Slashdot Mirror
Canadian Music Industry Wants Royalties on Net Usage
Dr. Zoidburg writes "Apparently Internet music and movie sharing in Canada has gained enough popularity to turn the heads of the music and movie industry. CTV has a report about a Canadian organization named SOCAN (Society of Composers, Authors, and Music Publishers of Canada) that will "ask the Supreme Court of Canada next week to force Internet service providers to pay them royalties for the millions of digital music files downloaded each year by Canadians". Says the president of the Canadian Association of Internet Providers, "Consumers could very well see an increase in their Internet costs and they could see a slowdown in the transmission speed of their Internet communications"."
All of a sudden I *don't* want to be classed as an ISP any more (re: that story
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
Who the hell came up with that acronym? It's not even close to what it's meant to stand for...
...Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.
Churchill
Finally Canadians get a taste of RIAA's medicine. Theyve had these freedoms for way too long.
Vote for new mod!!! Score:-2,Imbecile
when your stuff gets downloaded. If you're gonna tax everyone, then you can't complain when they take what they paid for.
Slashdot is proof that Sturgeon's Law applies to mankind.
when will they learn.........
Relatively speaking, of course. If "Screw the big labels, who overcharge for music and cannot assemble a coherent internet strategy - I'll just get it for free" is a reasonable response to the status quo, then a blanket tax on traffic to "reclaim lost media revenue" is also reasonable.
We already pay royalties on blank CDs. That is supposed to cover the cost. On the other hand if it means i can't get a 2 billion dollar find for sharing. why not?
That's great. Raise internet prices for everyone for no apparent reason to the consumer. Reminds me of some of those obfuscated extra charges on my phone bill.
Always going forward, 'cause we can't find reverse.
Hey lets tax internet access.
I dont feel like we are making enough money.
So lets try to get the govt to tax other businesses
to make up for what we feel like we are not
getting. right...
I think this whole movie and music thing is way
overblown.
Sue
Our
Canadian
Asses
Northward
Im sorry the coffee hasnt kicking in yet
Sounds good. I'll download gigabits of stuff via a Canadian proxy and see some poor bloke get screwed. ;)
A blog like any other.
As much as the DMCA is unpopular among Slashdotters, and rightfully so, at least it gets one thing right. It establishes that the ISP isn't responsible in any way. As the article states, if the music and movie industries get their way in Canada, they could soon be responsible for the traffic through their network. I know the DMCA gets a lot of things wrong, but protecting the ISPs is one thing it actually gets right. Think about it.
Surely payment upfront on the assumption that people will be using their connection for legally questionable activities will help to justify the 'crime'* to people before they even sign up? "If I'm paying for it, I may as well be doing it"
* I say crime, I mean 'copyright infringement' (or whatever - Lets not start this one again!)
Judging by this article, it looks like they do!
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
isn't like 55 bucks a month enough for internet. Geess i guess not, heres an idea... how about offering better prices on cds or offer somthing simalar to itunes or somthing.
:)
Hell i should start my own isp.. teach them all
Then again, what about all the people who dont download music or movies.. on the net... charge them as well?
Friggin America, always trying to take away my rights! I'm moving to Canada!
Oh wait...
After all, the food companies keep illegal downloaders alive, so ultimately they are responsible!
...who would never sign with a 'major' label (or even a really large indie one)... when is my cheque coming? ...and how much do I get?
I make a good portion of my music freely downloabable from my site... and if they're going to tax people for downloading my music, then I should see that money, shouldn't I?
Im not trying to make a bid for Ethnocentrist of the decade, but do the Canadian musicians and movie industry people really believe their properties make up that large of a percentage of what is being downloaded?
I mean, correct me if I am out of line here, but doesn't the US version of MTV, which isn't shown on any "legal" cable or satellite provider in Canada get multiple times the number of viewers of the various Canadian music television programs (I.E. Much Music)
If our Internet bill helped to fund the music industry, I would suddenly have an attitude that I can copy and download music freely without restriction.
Currently I believe that it is important to respect the owner's copyright and that music should be payed for, if the artists ask for payment.
If this proposal was to be enacted, I'd be curious to see whether it hampers efforts by SOCAN to then sue or harass file swappers. By forcing royalties from the ISPs, they're effectively saying 'Yes, we know our content gets swapped on this channel, and we're taking our share', and lending it an air of legitimacy. Presumably, that's not the intent, though, and they want to extract royalties and continue to persecute the end user by other means.
Regardless, that could be an interesting development.
Fuck You.
I have been pwned because my
We already pay $0.25 per cd-r, "they" want to increase it to around $0.59. As an example, that would increase the take by the music industry of a 30 pack of cd-r's to $17.70, from $7.50, an increase of $10.20. I for one find it offensive that the recording industry is charging me for the right to back up my own, non-musical data, and I doubt that any of the levies collected are rightfully distributed to pornstars that most /. readers have stored in the way of movies on cd-r's. Large per GB levies have also been proposed for portable players, and if I recall correctly, if implemented, the levy on an iPod would be around $200.
There has been a lot of opposition to the proposed $0.59 levy lately, spearheaded by large retailers, so the music industry has turned elsewhere, and that is to ISP's.
"WRONG ANSWER!"
"SOCAN" is not a representative of the Entertainment Industry, all such organizations must have acronyms ending in "A" or "AA".
"SOCAN" is most likely a Canadian organization, possibly standing for "So Canada, SO CANADA,..."
"Next question: what does SHALSHODT stand for?"
Ceci n'est pas une signature
1 canadian dollar = 0.76 US dollars, so no smart comments on how were are only paying pennies in US dollars, please.
It seems the SOCAN technical advisor only seems to know about downloading illegal content from web pages. Let's hope the courts have access to someone slightly more savvy.
I'm totally against piracy of any sort, so it makes me mad when they'd tax me (because you know the ISPs would just pass the costs onto the users) for something I didn't do! This is just the same as those damned proposed taxes on CDRs and HDDs, because they "might" be used for piracy.
Verdict: not a chance in hell, if common sense prevails. If ISPs inform their users that costs will go up because SOCAN considers them all criminals, there'll be enough of an outcry to squash it.
Just come and get me, buttwipes.
As far as taxing at the ISP level goes... why should a file marked "madonna" be assumed to be an MP3 of a particular singer. It could be any number of things.
Ph-nglui mglw'nafh Gates M'dna wgah'nagl fhtagn.
... I feel like freakin' moving!
This is the first I'd heard SOCAN had gotten this far and quite frankly I'm pissed. I don't even have a P2P app installed in my computer, my MP3 collection consists solely of my own CD collection and is in that format for ease of access.
What's next? Royalties on showerheads, shower curtains and bathtubs in case we happen to mumble out a tune while showering?
The problem with our Supreme Court is they'll likely side with SOCAN and we'll end up paying. This is the same court who sided with our domestic DTH satellite providers and outright made it illegal to subscribe to US services in our country, yup for years we did our darndest to broadcast signals behind the iron curtain but when it comes to protecting a few broadcasting monopolies it's ok to ban foreign signals.
Shit we don't get to vote for a new government until next spring but the media have all pretty much named the new PM who is just the guy taking over from the retiring PM, lucky for us in the rest of the country it only takes Ontario and Quebec to vote in the same idiots time after time, the new guy is very pro big business, heck in his private career he made an effort to get around Canadian tax laws by using ships registerd at foreign ports, just the guy to put in charge!
It's common knowledge that electricity is only used by illegal filesharers, so increasing its cost to recoup diminishing profits^W^Wdamages makes a lot of sense.
Naturally, this also includes batteries. Solar panels are allowed (for now) but there's going to be a tax on sunlight soon which should be able to close that gap.
Remember folks: You are consumers. SO START CONSUMING ALREADY! Your unwillingness to consume our drivel^Wproduct is costing us MONEY. If this trend keeps up, we'll be forced to sue you.
Cooper
--
I don't need a pass to pass this pass!
- Groo The Wanderer -
http://www.futureassassin.com
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Personally, I would quite happily pay a premium if they repeal all copyright law as well... but we know this probably isn't going to happen.
At the moment, this seems like another excuse for the labels to grab money from somewhere.
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
The judge in this article says that caching of popular web-pages by ISPs changes their role as mere conduits for information to providers.
Next my modem will be impounded by **AA because it buffers the data coming into it.
There are so many things wrong with what SOCAM are proposing it makes my skin crawl. This is the same principle as the Recording Industry getting a tax on blank CDs because of course they are all being used to pirate the music of those artists owned by them. The principle is that everyone is judged guilty and punishment (fines in the form of tax) are automated and mandatory.
Extending this principle beyond the music industry, you would then logically get the movie tax, a tax on news to reimburse newspaper distributors and those who turn off FOX half-way through, a literature tax to reimburse Random House and McGraw-Hill etc etc.
In fact, what the proposed laws are doing are creating the following viable business model
1. Fail to sell stuff.
2. Introduce laws to make other industries compensate you.
3.???
4. Profit!
Actually, I think number 3 is probably incarcerate any civil liberties campaigners and fine a few people loudly and publicy to financial ruin to scare any transgressors.
Go back to sleep, Canada - your Government is in control.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
1. Claim [insert big group of people] owes you money.
2. ???
3. Infinite profit.
* ??? beeing taxation by private companies, that may or may not produce something.
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
The movie/music industry corrupt out young with popularised violence.
/end 2cents + RIAA tax
Corrupt our young by popularising youth sexuality.
Corrupt our government with taxes on their so called *illegal* copied/downloaded files.
Corrupt our laws with legal exemptions in computer tresspassing(ie riaa wants to break into your computer if they *think* you have their music).
Have laws written that exempt them from litigation and otherwise.
For sure its obvious that those with the technical interllect of 2 year olds are making IT/IP laws.
*My question is, how far down the slippery slope are we?*
Although i used to believe that systems fail because they cannot adjust to a changing world, but now IMHO I have also become to believe that regardless of a system, people will fail to pay attention to detail and thus derail any system after some time and I do feel that is what is happening in many first world legal systems.
