Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Canadian Copyright Board Quadruples Levies on Blank Media

Posted by michael on from the taxation-without-representation dept.

agallagh42 writes: "Computer World Canada has a piece on increased levies for blank media. Basically, the levy was increased from 5.2 cents to 21 cents (canadian) on CD-R and CD-RW media. They seem to be using the "presumed guilty" idea, and punishing everyone who uses this technology for whatever purpose, legal or otherwise. Does this mean that, since I'm already paying the music industry for my potential pirating, that I can feel free to pirate all I want?"

1 of 33 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Canada is looking about as corrupt as the U.S. by MattGoyer · · Score: 5
    It's a bit strange that it crashed your browser. Email me with your browser specs and we'll look into it.

    I also ... didn't see any binding guarantee that they would actually send my money to the artists in question, or that they even knew where to send the check.

    While we can't offer a binding guarantee (no one can) we do try our hardest to get the money to the artist. Failing that we'll refund your money. So far we've processed 1000 contributions and only one band has rejected payment. Why trust us?

    1. We display all the transactions on our site so both fans and artists alike can check see if a transaction has been made. If the artist sees a transaction on the site but doesn't get a check then they'll know something is amiss.
    2. We've received a substanstial amount of press coverage and if it was known we were cheating artists it would ruin us pretty quickly.
    3. So far we've processed ~$6500. That is barely worth skipping the country with (seeing as our investment into the company has been greater than that).
    4. We display processed cheques on the site.

    In terms of the professionalism. No one is funding dot.coms. We're doing what we can with what we have.

    Matt. (founder of Fairtunes)