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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."
Clearly this is insane. It's nothing other than welfare for copyright holders. One way to make things more sane is to abolish copyright. Without copyright, nobody would have a legal right to prevent others from copying music, and thus would have no justification for asking for a tariff on equipment for recording music to. But copyright should be abolished mainly because it is unnatural--cheaper recording media would be just a side effect.
Agree on abolishing copyrights and patents? The poster argoff does as well. You are not alone.
-Libertarian secular transhumanist
Dammit, RIAA, you can't just change your name and cross the border... can you...?
:^)
The Copyright Board decision comes as the Supreme Court of Canada begins a landmark copyright case that will determine whether Internet service providers must pay a tariff for being a conduit for the rampant downloading of free music.
Hmmm... we should also charge them for the lost business from gaming that they create! Oh, and let's tax them so that the telephone industry gets a cut since so many people are using instant messaging and IRC rather than calling people. Hell, let's just shut them down entirely because they can be a conduit for crime!
Remember, what you choose to spend money on is no longer up to you.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
I think you may be confused about the effect of a rising Canadian dollar. If the dollar continues to go up, importing an iPod should get cheaper.
Now that I have to pay this royalty, am i free to duplicate copyrighted material? Or will I now merely be paying twice for something.
~ Maintainer of the Skajake Projects
You're already "paying" for the media... Maybe the government should just track what files are being downloaded, and distribute the "media tax" proportionately.
This is the kind of thing that makes me mad. What does it really solve to do this? The copyright holders will still crave for more money, and they will continue until there's no more money left! And we, the consumers, will never have any profit of such a levy, it won't keep us from getting sued if the copyright holders wants more money, it wont make it easier for us to chose our own device of playing the more and more customized copyprotection...
So I say: Come up with something better, will ya?
falxx
I don't know anything about Canadian Law, or Canadian internet/music habits, but I'd guess only a minority of users are downloading (copyrighted) music. I think it's absurd the entire industry could be forced to pay a tariff.
It's almost enough to make me glad that in the US, the RIAA has to sue individuals, and haven't (yet) been able to bill ISPs directly.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
My laptop uses the same HD type found in small mp3 players, would it fall under the tax?
So, I assume all this money will be going directly to the artists, who have been so badly hurt by the mp3 downloading craze? Yeah... right.
France's currency isn't falling right now (quite the contrary) and France isn't especially big on technology.
:-)
Nice try though
Even hard drives? Sheesh... At this rate they will tax the computer industry into oblivion..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Frankly, I think this is another example of intelligent Canadian legislation. The tariffs on CDR media and (potentially) MP3 players may not be palatable to consumers, but they keep the dogs of the music industry at bay. Meanwhile, South of the border there is a dearth of similar legislation. What happens? The heads of the RIAA are weeping and gnashing their teeth, launching lawsuits against pre-pubescent downloaders.
Although I'm not terribly fond of either option, I'd much rather pay a bit of a premium if the alternative is getting lubed up and penetrated by American-style "Justice".
That said, I might be wrong. I know the RIAA suits have pressed charges on non-American downloaders. Can anyone confirm whether (or not) any Canadians have been taken to task?
Anyways, it's no big deal because I've already got my iPod :)
...Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.
Churchill
If this is the same levy as before, it only applies to _blank_ media. That is, media without any sounds on it. So the iPod in Canada could just come with a copy of "Steve Jobs Sings" prerecorded, and no levy.
As a musician and songwriter, I see this sort of thing as a barrier to entry, not a benefit.
If the cost of recording media goes up, it makes it more expensive to record, and makes it much more costly to distribute one's music for free. If it costs me $4 to make a demo to give away, then it's costing almost as much to make music to give away for free, as it would cost to buy some music produced by a corporation!
This isn't about piracy, it's about controlling whose art gets distributed. Stalin had different methods, but it's the same goal.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
The interesting thing about these levies is that the money spent by the consumer doesn't necessarily vanish into thin air.