Since the only difference between us and those who are starving is our accumulated technology, why is that those with knowledge in technology pay no attention to politics. To have a right to wealth, one must also have a responsibility but I see no responsibility anywhere
ABCD
This legislation sucks ass, as does the blank media levy. However, it's nice to know that a money hungry, technically handicapped, morally devoid association like the RIAA isn't unique to America.
There is a way that the Canadian people could actually end up having a sorted system if this does become law. Unfortunately it requires a high degree of faecal unity on the part of many people.
..... obviously it makes a difference to the record company - just like it makes a difference to McDonalds when you eat at Burger King.
While this is going on, you could lobby your MPs {assuming that is what they are called in Canada} to ensure that if any royalty fees are charged on downloaded music, they should be payable directly to the performer {assuming the performer is the copyright holder} and not exceed the amount that would have been paid had the songs downloaded been obtained on the least expensive pre-recorded medium available {whether this be cassette, CD, LP, MiniDisc or To Be Invented}. If Avril Lavigne {faute de mieux} gets x cents when I buy one of her albums, I don't see why it makes any difference to Avril Lavigne if I just make a copy of the album and pay her the same x cents directly. I mean
And, of course, in the case of unauthorised downloading, you would only ever be held liable for those x cents per track - not the thousands of dollars the RIAA conjures up out of thin air. Call me quaint and old-fashioned, but if you steal a dollar you should pay back a dollar; or at the worst no more than what would buy when you come to pay it back,whatever a dollar would have bought when you stole it.
It would be interesting to see exactly what objections anyone could raise to this proposal. I've even come up with a name for it: non-discriminatory licencing. Basically, if an artist allows a record company to package up and distribute their work for a fee, they have to allow anyone to do the equivalent job for the same fee; anybody's money is as good as anybody else's.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
Why ask for a new law to get a few cents per download when with the current penalties for copyright infringement they can get thousands of dollars per download?
This just in; The Society for Drug Traffickers and Fat Cartel Bosses are asking for royalties from car and plane manufacturers because so many drugs are being sent back and forth over the border using Buicks, Fords and Cessnas without them getting much of a cut.
And in other news, hell just froze over.
Well now, if the ISP's can be made to pay for theft that occurs on their infrastructure, why, then the government is obviously required to do the same for every thief that uses a car to drive on a street during the getaway. I mean - hadn't the street been there, he wouldn't have gotten away. So therefore the street owner is partly responsible for the success of the theft.
Does everything include nothing?
Rush, Bryan Adams, Frank Marino, and noises these guys make, and Celine Fucking Dion, so that leaves those of us with some taste in music in the clear?
If they wish to impose such a fee for Internet, just call it Information Tax and at least be honest with it. It is a tax because it's a legal obligation set by the government that requires people to pay a fixed amount of money. It's Information Tax because it is imposed on all people doing generic information exchange. It's obvious that if you don't pay the Information Tax, you are not allowed to access any information on the net.
Anyone know how the money gets distributed around artists?
Are they just going to distribute the tax around members of this so-called SOCAN, or are they going to somehow monitor the traffic and assign it radio-style?
It would be kind of interesting if it was radio-style (royalty-per-leech).
If I was living in a country where I was paying a copyright infringement tax on my CDs and on my ISP bill, I think I'd feel pretty different about engaging in copyright infringement.
SOCAN KSSmyASS
In canada, there's already a levy on blank CDRs which goes to the music industry...
I'm all for paying money for the music I download. But let these guys asking for my money, first decide who's gonna get it.
I'm certainly not in a mood to pay every tom, dick and harry who wants to jump on this bandwagon asking for cash!
If I pay for a song when I download it (ie. thru iTunes and the like) then I certainly don't want to be taxed for downloading something I already paid for. Then it is for the songwriters to negotiate with the recording industry dinosaurs to get their piece of the pie.
Hmm... if we pay for the file-sharing then the downloads are legal right.
Only problem: The artists don't see the money because this SOCAN puts it in his own pocket. (Here in germany the GEMA is lobby of worldly innocent old poeple with bad karma, huge limousines, own islands with fat villas... [no joke, this is the truth! i worked with somebody who worked for them.])
Because of their bad karma i think they will even try to sue us when wie may more for the treffic, computer, cd/dvd-burner, harddisc, scanner, whatever...
That's why i think they go to hell, because they have to kill me before i'll pay 1 cent to them.
I ONLY pay the artists directly, and only when i think it's WORTH it.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Do we get taxed for car crashes that occur on roads?
No, we get taxed (fined) for speeding, or DUI, on roads.
Read this; the first interesting piece of writing I ever read because of an article on Slashdot (apart from the amazing and innovative taco-snotting-trolls. And I have been around for a long time, as you may have noticed.
--- Anonymous Coward
Then ISP's should be able to charge them back for facilitating a server that allows iTunes and etc (legal music downloads) to bring them revenue. It's all fine and good to say you want a cut of the internet-music-market (and I will not doubt that ISP's make a killing off selling broadband for filesharers, many ppl I know got it to download music), but you can't have your cake and eat it too.
How the fuck can SOCAN ask for a % of adevrtising revenue made by the ISP?
This is gonna open up a can of worms. Next thing you know software companies will create their own lobby/protection group and we'll see more ISP taxes beacause everyone is a thief and the ISP is providing the tool to commit the "crime"
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
were not america. everyone uses the internet here. you tell them they are going to tax the internet and they will flip out.
also i read the article and it doesnt seem that severe. they were already turned down from court and now they are apealing. i have never heard of these people before. Maybe there just upset because most canadian music sucks.
(i am canadian but seriously name 3 good canadian acts other than bowie) no jan arden is not good
This is not a Good Idea. Why in the fuck do I have to pay the following taxes when I'm not copying music illegally? We go through assloads of CD-Rs to archive projcet photos and now we have to pay more "Because I said so." That's pure thuggery.
We're already getting jacked for $.21 for each CD-R we buy and they want that bumped to $.59, double that if it's a "CD-R Audio" disc. You want an MP3 player? Pony up $21 per GB of storage. Memory sticks/cards for your digital camera? Sure! Just hand over .8 cents per megabyte. How about a fancy new 256MB USB dongle for your keychain? Same rate for that, too.
Unfortunately they seem to think I have a lot of money left over so now they're petitioning for an Internet levy on ISPs. Again they take my money and I get ...nothing?
and they call us pirates?Face it. If I really wanted to live in a police state and be subjected to financial shakedowns on the whim of the local merchants I'm quite sure I could find a much warmer place to live than Canada
one better than mcleodeight
This is exactly what I - as a media pirate by habit, mind you - want to see.
In Europe, people pay a small yearly fee for media already. They pay a fee for access to public service television. I see a parallel here...
There has been much talk of compulsory licensing being the only sensible answer to the current situation.
This kind of response is what I want: a blanket scheme where you can choose to pay (to a trusted government entity (1)) a blanket fee, in exchange for the right to download any works for personal noncommercial use during a specific time period. Needless to say, the fee needs to be reasonable. I believe $100-$200 per year is in the appropriate range.
(1) Yeah yeah, I know, "trusted government entity" is an oxymoron. But I trust a government-controlled entity a lot more on this issue than I do the industry's self-interest groups.
The taxi companies must pay Teosto license fee if their drivers wish to keep the radio on when they've got a customer in the car. It doesn't matter if the broadcaster already paid for the songs...
They also tried to extort money from kindergartens, schools and churches for the copyrighted children songs/hymns that were being sung by the kids and churchgoers. That didn't go through - yet. I bet they'll try again soon.
I've often thought that this might be an idea. The problem I see is how does an ISP know what tunes an individual person is downloading?
....
I myself only download a few mp3's a year, and I dont think I would be a prime target for the RIAA (althought I do live in the UK). No-one is denying the fact that sharing mp3's on a grand scale is piracy whether you like it or not it is illegal. I dont condone the practices of the music labels, (who really should be called marketing labels). Nor the RIAA.
I have seen several music stores close down near where I live, which is sad because I do like to actually buy CD's (mainly of older stuff, or on the rare occaisions that I hear a band that I like). Its a sad fact that sales of CD's are falling.
The fact remains that people are going to download mp3's over the net no matter what heavy handed tactics the various organisations try to stop it.So how do you pay for it?
How about a licence? Many companies have a special licence (i beleive it is called a PRS) which grants them to use the music from commercial artists on their call hold music. Same way many bars and clubs have this licence too. That yearly fee ensures that artists get a payback for their tunes being played.
The problem with micropayment services like apples iTunes and the other services that are around is that they are limited in the stuff they have that you might actually want. I'd be very surprised if i could find obscure Pink Floyd or Ozric Tentacles stuff on those services. I use lopster or bit-torrent to find things like that. Herein lies the problem with ISP's charging extra to account for mp3 traffic. If people use obscure p2p software that doesnt go through the ISP's system how are they supposed to know what people have or havent downloaded? If they increased the monthly line rental accross the board there are going to be a lot of angry faces!
Its a difficult system, I can see how passing the cost onto the ISP could help take the hassle away from the end users, but the internet has other purposes than downloading tunes and porn. Surfing slashdot for anti-capitalist whoring and geek stuff takes up a good percentage of my bandwidth.
Yes Im unemployed, and no i havent got a girlfriend. But I do have a band
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
If my ISP has to pay this fee, it means that my connection will get more expensive.
Why do I have to pay because someone else is leeching MP3's?
I buy my CD's to help the industry, is this the thanks I get? Fuck it, if my inet connection fee increases, I'll start downloading MP3's too, and never buy a CD again.
This is something called "mass punishment" and is, AFAIK, illegal in most civilized countries.
Over here such use is a cause for an immediate termination of your contract (if you're staff) or your right to study (if you're a student).
They use some sort of a program to scan the data flow and say that it can detect P2P use even if you tunnel it through some other port like port 80.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
They saw how laws were put into effect in Canada through the courts and said "a ha!!!"
holy shit, canada has music?!
Nobody has yet figuered out where the money from the cd tax goes, cause its cerintaly not the artiest from the news reports.
And we thought the RIAA was evil. They haven't started asking for royalities from ISPs... yet.
10GB iPod: $439.00 + $210 tax = $ 649.00CAD
20GB iPod: $579.00 + $420 tax = $ 999.00CAD
40GB iPod: $729.00 + $840 tax = $1569.00CAD
BTW, you can buy the 12" iBook for 1500.00CAD. I love Canada but this tax is nuts.
