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Canadians [Will] Pay Levy on MP3 Players - Updated
Capt. Canuck writes "According to this Toronto Star story,
the Canadian Copyright Board may approve a 20% levy on electronic media tomorrow,
including MP3 players and hard drives. With the Canadian Dollar
rising and this on the horizon, maybe now is the right time to get that
iPod." Update: 12/12 16:33 GMT by M : rcpitt writes "The Canadian Copyright Board has (finally - a year late) issued its ruling on the latest round of blank media levy - the controversial (in the rest of the world as well as Canada) private "tax" on recordable media used to copy music which proceeds go to the music artists in Canada. The ruling by the board and a press release were posted to the Board's web site at 10AM Ottawa (CST) today. The ruling continues the levy amounts from the previous 2 year period (2001-2002) to the end of this period (2003-2004) at the same amounts as previously set but adds new levies on portable (MP3) digital audio recorders of from CDN$2/unit to CDN$25/unit depending on internal storage capacity."
SIG: More Americans run Kazaa than vote.
Yes, that's because when they download a song from Madonna, the computer they download the song from doesn't recount their download requests and send them a Waylon Jenning track instead.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
You mean France?
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
Oh dear, what will I do now that I can't threaten to move to Canada if Bush gets elected again?!?
Hey, what'd you do to my formatting, Slashcode?
I said plain text. Plain text dammit!
Until Slashdot fixes the funny modifier, use insightful or interesting. The poster knows your intentions.
Psst, Trade ya these prescription drugs for your MP3 players? How about it eh?
BTM
That was the turning point of my life--I went from negative zero to positive zero.
"So far, the organization has distributed $11 million back to Canadian artists"
;)
Wow.. so that's like about what, 2.75 mil per Canadian artist then?
*ducks and covers*
"Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
Crucifixion is what killed jesus.
As someone pointed out the other day, there was plenty of quality art available before copyright. Shakespeare and Mozart were happy to create art without it, and (AFIAK) made money from performance and patronage.
Mozart (and other "classical" composers) were funded by the royalty and/or the church.
As long as you don't mind listening exclusively to religious and/or patriotic music, I guess there's no problem.
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
With appoligizations to our brothers and sisters up north.
With the black market on media bound to spring up, I for one look forward to getting my hard drives and soft drugs from the same convenient supplier.
Anybody want a peanut?
Hard drives for prescription drugs!
sulli
RTFJ.
"who gets this money?"
Actually, I think the most efficient way to get rid of these taxes would be to lobby for the fair distribution of this money. Those whose content is being copied most should be the ones getting the most money.
As the number one 'killer app' download appears to be pr0n, I'll bet the tariffs wont survive many weeks after the news headlines about 'government subsidizing the pr0n industry' get going.
Will send over blank media for prescription drugs.
*grin*
Wow. So the government wants cut in on the music license fee extortion business... I'm sure that the bulk of the levy will go directly to the small bureacracy that is the Candadian government. Thank you for reminding me what my Political Science 120 professor said years ago:
The only difference between the mafia and government is that we've decided that the government is the bully of choice.
This idea is no different than, say, making protection schemes (shakedowns) and ponzi schemes (pyramids) legal as long as the government gets their cut!
Go Canada!
-- $G
it's like putting a tax on balaclavas and giving the tax money to banks that had been robbed.
Technically it's more like taxing balaclavas (that's ski masks for the non-Northerners) and giving the tax money to banks whether they have been robbed or not. But only the Canadian owned banks, even though a lot of the stolen money probably is in US Dollars and British Pounds.
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing -- Emo Phillips