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

Re:Abolish copyright--a solution to the insanity.

[iminplaya]

"Spoken like someone who has never created anything of worth in their life."
I've created plenty of "worth", just not copyrightable. As stated before by many, people have created worth before there were copyrights.
"Otherwise, everyone would be working 24x7 just to make ends meet."
Jeez, I only work 5x6, and after all the bills are paid, I can still afford some pretty good weed. All without copyrights.
It seems that our addiction to entertainment is what's causing this horrible mess. And copyright holders are just doing their best to exploit this. They operate like herion dealers. The first one is "free", but after you're hooked...well, you know the rest...