"And a voice was screaming: 'Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?'" - HST
if you were paying royalty fees, wouldn't that indemnify you against copyright infringement claims?
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Can't you just see it when the ISP that hosts SOCAN's website (or provides them with connectivity) sends them a $50,000 per month bill (Canadian, or about $25,000 US) due to the "higher costs" of being a part of the internet?
Remember that if Canada taxes the whole internet, then businesses, which usually have more bandwidth than individuals, will likely pay a higher percentage of this so-called tax.
That's going to make for an interesting backlash.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Isn't electricity also used by people who share music online ? Yay...let them tax electricity as well. And water...well online pirates have to drink, how about taxing the water...oh and of course they breathe too !! A tax on air would also work nicely.
I can just move to Canada, pull out my old guitar, announce to the world that I am 'A Musician', and wait for the tax money to roll in. Brilliant!
What, you mean this money won't go to the musicians, it will go to the bloated music distribution industry instead?
More seriously, this is the whole problem with any kind of 'download tax'. Who's going to decide who's a musician who qualifies for money and who's not? If I'm putting up MP3s of my songs on my web site, do I qualify? Or will there have to be some government Department of Music to determine who's a Legally-Qualified Musician? Otherwise it's simply government-supported theft for the IP Barons.
Business needs to change, to adapt to the benefits of our technology.
Look at it this way:
Technology advancements are supposed to be good for us. They are supposed to make our world better, our quality of life better.
At what point does the old economic systems need to change in order to work in accord to such benefits of technology?
The whole point of money is that of a value exchange system, but what happens when our production of value reaches the ultimate point of being able to supply everyone with the basic needs for near nothing?
Lets say I'm an artist, I produce some work that is popular, I want value I can use to exchange for other things, including investments, etc.. and all of this is a matter of my quality of life and influence on the direction of things (personal power)...
At what point of world quality of life and wealth does money hinder more than help?
We need incentive to keep going, we need to be doing something productive that adds or helps to maintain the wealth we have..instead of becomming fat and lazy..
But its clear that music production is alot less costly then it used to be and distribution can ultimately be practically free. Making it possible to have a higher percentage of return against the investment... which might be less than the old expensive way.
But if cost reduction is spread across all products and services...at some point it can be reduced to near nothing.... leaving only the need for incentive to keep going...
Btw.: this post was temporarily stored on an IDE-harddisc configured as SLAVE.
This flamebait is dedicated to all the ugly dick-slinging sons-of-bitches niggers polluting my beloved United States.
HEY HEY HEY! It looks like Canada is run by an evil dictator too! I mean... he's letting SOCAN run things. I guess Chretien isn't any better than Bush.
That's the logic everyone around here seems to be using. Hear something involving the government you don't like... call Bush evil, stupid, and make fun of him. How come I'm not hearing the same thing about Chretien?
Go ahead you crazies... flame on! Be sure to make yourselves look good and foolish!
3cx.org - A truly bad website.
not really? they just want US to stop wrecking it/killing innocents.
they're not just kidding about that.
the daze of the felonous ?pr? ?firm? scriptdead payper liesense georgewellian fuddite corepirate nazi softwar gangster stock markup execrable FraUDsters, is WANing into coolapps/the abyss, at the speed of right/light.
consult with/trust in yOUR creators.... all of us will be seeing the light.
welcome our music hoarding Canadian overlords. Once music sharing becomes legal in Canada, downloading it for free becomes legal for everyone in the US, but best of all, no bogus tax.
Blame Canada, Blame Canada.
Record sales are down,
pirated mp3's abound.
Blame Canada, Blame Canada.
And sharing through proxies located in Canada. Genius! You guys might want to look into upgrading your infrastructure, you might need the extra bandwidth.
Seems like SOCAN is trying to get the Candian IP providers to do their work for them. There'll be costs involved in getting the money from the customers then assigning the correct amount to SOCAN. If you've got a lot of customers this adds up pretty quickly.
Of course the CAIP now looks like the bad guys to Joe Public. I'd suggest the providers simply forward on a list of customers contact details to SOCAN and let *them* worry about how to collect it.
I'm pretty sure they won't collect much.
Dr. Noidburg writes "The scourge of Internet Music and Movie sharing has the Canadian Society of Composers Authors aNd music publishers (SOCAN) pulling out their lawyers. The SCO group, which owns the copyright on the software powering 100% of today's servers, relays, and routers, will be served by SOCAN on Tuesday for their pivotal role in internet piracy. "It's about protecting our artists from those who would make a buck off of their work. 10% of SCO's $699 per-seat license should go to compensating the artists that they have based their business upon. And with SCO's estimated figures of 80% compliance, they owe us about 70 billion in back licensing fees." SOCAN declined to provide any evidence, lest their opponent fabricate enough counter-evidence to convince a judge.
The ______ Agenda
And let me through!
I'm going to barf all over them!
Justin. But call me Darl.
You're only jealous cos the little penguins are talking to me.
Sorry guys but were going to get your broadband reduced to nillband and up your fees becuase some of you have been downloading music.. Of course we cant prove who was doing it so were going to punish everyone.
Dont you love mass punishment.
Same crap happened here... ISP's claim it was to stop the few from hogging all the bandwidth but it was really the RIAA/MPAA demanding they lower our broadband speeds to help curb the speeds we were downloading music. My RoadRunner before the capping frenzy ran around 3.5mbit down 1.8Mbit up.. now you can only get 768/128 verizon and SBC is worse 384/128 for the standard fee..
Now I wish I could get Speakeasy DSL at least for a similar price I could get2+mbit up and down but my phone company has a monopoly on the phone lines.
For once the music industry is thinking clearly. I think this is a great suggestion. It's a welcome relief to find the music industry thinking about the greater good for a change.
As others have pointed out, in many countries - like Canada and the UK - we pay a tax on TV to support the national broadcasters, the CBC and BBC. So why *not* an information tax? It's for the public good and would clear up a lot of issues in one stroke.
The only thing we have to do before implementing the tax is nationalize the music industry. (A tax is something you pay the public. Money paid to the music industry for using blank media is not a tax, it's compensation for perceived damages.) Of course, artists will be able to choose whether and to what degree they want to be on the new Canadian Music Commons label, and will be paid accordingly.
It's surprising that the music industry wants to sacrifice itself for the good of artists and the public. But if that's what they want to do, who are we to stand in their way? Maybe we could put up a statue or something for 'em.
I own and run a small general store in a small town in a small country. Up to now, business has been good, and my fat-assed wife and our fat-assed kids have enjoyed bounty well beyond what they deserve.
But times are changing. iTunes cuts into our CD sales, and online grocers really destroy us.
I have therefore gone to my local municipal government to ask for compensation through taxation. I believe Internet surfers must be made to pay for the damage they have done to my business.
Regards,
Jim-Bob
SOCAN is a performing rights agency. It is the Canadian equivalent of BMI and ASCAP in the United States. These organizations collect money for the composers and publishers of music. They do not collect money for the recording artists. (Note that the composers and publishers are often different from the recording artists.) And they're not an industry lobby group like the RIAA.
Eric
The views expressed are mine own and do not express the views of my employer.
you are assuming that laws are logical. Let me challenge that assumption: here in Germany we pay sort of a tax on blank media and recorders. Music industry is even trying to broaden the scope of these royalties: they are currently pushing for a copy tax on printers (older link here.).
In addition to that, there is an entity called GEMA which makes sure that radio stations pay for each song they play. Public radio and TV cost consumers a monthly fee, too.
Recently they made a new copyright law. Copying for private use used to be legal, and strictly by the letter of the law still is, but circumventing copy protection mechanisms in order to do something the law explicitly allows you to do is now illegal. In other words: They didn't outlaw crossing the road. They made touching the ground with your feet while crossing the road a crime.
So consumers over here are forced to pay for the same product multiple times. All attempts to set that straight have failed so far. I have a hunch that this kind of legal creativity may become an exportschlager.
I find your comments pompus and overrated.
I am writting this to let you know, I'll be charging you an exhorbitent service fee for having read them, and providing this insightful feedback
You now owe be one hog's head of Linux kernals [retail value $699.00 per kernal].
www.HearsayMusic.ca legal canadian independent artists' mp3 download
=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=
Daniel
http://people.cinn.ca/daniel/
Write it in a letter, and send copies to SOCAN, your MP, and the editorial page of your local newspaper / TV station.
/. is pointless, you're preaching to the converted. You need to make issues such as this known to the general populace, Speak to them as a songwriter yourself and show them how this does not help songwriters, it only helps huge money grubbing corperations to suck more money out of young artists than they already do,
Saying stuff like this on
just need to learn that copyright is basically imoral. Earn your money by doing a job - hold a concert, fine, that's a job, you get paid for that. Someone listens to your song? No, you don't get paid for that. In the fair world that is.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Of course, there are two arguments against having the ISP block illeagal data. The first is the technical difficulty of detecting it which most
The second issues is more subtle and that is who is deciding the legality of this data? Does the **AA just send a list of filenames to all ISPs that they are obliged to block? What grants the **AA this authority, what about disputes over legality, are the ISPs liable?
The first issue is what gets most
Of course there is the ethics of scanning everyone's internet traffic without just cause or warrants, but let's keep to things that might have an effect.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
Eh?
Tell me what else is new.
Anyone beginning to see what the problem is when you start allowing courts to rule on what's "right" instead of what the actual law is?
This isn't so bad. It actually means that they're giving up the fight over control. They still get paid, but I can download whatever I want. It's the same logic as the CDR levy. It's really not that heavy for the end user. I suspect that the pool will be expanded at some point to include movie publishers, software publishers, etc.
Once that is law, just imagine how easy it would be to find a high quality copy of your latest favourite song instead of a buzzy Kazaa mp3.
It doesn't imply that the end user is a criminal, it does imply that it's an activity that almost everyone partakes in. This seems like an equitable way to solve the problema and make it go away. Very Canadian.
