Slashdot Mirror
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.
With the Canadian Dollar rising and this on the horizon, maybe now is the right time to get that iPod."
...
Or you could just get one from a country outside Canada. Say, like one that's big on technology, with small(er) taxes, not too far from Canada and with a currency that's falling through the floorboards
Hint: it's not Mexico, Greenland or Russia.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
First, the blank-tape tax.
Then, the blank-CD tax (20$ for 10 blank CDs? Madness!)
The proposed internet bandwidth tax. Grrr!
Now a hard-drive tax?
I'm going to have to pirate music extra-hard from now on, just to get my money's worth!
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.
It looks better than the previous scheme, which charged a fixed amount per megabyte of storage.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
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.
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're paying for it now, so copy as you like. Don't feel remorse. The government is just making it easy - now Canadians can download music and movies off the Internet instead of wasting time walking to a store. You think the recording industry would dare take you to court and lose when the judge learns that you paid them for it already? That court loss would open the floodgates!
Use this stuff for legitimate reasons only? Go buy in the US. You have a right to do that.
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.
Why does one group get to have its way with all digital media without respect for other groups? Why is it that musicians and songwriters deserve to impose a "guilty until proven innocent" handout? If they get that much, then what will happen when other groups ask for them? What about film producers and movie studios? What about software companies? What about print publishers? If you take all of these groups into consideration, given what is already charged, the average CD blank will end up with a $4 per blank tax.
Great. The deal is then that I will get all of my software, music and books from warez newsgroups, filesharing networks and wherever else I can.
Does this make any sense whatsoever? Because if these groups think they can tax all this blank media, they will utterly destroy retail sales of both original media and blanks and the incentive of the consumer to engage in purchases thereof. This will end up hurting the artists represented by the collective. They will also drive blank media into the underground where trucks haul this stuff into black markets. Who loses in this scheme? Everyone but the people who supposedly get these taxes.
I consult for a living in the video editing and commercial production field, and now I have to tell my clients to make an emergency purchase tomorrow of spindles of DVD-Rs, CD-Rs and any other media and stockpile them because of this ridiculous tax. My clients don't deal in pirated material, and often we have to license music, images and footage from the creators anyway. They will never be able to apply for the proceeds from these taxes because they'll never qualify.
Enough is enough. E-mail Claude Majeau at majeau.claude@cb-cda.gc.ca and let him know what you think of him and his band of thugs. Find the MP for your riding and tell them that the Canadian Copyright Board needs to be stopped before they destroy retail sales in Canada and end up fueling mass piracy and the black market for the sake of artists who should be paid based on the merits of their music, not because they have been somehow directly robbed.
"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
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.
Ok - not like this is a lone cry in the wilderness, but this just sickens me.
This does happen elsewhere. We pay for increased insurance rates when other people have more accidents. The prices in our stores go up when other people shoplift. The difference? The government doesn't raise the prices on tangentially connected items in order to compensate.
I'm not screwin around here. Several years ago I bought a hand-held dictaphone that used normal-sized cassette tapes. Sure, it's bulkier, but had a huge advantage -- those mini-tapes were mondo-expensive. I'd buy ten cheapo no-name standard cassette tapes (all I'd need for a lecture, etc) and I'd be set. Enter the levy -- doubling the price or more of the cheap tapes. May as well get pricey ones if I'm gonna get charged a flat fee per tape. And out goes the entire purpose of buying that particular model. Punished for an entirely erroneous assumption. And let's remember: mixed-tapes were legal, too. Mass production and use (as some DJ's would do) was a concern for the powers that be, but fair-use was still fair-use. Now we get slammed whether we break the law or no.
Is this a democracy or not? Who got to have a say on this issue?
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.
It seems that one fair way to proceed is for the government to levy these taxes and then tell everyone to go nuts, copy everything you want, because it's all paid for. The problem seems to be that the copyright holders want it both ways: to collect the tax money but still have copying be illegal.
The Canadian prices for iPods are $439, $579, and $729 for 10GB, 20GB and 40GB iPods, respectively. You must pay 7% GST on top of anything that you buy.
