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."

Comments

They do it for a reason

[Sven The Space Monke]

London Drugs as a company is opposed to the levy (specifically, the proposed increases to said levy). The do the add-on at the till to make people aware of it. Most people won't know/care about the levy until they see it directly effecting their pocketbook, so they try to bring this situation to the consumer's attention. The best way they came up with is to show -- on every reciept -- how much this levy actually costs on a per-purchase basis.

Check out London Drug's official position. Also worth a look is the Canadian Coalition for Fair Digital Access - a non-profit group against all this foolishness. Especially look at their member companies - they include the likes of London Drugs, AMD, Intel, Creative Labs, Apple, Dell, FutureShop/Best Buy, Hewlett PAQard, Wal-Mart, Radio Shack and (sweet Jesus, is this one right?) Sony Canada.