You need to establish a trade route to subsidise the fuel both ways. I might recommend diversifying your cargo. Say have cigarettes and have CD-R. Then smuggle bongs and pot back into the US. The beauty part of that is, the bongs and pot can be sold together. That is synergy my friend. Only problem is your butt might end up being the butt in someone else's prison rape joke. And as some slashbots are quick to remind us, that is, under no circumstances, funny. Even if there is a novelty sphincter buzzer involved, it is still not funny.
What if I'm dl'ing a copy of a new Linux distro but all the ISP's see is bandwidth usage?
Does that mean I'm to pay extra to obtain freeware?
I'm not "legal educated", but can the empty pocket publishers generalize justification to everyone despite whether they're dl'ing slopyyrighted garb or not? Would that not be the equivalent of burning everyone and calling them witches?
Some aim to please, I aim to tease.
This is bullshit, in Canada we already pay a tax on blank media that goes towards music artists and now they want to tax ISP's, which will then pass the tax onto the users. What if I don't download music why should I have to pay this tax? This is just another way for the music industry to make more money.
If people will start paying a tax for the stuff they "steal" then it's not theft anymore. At least I think that's how reasonable people will see it. It will actually legitimize the sharing of music and movies.
The SOCAN (or whatever their name is) are just shooting themselves in the leg here.
and tell SOCAN that SCO uses the Internet without paying royalties to them!
NoSuchGuy
Grundgesetz * 23. Mai 1949 - 30. November 2007 - http://www.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/
I guess I'll stop spending all my free time listening to Canadian Rock and Roll...
Oh, wait - I never listen to any music from Canada.
Do they have bands up there?
The above was an attempt at humor
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
>And no, there is no actual difference between the 2 types of CD-R, just how much you pay.
Wrong, buddy. There *is* a difference. There's audio units that can record audio CDs, however these units will only accept *music* CD-Rs.
I've been told the music CD-Rs have something pre-written on them that those units look for when trying to write on the CD.
After all, if there wasn't any difference, why would people pay almost 10$ for 5 music CD-Rs when they can get 50 data CD-Rs for about 40$ (let's stay with the prices of good CD-Rs such as Fuji, for the sake of the argument)
So thanks for your input, thanks for trying to help and all, but please quit now before you really fuck the facts for the others!
what about AN SCO like?
I think I speak for every Canadian when I say:
Take off, eh!
Since I don't download music or movies on my net connection that I already pay $50/month for, SOCAN will be getting a bill from me if this passes. I'm not paying for something I don't "use". I'll send a monthly bill to them for whatever the increase is and let a collection agency have it with them. They can come and look over my computer to see what I have/don't have on it.
An optimist believes we live in the best world possible; a pessimist fears this is true.
and the internet service provider's position was at least represented by an eloquent speaker. I was surprised, however, that the segment noted that Canadian radio stations pay SOCAN a chunk of money, but nobody made the obvious (to me, anyway) observation that the people who enable radio communications are not paying SOCAN. The ISPs are saying, "don't go after us, go after the people who are distributing your material, like website owners, internet radio djs, etc." To drive the point home, they should be saying, "you don't get a check from the guy who builds the radio tower, or the guy who puts up the antannae, do you? then leave us alone for providing an infrastructure"
"Now gluttony and exploitation serves eight!" - TV's Frank
The difference is that stand-alone (hifi) cd-recorders require Audio-CDRs in order to burn anything. At least as far as any I've seen.
If you got a PC however, this is a non-issue.
Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.
Greedy bastards. Penalize everyone because of the minority. Typical. They better not do this, we're already taxed enough as it is. I don't know why I have to pay for their crap being downloaded by someone else.
but i can guarantee you unless you are a member of SOCAN, or have your Artistic Lisence (unless this licence is a provincial thing here to saskatchewan, which i'd highly doubt...)...your chances of getting any of this royalty stuffs is pretty slim.
i'm pretty pissed off at this, actually.
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
From comics.com
Please carefully read the whole damned section including the second part.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
wicked, so now we can all think that we're paying for the music we're stealing, and steal more of it, guilt free.
till we ensure that we leave SOCANs left foot bleeding, right hand smoking.
A tax on sunlight? Something similar has been suggested before. More than 150 years ago Frederic Bastiat wrote his satire where the light manufaturing industries complain about the unfair foreign competition from the sun and ask the lawmakers to outlaw windows. Excerpts:
My problem with this situation is the same one that I have with the current CD tariff. I use black CDs all the time for backing up my HDs and for Linux distros. I have bought a over 100 blanks in the last couple of years.
But the thing is, I don't like most of the music that's being put out these days. There are a few bands that I don't mind but nothing that I really go out of my way for, so therefore I don't copy my friends CDs and don't download much from the internet. But I still have to give the recording industry my money. So my question is, if I'm paying for all of this content, where is it?
This is the problem with blanket royalties, it assumes that I'm a criminal and punishes me for it. Even though I have no interest in the product that I'm suppose to be stealing.
It really pisses me off because not only I'm I paying for content that I'm not recieving, but it also means that if I actually want to support an artist and buy their content, I'm paying for it twice.
And now if they bring in the internet tariff I'll be paying again, from something I STILL DON'T WANT!
"Microsoft wants to own your identity and rent it back to you for a few bucks per month," - Clay Shirky
I'm waiting for the tax on all people with ears. Those people with ears are untrustworthy! They could be walking along one day and hear music created by starving artists just trying to get by. They should pay royalties to be able to listen to other people's music!
SOCAN is the Canadian equivalent of ASCAP or BMI. Performance Rights royalties. ie: any public performances of a copyrighted work.
The model which was created for radio, we're talking back in the 1920's here, was that radio stations apply for licenses to be able to play copyrighted works over the airwaves. All well and good. It means that radio - for the consumer who's listening to it - remains "free," since the stations are the ones paying for the music itself.
What SOCAN is asking for here is the equivalent of asking a record store - a place where a consumer already pays for recorded music - to also pay this licensing fee. Which is retarded. Unless they are limiting this only to single hosts who provide ONLY streaming audio (which they are not) I could see it. An entire ISP which may or may not be carrying audio files, audio streams, etc.: that's ridiculous.
Canada's government - and the governments of other media-producing countries - require someone under the age of 75 in these organizations (and the legal community) to speak to both the legal and technological aspects of the changing nature of music distribution. Continuing to apply this nearly two-century-old model to something as "new" as streaming and file downloads is just stupid.
ad
Because I can! [Brainrub.com]
Here's the thing:
I don't mind those taxes on blank CD's and wouldn't mind taxes on bandwidth. As long as they are for the end user minimal in impact. No tax should stiffle growth.
But the stupid thing is: why should the music industry have sole benefit?
Come on, guys/grrls! Programmers Unite!
A shitheap of illegal and legal downloads and copies are made of your work.
In the end, if the money is well spent I say: "More power to you", but for every ten CD's I burn, maybe one is music - LEGALLY aquired, thankyouverymuch - and the rest is backups, pictures, my own work and programs. I actually don't think I'm very different in this than most people.
Cheers
I think, therefore I am...I think.
Are we sure that this is going to be a "tax" on everybody's connection? It sounded to me like the ISPs would be forced to tally up the songs you download and pay only the royalties for that song. The issue was that those costs would be passed on to the user, and the software for checking for song downloads would slow down the connection.
I see a lot of "this isn't so bad" comments, but you really need to take things one step further.
So $5 per month gets added to our ISP bill (it won't be a tiny amount), and now the music industry is happy. Now it's the movie industry's turn -- let's add another $5. Oops, software association is losing their money too -- $5. Almost forgot ebook publishers -- $2.
And if past performance on our CD-levy is anything to go by, that rate will just keep rising. Every year the "levy" we pay on blank CDs keep climbing. What's to stop them from hiking the "levy" on ISPs each year?
This could turn into a mess quickly.
"The market alone cannot provide sufficient constraints on corporation's penchant to cause harm." -- Joel Bakan
Something has to be done about all of the Anne Murray, Loverboy & Celine Dion downloading going on out there!
This is NOT a workable solution. I already asked for royalties on Net usage ... and so I should be paid before Canadian Music Industry weenies.
There is no point for me being in business if everyone is going to steal my work. People just download my software WITHOUT PAYING. I spent a lot of time collecting the very best open source and public domain software - SHOULDN'T I BE COMPENSATED for these efforts???
Secondly, The Supreme Court of Canada should never make a ruling in which it punishes all the children for a portion of the children's activities. I realize that our government is corrupt and there's no hope for us, but this is going too far.
"Hello Canadians, this is The Liberal Party speaking. Though many of you have done nothing wrong, you will all be taxed by the music industry, because we get to tax them. Blame them though, they did it! It has nothing to do with the fact that we have appointed several of the Justices in the Supreme Court! Blame the music industry, don't look this way, ignore the man behind the curtain while we collect taxes from you until you bleed from your eyes!"
Soon, they will tax air.
"It's here, but no one wants it." - The Sugar Speaker
The levy is the main reason why I purchased a MP3 player with internal hard drive now rather than wait for perhaps a newer model with more features, etc. - for an MP3 player with a 20 gig hard drive it will cost an additional $420 - hardly an "invisible" amount. Maybe they would even put the levy on internal cache memory on the player?
2 -b.pdf for a pdf with legal details. For less formal info and background just Google.
For the official information on the levy people can go to http://www.cb-cda.gc.ca/tariffs/proposed/c0903200
Did not see anyone posting this - perhaps people don't know the rates proposed. Here they are:
(a) 60 for each audio cassette of 40 minutes or more in length;
(b) 59 for each CD-R, CD-RW or each unit of any other type of recordable or rewritable compact disc of 100 megabytes or more of storage capacity;
(c) $1.23 for each CD-R Audio, CD-RW Audio or MiniDisc;
(d) 0.8 for each megabyte of memory in each removable electronic memory card, each removable flash memory storage medium of any type, or each removable micro-hard drive;
(e) $2.27 for each DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+RW, DVD-RAM or each unit of any other type of recordable or rewritable DVD;
(f) 2.1 for each megabyte of memory in each non-removable electronic memory card or each non-removable flash memory storage medium of any type incorporated into each MP3 player or into each similar device with internal electronic or flash
memory that is intended for use primarily to record and play music;
(g) $21 for each gigabyte of memory in each non-removable hard drive incorporated into each MP3 player or into each similar device with an internal hard drive that is intended for use primarily to record and play music
Regarding the RIAA and it's various clones: what is this collective presumption that they, of all industries, are somehow special? What are they, some kind of natural resource that needs to be protected against poaching or theft? Is industry-spawned music just so goddamned important that the most powerful tool for worldwide technological and cultural advancement ever invented, the Internet, must be dismantled or neutered? Who are these people?
