong people (who have a direct interest in paying themselves more and screwing over the consumer) as opposed to an independent agency. Of course, the RIAA, who has the most say over the situation (holding the contracts of many, many artists, and the chequebook in the face of the politician's campaigns) will have no desire to change it.

I thoroughly enjoyed your take on those RIAA blood-sucking bastard assmonkeys (I'm not a journalist, and if I call them that on my website I am projected by the "22 year old college student" defence as HardOCP has dubbed the weblog freedom of speech ruling).

I would like to point out a little something that, although not very relevant to the US, is a thorn in our side up here in Canada.

I'm talking about a little legal wonder called SOCAN Tariff 22. SOCAN (The Society of Composers, Authors, and Music Publishers of Canada) is pretty much like a Canadian RIAA, except controlled by the government (we're almost socialists up here, in case you didn't know, but don't hold that against me... I didn't vote for those bastards either). Anyways, Tariff 22 is currently being appealed and for good reasons. It introduced liability for ISPs for caches of material which violats copyright, specifically copies of musical recordings of SOCAN artists.

(What is SOCAN:
SOCAN is the Canadian copyright collective for the public performance of musical works. We administer the performing rights of our members (composers, lyricists, songwriters and their publishers) and those of affiliated international societies by licensing the use of their music in Canada.)

This means that your distributed user-controlled cache-reliant webcast radio scheme would (currently) land ISPs subject to Canadian law in hot water. Sucks, doesn't it?

The appeal is getting into full swing as factum are submitted, etc. The Tariff 22 ruling was based on the appeals court blatantly misunderstanding caching technology, the nature of the Internet, and the role that network infrastructure plays in communications, so things look good for those of us involved in protecting the ISPs' ability to provide service to Canadian consumers (I'm involved from a technical standpoint), however the act remains that Tariff 22 is currently on the books as Canadian law.

Here are some online resources you may find interesting on the subject:
Tariff 22 Intellectual Property laws meet the modern age

SOCAN's Tariff 22 will be the death of Canadian Internet Radio

I hope that the rabid RIAA legal minions don't pay too much attention to us up here, because that would be a way for them to go after litigation targets with really deep pockets... if Verizon thought they had problems with Court Orders to hand over customer data, wait until they get sued for merely being an ISP.

>Think local diner with CD jukebox system.

They pay the American equivalent of SOCAN for the right to play the music in public.

The licenses are usually quite reasonable, really, all things considered.