While this has yet to be tested in courts, what consumers get in exchange for the levy is permission to make copies of music for personal purposes. In other words, it legalises the _download_ of MP3s for which you don't own the cd or other media. This is, after all, what the levy is compensating artists for.
However, it does not legalize the _distribution_ of copyrighted works. Hence you're in the clear if you only download, but not make anything available from P2P networks. An interesting compromise.
Canada has not yet signed the WIPO treaties which would be breached by the compromise reached by the copyright board. Naturally, copyright holders argue that this is a mis-interpretation of the law, and that we should be both paying the levy AND barred from copying for personal purposes.
Compare the Canadian Copyright Act to the Australian Copyright Act, and you find that the consumer comes out far ahead in the Great White (as in snow, not culture) North. In Australia, making a backup copy of music that you've purchased is a technical (but again untested) breach of the Copyright Act.
In the end, I'll take a $25-$200 once-off levy over not having permission to copy CD's that I've purchased, or being subjected to the DMCA, or being subjected to the WIPO treaties any day. As an added bonus, artists who have limited distribution of their works (i.e. the Little Guys) see some of this cash. This helps the economy a lot more than slowing down the sales of portable music devices.
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.
A middle ground would definitely be a good idea, though. I would be happy if copyright was limited to the lifetime of the artist, and/or non-transferable. An artist gets paid for their creations for their whole lifetime, but Brian Herbert and Disney have to come up with something original if they want to pass themselves off as artists.
Vino, gyno, and techno -Bruce Sterling
Seriously, what about the porn industry. Kazaa, usenet, gnutellla etc all have pirated porn. Yet they seem to stay in business even without levies.
Have you ever been to a turkish prison?
In exchange for the tarrifs, Canadian citizens are allowed to legally engage in "Private Copying" which is an exception to the Copyright Act.
Private Copying allows you to visit your friend, use your friends CD collection, computer and blanks (or your own for the last two) to produce a copy and take it with you. However, your friend is not allowed to make a copy to give to you.
Any other attempt to argue that you've paid your tax to the music industry will be summarily laughed upon.
That said, it's a tough call who's making the copy in the case of something like P2P software. Could someone design a P2P app that exploits this exception? It would require that the person making the copy not be the person with the original.
But imagine this: when you send an MP3 to someone, you have no way of knowing in advance whether they're using it as a stream directly out to their speakers, or if they are actually saving it to disk. Sending a stream, broadcasting, is not considered duplication (pay mind, there are other licensing issues with broadcasting in Canada). As such, if someone saves that stream to disk, it might be argued that the person making the copy is the person who was receiving the stream, not the one sending it. Just like pressing "record" on your radio/cassette player is considered making a copy, not the broadcaster.
An oldie but a goodie -
.sig
The "levy" is only for blank media.
So put a recording on the hard drive.
Not only would you avoid the tax, you also can claim to be a music distributor, and collect a portion of the tax paid by your less savy competition.
Make the recording an advertising jingle, and you can get someone to pay you to install it.
And maybe you can get a spot on the top ten best sellers list - after all, how many recording artists sell albums for the price of a hard drive?
-- this is not a
Yes, actually. Although you will have to prove it (which isn't that hard if you are using them for backups at work or otherwise can objectively demonstrate that you have substantial non-infringing use that can be recognized as applicable directly to your own situation).
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
This will probably cause many small and struggling computer stores to close. The one I work at barely survived Toronto's Summer of SARS, and sales are finally starting to recover. People from outside the province get enough sticker shock when Ontario's 8% tax and the federal 7% tax are stacked on top of the posted price. If an extra 20% gets tacked on storage media, that's a 35% tax, little of which will end up going to the struggling artist, most of which will go to Bryan Fucking Adams and Celine Fucking Dion if most of it doesn't disappear into copyright board and record industry bureaucracy. When a customer mentioned this to me today, I thought he was joking. This is going to help no one, and will likely hurt many, many people who would otherwise be purchasing music and movies. Fewer people will buy storage media, which means less money will be available for businesses to pay rent and employees, which means fewer people using their wages to buy entertainment--if they end up receiving a wage at all. Basic capitalist economics--even a tree-hugging commie like me understands this cause and effect, and it's not as if that 20% will go to serve any common good in the end.