One can imagine the state of technology and civilization today if, say, Thomas Newcomen had sued James Watt for vastly improving Newcomen's primitive steam engine, or had gotten a law passed making such improvements illegal. These people need to be made aware, by whatever means, that they are of so little consequence to society that the rewriting of key portions of a nation's legal system to suit their own ends is absolutely UNACCEPTABLE.
I understand the argument that copyright is important, and that the rights of copyright holders under those laws are important (John Hancock might disagree with that, and the validity of the copyright concept itself is even more questionable now that it was two hundred years ago.) Still and anon, Copyright has long been an important part of our culture and isn't going to go away soon. But (and this is an important "but") those rights have always been strictly limited, to provide balance between the need to encourage the creative spark while simultaneously promoting the public domain. The Founding Fathers were were pretty sharp, actually, and for a long, long time these principles worked very well. But lo and behold, here in the 21st century, we find that the LAW itself requires more defense than does the actual content it is supposed to "protect"!
The problem with all monopolies is that they have a fixed lifetime, in that some technological (or cultural) change will eventually knock them from their perch (that is, if their own bad decision-making doesn't do them in first.) This has happened countless times before (George Gilder coined the phrase "Creative destruction" to describe this phenomenon) but what makes the RIAA/MPAA and their evil siblings abroad so dangerous is their willingness to buy law, any law, without any thought to damage done outside their own little piece of the economy. It is bad enough when corporate leaders abuse their own employees. It's another thing entirely when they attack core elements of their own countries legal systems. People with so little social consciousness should simply not be allowed to run billion-dollar corporations.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Okay let me just iron out this issue. I will be forced to pay more for my internet access because they are going to assume I'm downloading illegal/copyrighted material? Thats idiotic, everyone knows assumptions are the mother of all fuckups. I download on average maybe 1-5songs a year. Usually they're songs from the collection of old cds I have boxed up in my closet which I failed to unpack after moving here three years ago. If my internet fee's go up even $1 for this crap, you can expect me to go buy a few 200+gig drivers, and download, download, download. What garbage, I allready have to pay royalties when I buy cd's and burn knoppix, or debian or anything personal for that matter. I wonder if Rogers' (Canada's largest ISP) new limit of aprox. 30gigs a month has anything to do with pressure from groups like this? Considering if you call Rogers they will not give you an exact number just say 'I guess about 30gigs' pretty pathetic if you ask me.
No, this is
Fine I will just use the money to buy a larger harddrive to store this stuff instead. But slower speeds and extra costs just to access the internet?
I thought it was funny when a competing service was trying to get me to use their service when they mentioned they have a five gig cap per month, and my current service doesn't seem to have any cap at all.
Sheesh five gigs! I can go through that in a DAY! For legit reasons too, like grabbing all the ISOs of a distro.
Gosh will we have to pay for EVERYTHING that could be possibly be transferred over the net, next newspapers will want a cut cause we might read it online instead of buying dead tree versions. Even though they make them available LEGIT online.
Hey,this guy Anonymous Coward sure owns a lot of comments here on Slashdot! Oh wait, that's me! I sure own a lot of comments here on Slashdot. I think there ought to be an extra 1% tax on those ISP's to compensate me for all those people viewing my words of wisdom and humour!
A.C.
This really makes me angry. I avoided joining SOCAN and have released all my music over the internet free of SOCAN. Most of it has been played in the States anyways, where I'm also free of the RIAA and such.
It's cost me a lot of potential money as well. One morning radioshow played my song very frequently they told me, and that I would be getting royalties for it. However since I don't belong to the proper Unions and such I didn't see a dime.
I must admit though, with stunts like this and SOCAN's other anti-piracy initiative, the levy on all blank media, it's getting worse here instead of better.
I'm feeling more American every day.
"Consumers could very well see an increase in their Internet costs and they could see a slowdown in the transmission speed of their Internet communications."
But remember, the law would be for your protection and to serve the interestes of the people, as all laws must do.
Apparently Internet music and movie sharing in Canada has gained enough popularity to turn the heads of the music and movie industry.
That's right. Laura Secord, the proud Inuit owner of our country's only computer, has dialed up with her revolutionary 14.4kbps ATi modem and downloaded an OGG by Voivod from Kazaa.
Apparently my ass.
Yes, I am bitter. Fine, I'll cut down on the caffeine.:)
Is this a sigs-optional kind of place? 'Cause I am totally down with that if you know what I mean.
Rush is one I can think of.
As long as the fee is small enough ( $1 per month per DSL connection) it seems fair enough
i understand your point - however, i dont download music. i dont listen to shitty music. why should i have to pay for it?
you are lumping music together with universal health care, education, and civil liberties. Do you really think it merits this attention?
We're like rats, in some experiment! -- George Costanza
Doesn't make more sense simple to extend the blank media tax to MP3 players and even hard drives?
A tax on your MP3 player, seems more fair than a tax on your internet connection.....
The money only goes to a handful of famous "singers".
I doubt it. In fact, I say flat out, they never see a penny. In fact, the singers are charged enormous sums of money to get on the "list" to receive money they'll never see a penny of. In fact, the singers are then tossed to the garbage if they complain that they're paying enormous sums of money to get on the "list" to receive money they'll never see a penny of.
Time to leave the world of RIAA/MPAA and move to independent artists, I say.
What was the question, again?
This fear of lawsuits is so strong that many corporations won't even challenge a false copyright. Have you picked up a copy of Shakespeare and looked at the backside of the title page? What's there but a (c) declaration by the publisher. On what? They clearly have a coyright on the modern introduction but not on the plays and sonnets. Brooklyn Law School published an article about this disturbing trend entitled "False Copyrights" about publishers that claim copyright on public domain works. The fear of lawsuits (or aversion to paying to lititage) has driven many universities and publishers to begin denying fair-use rights of students, faculty and authors. In many cases universities are agreeing to royalty licenses when fair use would allow them to use the materials. Publishers are requiring authors to get explicit written permission to quote the works of other authors when fair use would grant them a priori permission.
I don't really have a problem with churches and schools paying standard tarrifs on copyright songs (we make them buy text books) but I absolutely draw the line at chilling fair use through fear of litigation and will not stand for publishers that claim copyright on public domain works.
Common... wake up ! You' are all victim of an international propaganda... What is the problem??? i'll tell you, THERE IS NO PROBLEM !!!
Can anyone here tell me the name of only ONE artist that really suffer from piracy ? I mean... new artists will gain from being knowns as their music is spreading over the network. And, for the other that have big contract with recording insdutry... well... maybe their benefits will be cut a little... so what... oh my god.. Britney Spears will earn only 15 million this year over 20 millions last years... oh.. so sad...
I see this same idea again and again and I HATE it.
So, because something has worked for the last fifty to one hundred years that is how it must always be? Just keep a bad idea on life support for about a generation and that's it you can go to court and be declared a national necessity.
It is not the artist but the industry that has popped up to support the commercialization of music that are in trouble here and since they all have skills other than being artist they should be able to find work in other industries. End of story. Thanks music biz, it was nice knowing you but as of about now you are all dinosaurs. You have to do what so many others before you have done, go somewhere else and get a job.
Now back to the artist, my friend is in a band that has been around for over twenty years. They have had a few "record deals" but have always kept ownership of the music. They tell me they have always made more money touring and selling from the fan club than any contract. Now with the internet they are making more money than ever and the fan club (paid members) is the largest it has ever been.
It is the opinion of this band that "music sharing" helps them because they would never get on the radio any way or not enough to help but when someone finds their music and likes it, it eventually leads them to the web site or a show and that, is what brings in the money.
So this proposed tax (and that is what it is, Canadian's have a problem being honest with taxation) will increase costs to the consumer, devalue what ever funds are collected (the cost to process this tax), and what little gets back will likely go into the wrong hands.
Now more bad effects, by propping up a dying system with tax dollars you not only put off the enviable but the wasted (now) tax dollars put a negative effect on the economy, exactly the opposite effect you were hoping for in the first place. Gee thanks.
Do not doubt it : it is a known fact in France that the money the SACEM collect from the blank cdr sales goes to Celine Dion, Johnny Halliday and some others top10 singers'producers (once the SACEM collects its fee, of course).
Had they given the benefits to the least earning artists I'd have agreed to buy my CDRs there...
Trolling using another account since 2005.
SOCAN tried shutting down independant shows where I used to live cause they didn't make any royalties of the shows because the bands didn't sign to SOCAN. These kinds of groups cripple creative music done outside of mainstream corporate labels. i am slightly biased against them after they threatened to sue local punk rockers who weren't signed to SOCAN who were just playing little 100 - 300 person shows. SOCAN are sick and evil and the money only ends up in the hands of crap artists like Celion Dion and Bryan Adams.
If an ISP has to pay the tax for its volume of traffic, then what if one of their customer's is re-selling internet services? Do they also have to pay the same tax? I've seen cases where ISP reselling is at least 4 levels deep, and I'm sure there are deeper cases. If each layer has to pay the tax, then you are being double or triple or quadruple taxed or worse. Are they going to make sure the tax is fair? But if fairness is to be a part of this, then what about all the people that don't download, trade, or share music? Most business customers don't do that, and I suspect half the consumer base doesn't, either. So who gets screwed?
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Perhaps you should read the act again. And maybe the rest of this story for other explanations. I hope you realize we are talking about Canada, not the US?
I have read the act itself, consulted with a judge, and read various interpretations. It is not a myth, you can copy a CD someone has lent to you for your own use.
In Soviet Canada, the act debunks you.
The ISP aren't d/l the files therefore they aren't legally responsible for paying compensation. It's a matter of culpability...
The GEEK shall inherit the earth...