The US prices for iPods are $299, $399, and $499 for the same above. If you're not in California you only pay shipping and no tax.
At $1.32 Canadian exchange rate, assuming no skimming by your bank, the US prices to Canadians are $395, $527, and $658. Aside from the difference in price, to then bring it across the border you will be charged 7% GST and unknown amounts of excise, brokerage, inspection and other taxes, and they're not small change. I can guarantee you that it will end up costing you more to order it from the US if you're in Canada.
More proof that the Canadian dollar should be at around $1.50 or that prices in Canada should fall. Every Canadian iPod sold makes Apple in Cupertino extra profit at this point, and there's nothing that Canadians can do about it.
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?
This whole idea of compromise means the industry gets at least half a loaf, right out of the pockets of many people who never recorded a song in their lifetime. People who believe in compromise are the worst sort to have on regulation boards.
And taxing MP3 players is absurd. If you buy the music you should be able to listen to it on your iPod or any other player without additional charge. It's not like you're suddenly listening to it on your home stereo, car stereo, and iPod at the same time.
Canada needs a popular revolution, with a few decapitations thrown in for good measure!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I'm not Canadian, but this is what I think about the issue: If they start charging such exorbitant taxes they are just sending the message that it's okay to pirate the music because you're already paying for it in taxes.
Of course, this would be completely unfair to those of us who make enough money and have the moral character to actually PURCHASE our own music. The additional tax would be like welfare to support those who didn't feel like they should have to pay for music.
Most people probably don't use digital media to store music on anyway. Flash memory cards are primarily used in digital cameras, hard drives are used in PC's, CD-R's can be used for back-up and fair use rights, DVD-R's are used for making home movies from camcorders. Taxing any of these just to give free money to someone who didn't earn it is just plain wrong.
My suggestion? They should just do more to educate consumers about copyright law, and why it's important.
What you are talking about is called Purchase Power Parity. The economist does this cool little thing where they use the Big Mac to compute the purchase power parity of each currency.
The reason the purchase power parity can very so much from currency to currency is primarily because of the financial interest in the U.S. Markets which drives the demand for our currency up.
Unfortunately for us American's, eventually the worth of our strong dollar must eventually fall to put it back into line with PPP.
Having a high PPP is a double edged sword though. If you have a high PPP, it means you can buy a lot of stuff from abroad with your dollar. However, conversely, your stuff looks high priced compared to other country's stuff. Thus, you tend to run trade-deficits. Eventually, it will balance out.
With some (Future Shop, par example), it is included in the cost of the media. You don't see it, and people are less annoyed by it.
With others (Londons Drugs) they charge the tax at the time of sale. You then get a bill a lot larger than expected (for CD-bundles), and many people blame it on the store rather than placing blame retarded laws and corporate hand-holding as it should be.
I think that having the tax inclusive is one of the reasons that people aren't awake/more-pissed-off about this. If everybody who bought CD's found that they increased by 25-50% at the point of sale, I think there would be a lot more of a push to have the laws repealed.
As somebody who buys the media to store data or legal music, I wonder if I would be in my rights to pursue a lawsuit for being wrongfully charged what is equivilent to a fine on anyone who buys digital media.
With appoligizations to our brothers and sisters up north.
Rather than saying pirating must be allowed, I think it should say the reverse -- copying MUST be allowed, and copyrighted content and playback systems must be set up in a way that the content can be copied for personal use in a manner which retains the full value of the content -- ie, not just BS analog copies on yesterday's mediums, but full-value copies which retain all the advantages of the original material. The only mitigating factor allowed would be the lack of availability of consumer copying equipment (eg, DVDs prior to the availability of DVD recoders).
In other words, copyright holders are forbidden from encumbering their material for sale with copyright protection technology which would otherwise hinder consumers from making their personal use copies.
It's not enough to just say "OK, you can make personal copies" -- the industry will just push DRM and other onerous systems which prevent you from making copies. At this point, they are violating the spirit of a law which grants them royalties without having to prove a loss.