Maybe the copyright board can donate some of that 20% to Employment Insurance, because I can forsee more than a few computer retail jockeys looking for new places of employment. Want to guess how many CDs and DVDs I'll be able to purchase on the dole while I hunt for work in a place that won't get screwed over with massive tax increases that will likely not reach the artists that really need the cash yesterday? Want to guess how many hard drives and burners people, including prospective artists, will purchase? Want to guess how many demo and promo CDs Joe the Band will be able to pump out for distribution now? And when CD sales continue to fall as the homogenization of pop music continues, guess what the industry will come crying for again. I don't intend retail to be a career, but it pays the rent until I can move on to something better. I can already see how this action will harm me and the people I work with.
Thanks for nothing.
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
The Nomad Jukebox that I bought a few years ago (I'm from the U.S.) came preloaded with more than 20 hours of music. Most of it was by artists that I'd never heard of, and after a quick sample had no desire to hear again, but it did come with about 10 hours worth of classical music and a few audio books that I am very glad to have. They seem to have genuinely given it a supply of music, and if this were repeated by vendors with the current MP3 players (Read: IPod), they would genuinely be exempt from the law and not just be loophole whores.
You sir are a jackass:
..
The average user DOES NOT qualify for a rebate, so basically whether or not this gives us new rights, does not automatically mean we can get a rebate (http://www.dww.com/articles/billc32article.htm)
A rebate of levies paid is available to societies, associations, and corporations representing persons with perceptual difficulties. No-other exemptions or rebates are available in the Act, however, the CPCC has voluntarily established a zero-rating program that will allow certain groups of users, on application to the CPCC and subject to specified conditions, to purchase blank audio recording media levy-free from participating importers and manufacturers. Levy-free purchases may also be made from a distributor of blank audio recording media if the distributor has made a prior arrangement with a participating manufacturer or importer that meets the criteria established by the CPCC. This program does not apply to CD-R's and CD-RW's. The groups covered by this program include: Religious Organizations, Broadcasters, Law Enforcement Agencies, Courts, Tribunals and Court Reporters, Music and Advertising Industry and Schools and Professional Users.
This is "blank media" that's being taxed right? What about pre loading some specific content that will allow you to skirt the law (and thus the tax)?
The CPCC,RIAA and MPAA just don't get it. Punshing law abiding citizens with your "pirating tax" will never work. Hard working people like me are fucking fed up with your "bought lock stock and barrel" tarrifs and taxes. This is just one of the reasons I haven't bought any of your over priced music CDs in years. Just because I buy hard drives, CDRs and video tapes does NOT give you the right to charge ANY sur taxes because the media "could be used to pirate music". Why don't you start charging taxes on hubs, switches, routers and sound cards.
Better start buying old computer hardware people, before the CPCC,RIAA and MPAA force the hardware manufactures into putting "approved" DRM controls in the hardware.
Sorry for the ranting, but this shit just gets under my skin...
"I bow to no man" - Riddick
Over here in Mexico there's a tax on CD's that goes to Music distributors to compensate for CD piracy.
Yeah, it's the same in Canada.
But the funny thing is that we're being forced to pay for piracy of music that no intelligent human being would tolerate in an elevator, let alone pay for.
The tax levied on Canadians goes exclusively to Canadian artists to pay for all the copies of Tragically Hip's Bobcaygeon and Rita McNeil's Now The Bells Ring allegedly floating around on Kazaa Lite.
Of course, that's bullshit; Canadians with MP3 collections have stashes of the stuff that gets little airplay here because of the 40% Canadian Content laws. And those Canadian artists who have actual talent have generally fled to greener pastures south of the border... think of Rush, Celine Dion, Barenaked Ladies.
If they really wanted to help out those being hurt by people with large MP3 collections, send the money south of the border! (But, of course, that will never happen. Some Liberal-appointed 85-year-old Supreme Court justice *knows* that good Canadian kids are only listening to all that top-flight good Canadian music that has to be forced onto listeners with Canadian Content laws!)