What myth? It is legal to copy music in Canada. Google "copyright act canada" if you want, you'll find the text I have included. Note that this doesn't say anything about only being able to copy originals, despite what others have said. Copying is legal, but file sharing probably isn't, if you look at the limitations 2(a) and 2(b):
infringement of copyright
80. (1) Subject to subsection (2), the act of reproducing all or any substantial part of
(a) a musical work embodied in a sound recording,
(b) a performer's performance of a musical work embodied in a sound recording, or
(c) a sound recording in which a musical work, or a performer's performance of a musical work, is embodied
onto an audio recording medium for the private use of the person who makes the copy does not constitute an infringement of the copyright in the musical work, the performer's performance or the sound recording.
Limitation
(2) Subsection (1) does not apply if the act described in that subsection is done for the purpose of doing any of the following in relation to any of the things referred to in paragraphs (1)(a) to (c):
(a) selling or renting out, or by way of trade exposing or offering for sale or rental;
(b) distributing, whether or not for the purpose of trade;
(c) communicating to the public by telecommunication; or
(d) performing, or causing to be performed, in public
-- Pot is safer than Beer
What would the rate be based on? Would it be based on actual download/trade/share traffic? Or would it be based on total traffic volume? If an ISP passes the charges on to their customers (how can they not do so?), how is it divided up among customers? Will it be by connection capacity? Actual bandwidth used? Or will they monitor and see how much is actually illegal music (assuming they can crack the next generation encrypted protocols which I doubt they can)?
Merely having a copy of music is not the same as listening to it. Someone who has a collection of 20 songs they regularly listen to is actually getting as much benefit as someone who has a collection of a million songs but regularly listens to about 20 of them (though he might have a larger ISP bill). Maybe the rate should be based on the maximum capacity to listen to music, which tops out at 168 hours a week. So why not a fixed price per person regardless of how much they download, since they can't listen to more than a certain amount (unless they listen to 2 or more songs concurrently)?
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
I realize that Canada is like... America's half brother, or just another American state. But damn, it feels good that some other country is making or propsing idiotic laws.
I don't feel so isolated now, even if it is just a illusion.
Don't spoil my fantasies. Shush.
If only there were a way to convince the Mindless Masses(tm) from purchasing the big name shit. How do you get the message across to stupid teens that they shouldn't buy the next Britney or Limp Bisquick CD? I know when I was a teen I'd buy full albums based on one over-played song just cuz the song would get stuck in my head (see previous story on "Ear Worms"). How do you get through to people like this and get them to support independants?
(And please, no retorts that yes there are teens who have taste and support the alternatives. I know that. I'm talking about the majority here, who are responsible for keeping the big labels in business, churning out manufactured crap.)
The more this story is talked about, the more people will understand the unfairness of the concept of taxing item A for item B's use.
The link to ctv's story is here
Write an email and let them know how you feel about it.
I personally have not downloaded a single fucking music track or a movie for over two years now (I used to do that, but I just don't want to do it any more, I actually almost don't listen to music and I don't own a TV for about half a year now) and I have to pay extra for all those fuckers who want to steal fucking music? (yeah, it is still stealing in my vocabulary, so don't start.)
SHIT.
You can't handle the truth.
They had a sale recently when it was $10 for 40 CD's
It's called a loss-leader. The merchant advertises and sells something at a loss just to get you inside the store. The probability is that while you are in the store, you will buy other items and that will make up for the loss on the CDR's.
*** Where are we going? And what's with this handbasket?
Is their anywhere I can move to that is civilized, yet allows freedom from the RIAA ect?
No, no... judges don't let their opinions affect their approach to the law. What was I thinking?
Never at a loss for words... because of the voices.
the supreme court will see some sense, and realize that it's not hte ISPs job, no more than it's the phone company's job to prevent people from using the phone to talk about drugs.
This is a non-government society (SOCAN) going to the Supreme Court to try to force ISPs to pay them royalties for downloaded music, most likely by twisting existing laws about peformance. (these are the peopel you pay when you want ot do performance, like, playing music in your store so the shoppers can hear it. Know why stores use musak instead of the radio, or real cds? Because they can avoid paying royalties to SOCAN.)
I'm not too concerned.
DATs and CD-Rs are already taxed here for the benefit of Canadian artists.
But if ISPs are taxed, I curious how you can then enforce laws claiming that the 'sharing' is illegal? Might become an interesting test case.
-psy
This fear of lawsuits is so strong that many corporations won't even challenge a false copyright. Have you picked up a copy of Shakespeare and looked at the backside of the title page? What's there but a (c) declaration by the publisher. On what? They clearly have a coyright on the modern introduction but not on the plays and sonnets. Brooklyn Law School published an article about this disturbing trend entitled "False Copyrights" about publishers that claim copyright on public domain works.
This is known as "copyright fraud". Which has never been as strongly punishable by law as copyright infringement. Probably because the major offenders here are corporate publishers. It is also possible for copyright fraud to involve work still under copyright. e.g. SCO Linux
We will forge our own path, non-beholden to Ottawa and the provinces adjacent to it!
Years ago I started a site that provided a platform for up and coming DJs to share their mixes with the world as well as providing them with the resources to do live streaming.
First contact with SOCAN was my initial inquiry as to how this should be done legitimately. The response came that I was asking about a "grey area" and that the issue had come up for discussion within SOCAN and had been put aside for about a year.
A year later I contacted them again with the same query, I got the same answer along with a suggestion to document all play lists because their goal would likely be to compensate the individual artists and there would be royalties to pay (I thought this was dodgy anyhow, was SOCAN really going to hunt down Gunther who runs a tiny record label from his parents' basement in Germany? The majority of the audio being played was from tiny, obscure labels scattered throughout the world, not to mention the promotional copies and white labels)
Subsequent queries gave me the same answer every time; I kept detailed playlists and wondered what the bill would be when it came around..
This went on for a few years. Fairly recently my project switched gears and no longer streams audio through the web -- and now this!!
Perhaps this was the experience of many others, realizing the nightmare that it would be to implement the plan that SOCAN initially hinted at, this may have been seen as the easiest way to approach the issue.
At the very least my experiences with SOCAN left me with the impression that this was an incompetent bunch that didn't have a clue. At most they came off as lazy and unresponsive and ultimately played no role whatsoever in this fairly long-running project.
Pure and utter crap.
ISPs are the providers of bandwidth. Thats all. They shouldnt have to police the use of that bandwidth. That is for the authorities to do.
The music industry wants a carte blanche tax for the stolen music people are trading, but they cant for certain say how many files are traded just that they are. I dont buy it and I dont think that the supreme court will either.
I as a consumer should not have to pay for the crimes of others. This is a breach of my rights. They are basically saying that all citizens are criminals and therefore should have to pay for their crimes.
Crap!
"You're on my side and the dark side, like Lando Calrissian?" --Gimpy, Undergrads
Everybody who thinks the USA will allow Canada to go ahead with this scheme, please raise your hands.
(Yes, I know we're on Slashdot and I can't see you raise your hands, but that's OK because I would have ignored you anyway cause you're wrong.)
The US could not possibly cope with us having legal music file sharing in this country. We've got better broadband service and more broadband uptake than most countries and lots of people trading files around already.
I expect that the RIAA and their puppets will weigh in against this idea and in turn the White House will make its opinion known here in Canada.
By the time all this hits the fan our PM will be Paul Martin, who I expect will be competing with Tony blair for a place on George Bush's lap. We will see the SOCAN lawsuits against 12 year old girls start soon after the ISP tax idea is shot down.
This is just a cash grab, nothing more than that.
It's not even a particularly well-thought-out cash grab. All they're thinking is, "Hey, we can get even more free money! It worked with CD-Rs, why not just get the government to collect money for us for every person on the entire Internet?"
I have big problems with for-profit organizations using the government to bolster their bottom line.
Nuff Said.
So where's my motivation to avoid using P2P software now? Considering I'm being imposed up on to pay up whether I pirate music now or not, the very act of buying CD-Rs means I'm supporting a recording industry even if I use those CD-Rs to back up documents. Why should I buy music or movies legitimately anymore?
"I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
-Hoban Washburn
I don't understand the outrage. Us Canadians have been looking on with envy at the antics of the RIAA all these years. If America has music facists, then we will have music facists. And they'll be made-in-Canada facists to boot. Let nobody say we are second best at anything.
In Canada, we already pay a fairly hefty CD-R levy because the jackasses in the recording industry convinced our government that CD-Rs are probably used to illegally copy their material (nobody uses CD-Rs to backup files, of course). Now that I pay these levies to the recording industry, I happily download and burn as much music as I want to. I'm already paying for the right!
I was feeling a bit guilty about downoading and burning movies as well, but something like the proposed new royalties (trickled down to my internet bill) would definitely alleviate this moral burden. If I'm paying for it anyway, you'd better believe I'm going to make the most of it.
You can make copies of the one you bought, you can lend your copy to a friend. Any dancing around that ends up with you and your friend (and the ever-expanding circle of your other friends and their friends) having copies in use is just wishful thinking.
And duh, yes I'm talking about Canada.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
The ruling says that ISP's should pay royalties because they're using a cache, which as we know is used to improve the perceived responsiveness of the 'net.
The thinking behind this ruling is that as soon as an ISP implements a cache, it ceases to be a 'common carrier' because they choose the content that goes into the cache.
As phrased, though, you can see the logical hole: it's not the ISP that put the content in the cache - they're only providing a service with well defined rules. Instead, it's the ISP's *users* who 'vote' for a particular resource often enough for it to need caching.
Given that, it's not the ISP's that should be charged, but the end users themselves!
So what I think should be done is one of these two things:
1) configure the proxies to not cache binary data except for inline images. All text data is ok. This means that mp3's or other forms of digital music will never be cached, and everyone's happy.
2) configure the proxies in such a way as to be income generators, then turn around and say to the customer, if you want 'fast' net access, you have to pay for it (and that covers SOCAN's costs, plus a little profit).
All this is not to say that SOCAN's royalty rates are particularily fair. 0.25 per subscriber per year, sure, but 10% of the ISP's profits too? Sorry, SOCAN, make the CAIP a better deal!
