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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"."
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.
it is legal to download songs in Canada.
No it's not. TechCentralStation is wrong. In 1998, the Copyright Act was amended to legalize private copying of music. It specifically says that only the original media can be copied, but that the copier isn't required to own it. Basically, I can borrow your CDs and copy them, legally. Note that you cannot copy them yourself and give me the copies (though you are, of course, allowed to copy your own CDs for your own use) - I must copy them myself.
TechCentralStation mistakenly believes that this applies to music sharing. This position has already been rebutted in other articles, because the files that you are sharing (the MP3's) are NOT the originals. They are copies taken from the owner's CD. Therefore the owner has made the copy, not you. Also, you're making a copy of a copy, which is not permitted under Section VIII of the Copyright Act.
However, with the advent of online music stores (itunes.com, buymusic.com, etc.), now those MP3's in your shared folder could be argued to be the originals, and the people coming in and downloading them are making copies.
You were correct, however, in stating that none of this has been tested in court yet.
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
According to the CCFDA, there's a fee on both - 21 cents on a regular CDR or 77 cents on an audio CDR.
I can't say that I don't give a fuck. I've just run out of fuck to give.