If it's anything like that in Mexico, you must be as frustrated as I am. I'm paying a tax - for music that I couldn't be paid to listen to - to burn Knoppix demo CDs for friends.
I'm *so* proud of the protectionist pandering-to-special-interest-groups stupidity of my country.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
Here's what I sent to Claude:
*******
Dear Sir,
I recently read that you will be making a decision shortly on adding an additional tax to electronic media in order to satisfy the recording industry's claim that everyone who buys media is a pirate.
I am wondering why stop there? Why not add a levy for the movie industry for all the pirated movies being stored, or the software industry for all the pirated software, or the printed media industry for all the scans. For example, to make sure all these industries are getting their share, a single blank CD should be charged a levy of $500, give or take a few dollars. The beauty of this outrageous price is no one will buy any media and thus stop pirating since that's all anyone does.
Of course legitimate businesses might suffer but since they are by far the minority according to the record industry, it shouldn't be a problem.
Best regards,
I was severely pissed last week when CBC Newsworld had a so-called "discussion" regarding music downloading and its effect on the recording industry. Their only guest was a copyright lawyer who (surprise, surprise) didn't mention the levy on blank recordable media collected in Canada, which goes as a free handout to the recording industry. What other industry get's to collect free money from the government on the chance that someone somewhere might do something illegal?? As if this isn't disgusting enough, the recording industry is pushing for a levy on internet access, which will again be given to the poor music industry. I can't believe they have the balls to demand that every internet user pay even if they have never downloaded a single illegal song.
I tried in vain to call in since the issue of the blank media levy was not addressed, and I hate the idea that uneducated people out there were watching that and possibly becoming sympathetic to the music industry.
...and do it NOW, is ORGANIZE! Put this to the people. I can see the commercials already - like Walmart's happy face logo replacing prices except way higher ones this time.
Since it appears that consumers in Canada are able to be trampled on just as much as they are in the U.S., why don't some of the retailers who are going to feel the pinch put pressure on the lawmakers?
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
That Canadian is supposed to declare that they purchased it in the United States when they re-enter Canada via Customs, and pay import duties on it, like a good little Canuckian. :)
However, many people don't, especially if it's an item (like an iPod) that they could easily say that they owned it before hand. Especially at busy ports of entry, Customs officials (at least a couple of years ago anyway) are general hesitant to stop the flow of traffic (whether it be cars or people at airports) unless they figure something major is going on (or see something so glaringly obvious that they can't ignore it).
If you move into Canada, and have acquired posessions abroad, they will also charge you duty on them as well. I recall that the company I was working for at the time, in California, was considering relocating the QA team (which was almost exclusively Canadians) back to Canada, and rent office space there. In order to get our test lab equipment into the country though, we were looking at paying somewhere around $100,000 to get it through Customs.
I deal with this stuff every Christmas when I go back to Canada to see my family. The bitch of it is that I'm treated better by Canadian customs than U.S. Customs (probably because I'm Canadian and have a Canadian passport).
-- Joe
That's the best part about a hidden levy -- if people don't know about it, they can't be outraged. It is just another "stupid tax".
How is this for a "compromise": let the CPCC have their stupid levy -- 100% of all they have asked for -- but with the stipulation that there be a label slapped on every media to which it applies, specifying how much the levy adds to the cost, and where to get more information about it (the CPCC), including how to take advantage of the "zero rate" exemptions they make so difficult to collect (if people are even aware of them!). Give it a year, and I think we would finally see the stupid thing repealed entirely. It might actually be worth some short-term pain for long-term gain.
As someone who writes quite a bit (though doesn't really make money for it) I can say I would be pretty pissed it if was perfectly legal and "OK" for anyone to take my work, stick their name on it, delete my credits, and publish it themselves.
I imagine anyone who does much creative work (writing, coding, composing, whatever) feels the same way, even if they choose to share it for free, they expect to be able to get credit for the work they have done. Taking this away WOULD drastically undermine people's incentive to share creative works with their community.