On a sidenote, several people have posted something to the extent of "this law is good because it makes music downloads legal". I just don't see how this follows. What I think will happen is that the RIAA (or its Canadian equivalent) will tax ISPs an then go on on their merry way suing people left and right. Common sense doesn't really apply to laws anymore.
>|<*:=
Sure you can make copies for your own use. But I'd say that limitation (b) distributing, whether or not for the purpose of trade; covers all the wink-wink, lend a copy to a friend and he makes copies, nudge-nudge piracy with a fancy dress on stuff.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Common carrier status indemnified ISPs long before the DMCA came along to complicate our lives. One suspects that if common carrier weren't already an established doctrine, the DMCA would have allowed nailing anyone in reach.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
They've been trying since 1996 to place a Tariff on Canadian Internet broadcasters, only to be shot down each year. It's little known that this 'tax' is worse than the most expensive proposal from the US counter part from the RIAA and also more intrusive into listeners personal listening habits.
I've been fighting against Tarriff 22 (the tarriff aimed directly at broadcasters) for a number of years now with a lot of support from other Canadian radio stations and listeners. Our fight has seemingly not fallen on deaf ears because each year it gets shot down again. This new blanket 'tax' on ISP's falls directly in line with similar unfair blanket taxes they have implemented in the past with blank media.
SOCAN doesn't seem to realize that by charging these huge tariffs on people and ISP's enjoying music on the Internet it doesn't benefit musicians but actually prevents the incentive for people to seek out music.
But then again, music is all about profit, right?
Most Office Max or Office Depot or CompUSA's do this every couple of weeks.
My friends and I just have stockpiles of the things...
Do they not do this elsewhere ?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
And you'd be wrong. If you make a copy of something and then give that copy to me, you are distributing copies of the work. However, if I borrow a CD from you and then personally make a copy, *you* aren't distributing anything. No, really, you're not.
Since you're not going to believe me (you seem quite stubborn), I'll give you an example. A video rental store can not be charged for distribution when one of it's customers copies a video cassette they rented. Right? Why? Because, they aren't *distributing* anything. Now, you'll say "ya, but copying tapes is illegal!" and my response is, yes, copying *tapes* is illegal, but copying CDs is very much legal, thanks to the Canadian Copyright Act.
So quit splitting hairs. I know you'd don't want to admit you're wrong, but, really, you are.
Take a look at this, which lists members of the CCFDA:
:)
http://www.ccfda.ca/subsections/eng_whoweare.html
Notice that Sony Canada is one of them. So... Sony is a member of the RIAA (who's lobbying for levys in the US), as well as the CCFDA (who's against levys in Canada). I wonder what this says about Sony's schizophrenic nature?
According to the Canadian Private Copying Collective website, you can apply for an exemption from media levies.
...
HOWEVER
There are several very critical hurdles you need to overcome, including:
1. You need to be a registered business entity and have a business license, utility bill as proof, etc.. (so much for saving your home videos and pictures)
2. You need to pay a $60 per year application fee to even apply if you're a corporate entity, or $15 if you're not, and there is no guarantee that they will accept you. ($60 per year in levies is what I'd pay for buying them in the stores as an individual anyway)
3. You are obligated to provide records and account for the use of every piece of media for a span of two years and cannot resell it. (yes, even coasters have to be accounted for apparently but you basically let them walk in at any time to be able to audit you)
4. You can only buy royalty-free media from a handful of retailers. (so much for consumer choice)
In other words, the system is set up such that you are innocent until proven guilty and that only large consumers of media might see financial benefit because the imposed transaction costs appear cleverly designed to be at the sweet spot of the amount of media consumed by the average individual.
This is thuggery and a make-work project for government bureaucrats, plain and simple. Nobody remembers all the people whose copyrighted images are supposedly scanned and saved on writeable media. Nobody remembers the movie companies whose movies are supposedly pirated on CDs. Nobody remembers all the software developers whose software is widely copied. But when it comes to the poor musicians who need a welfare handout, no problem - except they're not getting the money either. As I said, thuggery.
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!
The US Army: promoting democracy through unquestioned obedience
Yeah, whatever.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Why do artists believe they deserve millions of dollars for their work?The more money the artist can get the more the producer will get.Its nothing more than price fixing and we the consumer in the end pay the highest price of all.Personally I don't give a flying fuck about the latest album from so and so and if this comes into effect will probably never buy anything ever again.Such is life....
Great now we have own RIAA in Canada. First they limited music import to boost so called Canadian artists. How many good Canadian artists you know?. (From what music I like I know none). No it wasn't enouth they limited djs to play 4 canadian produced CD's and only one not Canada made. Most djs of cuz don't give a cheese about that but it's a law that all radiostations have to follow. There is nothing to hear on the radio. Zippo. Only once around 1 am or something you can find good music. Now ISP's have to give them money. Looks like they so broke they have no money to pay for heat to warm up their idiotic corrupted minds. We chose Liberals on our last election. No we will see who they really are.
Just who writes the laws in Canada. The courts that also enforce them? That doesn't sound like a democracy.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
The Answer:
Reverse smuggling. Send USA CD-R's and cigarettes north in trade for cheaper Canadian drugs. The free market works.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I know, it's a big pain in the ass...but if the copyright holders were to allow specific groups free usage then everyone else would cry foul and we would end up with an even bigger mess than we have currently. Enforcement unfortunately has to be done across the board and without prejudice.
As a disclaimer, I don't support the methods of the RIAA, MPAA, etc through assumed guilt taxes on CD's and the like. But the fact remains that you really should be paying for licenses to the music, software, and movies you own and use. If you don't like that system there is always open source software that is licensed for free usage as well as a lot of really good indie groups that don't mind you trading their works, if for nothing more than to gain a larger listening audience.
"The strong will do what they want, the weak will do what they must."
-Thucydides
This is such bassackwards logic! By their reasoning car makers should pay royalties to banks, since cars are used to rob banks.
Celine Dion is from Quebec (sorry!). And, according to this MSN biography, JH was born in Brooklyn. Why would an association supposedly protecting the rights of French publishers/copyrightholders/creators/performers/wh atever - and collecting money from the French taxpayer - pay North Americans? Perhaps there's a reason why you're modded down :)
"One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that ones work is terribly important." -BRussell
There is a 5.2 cent levy on regular, non-music cd-r's and cd-rw's. It is defintely not as much as the music cd's, but it is there.
"Share your knowledge. It's a way to achieve immortality." -- Dalai Lama
While that sounds plausible, it still sounds too much like an obvious loophole that nobody would want to exist (well, "nobody"). The act doesn't say anything about it being illegal to make copies of original discs you do not own*, or that you must destroy copies once you give up ownership?
That doesn't look like it covers file sharing. File sharing of music, maybe, but certainly not of software. Since you have the right to make backups of software optical media, it seems like a similar situation - except it isn't covered here (and I've not found it anywhere in the act).
as you may or may not know, first nation natives are allowed to trade goods according to theire original laws (no tax)
So just find a couple of local natives reserve and ask them to order a shit load of blank cdrw from tawain (cost a few pennies) and load them here on a boat (a few pennies again), et voila!
Seriously, the ISP tax would kill the music industry. People tend to use as much as they pay for. i.e.: who does not pig them self out at the buffet (eat-all-what-you-can-restaurants)
That's a few different scenarios, with different implications.
Speaking from Australian perspective...
- Supermarkets playing radio, or companies using radio for "music on hold" need to licence via tha radio station. It could be argued to extend that to taxis, but that's getting picky.
- Churches and schools don't need to licence what they sing internally. You can't stop people singing a song just for themselves... (it's not going to take income away from anyone).
- They do have to pay to reproduce words (overhead projection, or songsheets), and photocopies of music (treated differently). The hard part is copying recorded music to practise with - illegal, but danged near impossible to get around without buying heaps of CDs.
- Public performances are different to singing "in church" or at school; a concert would require licence payments.
- Public performance of new items are often be refused by copyright owners. e.g. performing a collection of songs from a musical that is still on its first world tour.
-- All your bass are below two Hz
Just wanted to point out that US advertisement industry shares part of the blame for her being lose on the world:)
Strioa
What if this type of billing applied to use of copyrighted words as well?
"We don't need no education"
There, I just cost my ISP 5 cents.
"Ain't nothin' but a hound dog"
There, take that ISP: another 5 cents for copyright trafficking.
Technically I just "sampled" two sets of lyrics right here on Slashdot.
The suggestion of the recording industry is that sound and video somehow have a higher place in copyright law than text and images.
I wonder: Does it?
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
What do you mean by "consulted with a judge"?
How much clearer can I be? I consulted with a judge. To expand on that, I mean I sat down with a judge and discussed the act with him at the dinner table, just to be sure that it said what it looked like it said. I have 3 lawyers and one judge in my immediate family, and all of them agreed that yes, you can make copies of a CD that you do not own, so long as it's for your own private use. We went over the act as published, point by point. I don't know how many other ways there are to put it.
It may not seem logical to you, but who ever said that the law made sense? Honestly, if this bothers you so much, go out and pay a lawyer for an hour of his time to go over it with you and explain it to you.
Dion and JH are SACEM members, that's all. ;-)
Now, I don't care being modded down, this has now relation to my intrinsec personal value.
Now, if you emit such comment, you may enjoy karma whoring more than me
Trolling using another account since 2005.
You've got it all wrong. It simply fills in the sentence:
If the RIAA can get money, SOCAN we.
Quote (emphasis mine):
Note how it specifically says "the person who made the copy", and NOT "the Owner"!
Furthermore... why on earth would they create a levy to compensate authors if it was only for personal backups? That makes no sense at all. The levy is there to compensate for OTHER people making their own copies.
"Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
And booze. Don't forget the booze. We need to send as much Canadian beer into America as possible, on general humanitarian principles.
Why won't SOMEONE think of the Yankee beer drinkers??? Poor souls.
"Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
As near as I can figure, this is nothing more than fear-mongering over what is run-of-the-mill binding arbitration.
Abe and Bob decide to let Carol determine the solution to their dispute - that's arbitration. They further decide that both of them must legally abide by whatever she decides - that's _binding_ arbitration.
