Canada to Tax MP3 Players $21/GB of Storage

einer writes : "A brief article on some new legislation scheduled to take effect at the beginning of next year. This tax would raise the price of an archos jukebox from roughly $350.00 to $640.00 (American). "Comments and objections are due by May 8, 2002." Looks like I'm headed to pricegrabber." Update: 03/13 19:36 GMT by M : We did a big story on this a few days ago (although people keep submitting it).

Comments

Depends on how you look at it...

[OneFix]

One way you have an MP3 player costing double what it should.

But, on the other hand, you are paying for a right to store whatever you want on there (mainly copyrighted music).

As a matter of fact, if you own one of these devices, the way I see it, they are saying that it is your duty to use it to store copyrighted music on it, because if you used it for something else, then you'ld get no return on your tax dollars.

Then again, just buy a Rio Volt...it only stores ~1/2 GB, but it is on a CD...

Re:Again, to dispel rumours

[cicadia]

The current levy is $0.21CAD per CD-R or CD-RW, $0.77CAD per CD-R-Audio, and $0.29CAD per audio cassette. See the CPCC FAQ list for details.

As regards piracy, if you do live in Canada, it's quite likely that you haven't actually been pirating music. Canadian copyright law states that copying recorded works for personal use is not an infringement of copyright. It's not even frowned upon. It's totally legal to copy your friend's CDs and make MP3s out of them. It's probably legal to buy a CD, copy it, and return it, as long as the copying is done for personal use.