The worst side effect of this is the punishment of the not guilty.
I backup stuff regularly to cd's. I've NEVER burned a music cd.
I also have a handy little 128mb key drive. Wonderfully handy for transferring stuff I'm working on.
I could very well have a 40GB iPod and use it to hold music I own - why carry all those cd's when I can pop'em on my iPod, or use to start story all the music I CAN NOW LEGALLY buy online.
So add a huge tax to that and how do I feel?
Do my morals change? Do I all of a sudden feel that since I am paying for music via this tax that I had may as well benefit from this? Or do I happily understand that because someone else doesn't something "they" don't like that I should pay more?
So, what we'e got here is a system that presumes everyone is guilty, and punishes everyone, knowing that if they punish everyone, they'll also be punishing the guilty ones by default.
This method has been used throughout history...such as when Hitler shot Jews en masse because if you kill them all, they'll be none to fight you.
In the U.S. we still pay a levy on every blank cassette sold. I wonder how many blank cassettes have music recorded on them these days?
This is Government at its worst...bought and paid for by big companies..Hmmm...maybe we should assume that all Govt. officials are corrupt, and then put them all in jail! That way we'd definitely be getting the bad guys!
We're Canadians, not Americans. We believe in compromises and tolerance and finding a way to work together for a solution that has some common good and is mutually acceptable. Kindly take your bloody revolutions, decapitations and psychotic violence fetish elsewhere because it's certainly not welcome in Canada.
Will it then be illegal to copy music in Canada, or do Canadians get nothing but screwed for their bonus 20%? The Canadian RIAA needs to be forced to give up something or it's just government-sponsored theft.
i stand corrected on the 'one cent' part ... it seems in fact they've paid out a third of what they have collected
yes a third, more than my number of zero, however far less than the money collected.... and how many years did it take to make that payout?
George Bush + Linux = "I will not let information get in the way of the fight against Windows"
... from the CCPC (read: RIAA) regarding disbursement of this stinky tax.
http://cpcc.ca/english/infoCopyHolders.htm
The Copyright Board designates the proportion of total royalties that forms the basis of CPCC's distribution amongst each of the three eligible groups: songwriters and music publishers, recording artists, and record companies. These proportions are recorded in the private copying tariffs. It is then CPCC's job to allocate and pay the royalties to individual copyright holders. CPCC and its constituent member collectives have developed a distribution process that is enabling royalties to be distributed fairly amongst tens of thousands of copyright holders.
Since no inventory of privately copied tracks exists, distribution is based on representative samples of radio airplay and album sales, which are given equal weight in the distribution. Together they provide a proxy for determining the titles that Canadians typically copy for private use. Internet usage is not referenced in the distribution as no adequate documentation of this activity currently exists. Samples are regularly used by copyright collectives because the cost of capturing and analyzing all available information would be excessive.
Recognizing the relatively modest level of collections for 2000, CPCC opted to pay out royalties for 2000 and 2001 in a single, combined distribution.
While songwriters and music publishers are eligible regardless of nationality, only Canadian recording artists and record companies may receive payments under current law. In accordance with the Copyright Board's decisions, royalties collected for 2001 and 2002 are allocated as follows:
66 % to eligible authors and publishers
18.9% to eligible performers
15.1% to eligible record companies.
The allocation for 2000 is:
75% to eligible authors and publishers
13.7% to eligible performers
11.3% to eligible record companies.
Please stop APK.. you're only hurting yourself.
No, it's a payment for presumed legal activity. Read the Copyright Act. Copying music (whether you own the original or not) is legal in Canada, as long as it's for personal use.
This levy was specifically designed to compensate copyright holders for this private copying right.
If you want a clear, correct discussion of the issue, see this post.
I find it amazing how incorrect information gets modded as "Insightful" on Slashdot.
I am a Canadian citizen with permanent resident status in the US. What if I go to Canada, purchase blank media and burn everything I can get my grubby little hands on. Can the RIAA come after me for piracy if I return to the US with my new music collection? POS