Like a contract, it's perfectly natural that the regular courts feel free to enforce an agreement that both parties willingly entered into, and willingly agreed would be binding.
FWIW, if the only place you found reporting this was WND, you clearly didn't look. 5 seconds on Google gave me a much longer and more detailed article at Vancouver IndyMedia.
...then SOCAN we!
Yes, the Charter has a Notwithstanding Clause, meaning the government can do anything it feels like, but must be very up-front and clear about it.
This is news?
Any government can do anything it feels like, _if_ the people will let them get away with it. The US Constitution, for example, handles this with amendments (or stacked Supreme Courts).
The real question is not what a government can theoretically get away with, but what it practically _can_ and _does_ get away with. In Canada, the worst abuse of the Notwithstanding Clause has been to force outdoor signs to be in French. In the US, a constitution lacking this clause has allowed slavery, discrimination, and long-term detention without trial.
Before we rant about what might happen, how about we consider what _is_ happening, mmmkay?
...I feel like moving back. And so does every other Canadian I know in this country.
:)
When your biggest complaints about the country are "I might have to pay a few bucks more a month because somebody's realized we all download music!", that's a pretty clear sign that life is good. Could be better, yes, but still pretty damn sweet.
As for your little political rant, well, I'll just assume you weren't paying attention last election. - nobody knew what the government would be until results from the last province came in. Not, admittedly, as...surprising...as the last US election, but a healthy democratic process nonetheless.
These government sponsored private taxes where your money goes to some unaccountable organisation are disgusting. In a capitalist society money is power, and these companies are taking your right to decide where your money goes from you. It is does is create monopolies and screw over everyone not running said monopoly. You all know that the money that's creamed off the ISPs/blank media is fed straight back into the pockets of the politicians who created these outragious laws. Any politician that votes for a bill like this, or indeed does nothing to try and revoke an existing one, should be ashamed of themselves.
...because we won't let it.
Canada's a nation where a compromise that benefits everyone 80% is better than a bloody victory that benefits one guy 100% and the other 0%, and for exactly the same reason as the winning strategy in the Prisoner's Dilemma is to play nice - it gives you the best result in the long run.
So, here, we can look at this and say "well, loads of people are downloading music, it would be fair to compensate music producers for this", and come to a compromise where we pay a little money but get the right to download music. It'd be like iTunes, but instead of $1/song it'd be $1/month - that doesn't sound so bad.
And, yes, it would be somewhere around $1/month. The Canadian music industry had total CD sales of about $800M in recent years, leading to profit of about $40M. If we assume that music downloads will cut the record company's profits by by 75%, they only need to get $2 per wired Canadian per year to make that up.
Even adding $1 to monthly ISP bills would generate about $100M - a eighth of the retail value of total CD sales - in pure profit. Adding much more than that isn't going to happen, and _that_ is why I'm not too concerned by your "$5+$5+$5+$2+..." scenario.
This isn't the best solution, of course - overhauling the industry to take advantage of the internet and have low-cost, authorized pay download sites (iTunes, but $0.1/song, and with everything, and with a reasonable royalty/payment structure) would be better. However, we realize that isn't going to happen just yet. Making music downloads semi-authorized, however, is just going to speed up their acceptance and prevalence, speeding up the rate at which the old way of doing business is going to be replaced. And isn't that what people keep asking for?
I have seen websites on the pro-copy side that are complete tripe.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
(a) so I'm a law-abiding citizen, I download no music, I make no music available for download - now I have to pay money on a monthly basis for someone else breaking the law?
e -entirety-of-existence-here; because in the end, when you look at things closely enough, if (he/she/it) hadn't set about *creating* anything in the first place we wouldn't have the situation we have today (ie there wouldn't be people illegally downloading music from the internet in violation of many and various copyright laws).
(b) I download the latest Debian Linux (7 CDs at 640MB each) what's the $ equivalent of Music that said download will cost other people for my download?
(c) So let me get this straight: every recordable CD I buy has a tax to account for illegal music copyright violation, as does every byte downloaded from the internet (by anyone, anywhere in Canada) - I'm effectively paying the equivalent of several CDs per month. So I may as well not bother buying another retail music CD ever, and just download music from the internet (in violation of many and various copyright laws) and burn my own CD-Rs - after all I've already paid for the music.
(d) so you want to tax ISPs for providing the infrastructure which (amongst many and various other things) enables music copyright violations? How about the telephone companies for providing the communications infrastructure which enables the internet? How about the electricity providers who provide the infrastructure for telephone companies to operate? How about mining companies, who mine the mineral resources used to make power cables? How about heavy vehicle manufacturers, who provide the machines to mining companies?
How about Oil exploration companies, who provide the fuels for the vechiles used in Mining, which provide the minerals to the power companies which provide power to the telephone companies who provide communications to the ISPs who provide services to people... *some but by no means all* of whom are illegally violating music copyrights?
Realistically though, you need to directly bill GOD (Allah, Yaweh, Jehova, insert-name-of-your-favorite-being-who-created-th
Seriously folks! Yes, profits are down
Yes, people are violating copyright left-right-and-center
No, billing Grandma AolUser (who is only just barely Internet-aware enough to be able to email her grandson once a month) for the illegal activities of other people Just Isn't Right. Nor does it solve the problem.
Billing an anyone anywhere for copyright voilations by sundry persons-unknown does address the symptoms (ie flagging music profits).
However, it does not address the problem (ie people are breaking the law, these days much of your music sucks, the world has turned and making money off physical distribution mechanisms is in many areas and aspects a declining prospect, life implies/requires change - don't change and you'll die).
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
If this is going to happen, then it should not be just for the record industry. There should be a non-profit that monitors statistics regarding copyrighted material being distributed on the Internet. These statistics should then be used to distribute the "copyright tax" that is levied.
In other words, the collected money should be distributed according to statistics to *all* copyright owners, not just the RIAA. Authors, Video-Game publishers (and other software), Independent music and film producers, etc..
Who does the RIAA think they are to get better protection than other copyright owners?
The reason that it can be true that 1+1 > 2 is that very peculiar nonzero value of the + operator
We're bashing Canada here. Try to stay on-topic.
What do you mean, "obvious loophole?" That's like saying that "freedom of speech" is an obvious loophole in the Charter of Rights ;)
;)
When they wrote the law, the intended to make it legal to copy CDs you don't own -- that's the whole scenario that brought about the law and the levy in the first place!What confuses people is that, in this case, we won
After reading your comments in this thread, I've come to one incontrovertible truth:
You are a tool.
When the legislators sat down to make changes to this law, the did so with the express purpose of making it legal to copy CDs you did not own. Let me repeat: in order for the industry to deserve the levy, they had to give something up (quid pro quo), that thing was, it is now legal to copy CDs you did not purchase, that you do not own, and that you may never buy, for your own private purposes.
Let me repeat:
You are a tool.
And, once more, for effect:
You are a tool.
I'm sorry man, but it's obvious that you care more about "winning" an argument than actually answering the question of whether or not it's legal to copy a CD for your own private use in Canada.
If you're unwilling to believe a word anyone tells you here (unless it agrees with your argument) then why even bother? Some feeling of self-worth? If you really care, go read the act itself. Here's a Government of Canada website that should make it abundantly clear to you that it is OK to copy for private use. Personally, I feel I've done enough research for you already, and I won't waste anymore time on you. If you have something concrete to offer other than "I don't believe you", please feel free to post it, otherwise, shut the fuck up.
otherwise, shut the fuck up Hmm? [checks] Yes, this is Slashdot, are you new here?
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Yeah? Show me something in Hansard or committee meeting minutes. Show a court case desided in favour of your interpretation. Until then, you are an anonymous coward. (Or a sock puppet.)
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Does anyone know when this will happen? I live a few blocks from the Supreme Court and I will be there alone if I have to, protesting this ridiculous request. Apathy breeds ignorance.
---Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A START
Yes, this is Slashdot, are you new here?
Heh. He's less new than you... if judging by your uid... and your idiocy.
It seems as though you completely missed the points the other poster was making all along. He never said that you could make copies for others, only that you can make them for your own personal use. That's what the act says. It also says you can't make copies for others, but again... the other poster never said you could. That appears to be your moronic interpretation. Re-read the comments, you fool.
I am the consumer.
I WiLL CoNSuMe You SOCAN!!!
if making a copy for yourself isn't personal use, what is? i mean, if idon't broadcast it etc. i just make a copy for me, then that's personal use. that's all the act says you can do. that's all that the original poster ever said you could do. you need to get a hobby dude. if you don't even copy music, then why do you give a shit? live and let live. stop being so cranky.
SOCAN is proposing that ISPs pay a royalty of 25 cents per subscriber per year as well as 10 per cent of any gross profit ISPs make through the sale of advertising.
.25$ a Year to download all the music I want and not worry! Hell.. I'll send em a Check myself to pay up for all the years I have listened to music and probaly advance pay for the next 50!
:)
Ok
What is crazy they want a piece of Advertising money's from the cable companies... How does this come into the picture... I guess it may stem from some of the TV ads you see on the TV about Young kids complaining about how long it takes to download music over dialup instead of having highspeed
Who needs WiFi when we can have Packet Over Sheep! http://datacomm.org/PoS-InternetDraft.txt
Well then I live in Canada, and I don't download or swap any illegal music right now. However if in the future I end up paying for the music through my ISP, then at that point I should start partaking in the illegal music scene and then everybody will be happy and getting their moneys worth.
I am all for removed the RIAA from the picture, I really don't think these "taxes" are the first step. How about the first change being the proceeds from sales go to the artist ( single or group ), and then they pay back the label for the production/distribution etc. from that. In this way, the RIAA and its members have no business with the buyers of the music, only with the artist. Think for a second, they will have zero justification to subpoena for IP addresses, send out cease and desist letters, etc. because the only party they get paid from is the artist that created the music. Oh, and that should also take the steam out of their marketing machine and payola scams, as control of ( and the bill for ) that is now in the hands of the artists.
Ok, it will never happen, but I can dream, can't I?
I can't afford a sig!
musicians of the future will be forced to distribute their music for free to build up a following and earn money the old fashioned way, actually playing on tour! There is no further use for record companies, they are parasites of the past!