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!
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.
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.
Or how about STFU (SOCAN Takes money From end Users)
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!)
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?
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.
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.
Look at the laws. What you're allowed to copy isn't linked in any functional way to what you pay the levy on, in the law. The law also doesn't have anything to say about the source that one copies from.
The Copyright Board has actually found that the source needn't be a legitimately purchased or owned medium for a perfectly legal personal copy to be made. There's no reason downloading music shouldn't be covered by the existing legislation. You run into trouble if you start uploading music, though, as it violates the legal restrictions on usage of a personal copy. It violates, off the top of my head, the prohibitions on transmitting copies across a telecommunications system as well as the prohibition on distributing your personal copies.
The gist of it is, uploading is sure as hell illegal under the current legislation, but downloading is fine unless some magic way to argue against it is found.
... 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 -
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!
SCAM PC? Sounds reasonably accurate to me...
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.
About time they stoped that practace, CD's are used for copying priated digital software, windows, office, games, and what not, not music, far easier to use mp3's and the net for that.
But paying for music I'm not copying, damn, it'd make me start copying.
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.
Speaking as a non-Canadian, they should pay me for having to endure that Celine fucking Dion at all hours of the day and night.
;-)
Hey, we had to endure her singing for YEARS before we finally convinced her to move away. She's your problem now...
You can't take the sky from me...
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.
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