BTW, thanks to the guy in NYC on park ave & 37th with an open access point. My gay room in the Sheraton doesn't have hi speed access.
But since we're already be paying for media we copy, that means copying is now legal right?
Otherwise, we're paying for the media twice.
:wq
This is government stupidity at it's best. As it is a levy, and not a tax, it CANNOT be collected by Customs. It is a level which is collected when sold to a RETAILER. (Note: that is any company which will sell the end product to the consumer. That includes 'wholesalers' when selling to the public.).
But it means they cannot collect the levy if I order DVD-Rs from the U.S., or take a trip south and bring back an iPod.
(Note: it can be difficult to get consumer electronics mailed across the boarder, but picking them up yourself isn't hard.)
(thats how I got my Tivo; and it was fully declaired to customs when I came back).
Here's what will happen.
... they will simply wander on down to their local weekend flea market, for example the one in the big red building on Terminal Ave. here in Vancouver BC, and spend their money on all the stolen property stacked up in every stall.
.... ... and millions will continue to go merrily along burning mp3's onto blank CD's, just now they're stolen CD's.
When the tax starts, which by the way also includes a massive increase to the music industry tax on blank CD's that will nearly double their already taxed price, far fewer people will want to buy the products.
However, they will still neeeeed the products.
SO
There's a couple stalls in particular that sell unopened, new stacks of CD's that are already a lot cheaper than retail and 'strangely' have no Music tax on them.
In the end, the music industry looses their tax grab (...that they were never getting anyways as the canadian government has not paid out ONE CENT of the money theyve collected in the past few years...), because fewer people can afford to buy the CD's, the crime rate goes up with more B&E's on businesses that sell blank CD's, or even through smuggling of cheaper CD's up from the US, The technology companies will offer fewer players as they become even further priced above what people will play, many will continue to gripe about a tax they are supposed to pay when they are just backing up their own data
Can't happen? look what happened in Ontario when taxes went too high on cigarettes (with the help of some slimy smugglers on a native reserve, and the bastard cigarette companies that covertly supplied the smugglers).
George Bush + Linux = "I will not let information get in the way of the fight against Windows"
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.
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?
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.
A man who can't pronouce "nuclear arsenal" shouldn't have one -sig ends here.
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.
This issue has come up in australia before, not sure what happened though. The governments of this world need to realise that this stuff has mostly legitimate uses.
A friend of mine made the paper about this issue story reproduced here.
He produces music CD's for sale on behalf of the copyright owner on CDR's, he shouldn't be paying the RIAA/ARIA etc (and hence other artists, BU*cough*IT) for music they have the rights for.
This is the same as taxing people for going to the bank so they can reclaim money from bank robberies.
I don't care how many people who use a particular device or service for illegal purposes, no-one should be suggesting to charge everyone who uses a device or service legitimately to pay for the shady behaviour of others.
09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.
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?
Background
The levy started in 1999, based on a change to the Canadian copyright act in 1995, and is up for changes every 2 years. This round is for the years 2003-2004, and yes, it is actually a year late.
The previous round had a whole 3 objectors - all consortiums - retailers, importers, hardware creators - no private individuals.
This round started out with 100 objectors - winnowed down to about 30 by the time the actual submissions and legalities got going. The hearings were to take place around October of 2002 with the ruling by the end of 2002.
In reality, the hearings didn't start until the end of January, 2003 and ran to the middle of February - and the ruling is only now coming out.
Having lived through this period, written much and run a (closed) mail list for the objectors, you might expect me to have some idea of what the outcome will be - but truthfully I don't. All bets are off since this round there was a lot more information presented as well as some interesting twists - new ideas as opposed to just countering the CPCC's presentation and ideas.
The article that started this thread is quoting information that was available over a year ago - some of which was changed during the hearings. CPCC started out asking for CDN$21/Gig for "non-removeable hard drive" in each MP3 player but ended up proposing a sliding scale starting at (all figures in Canadian $) $11.10/Gig for first down to $1.99/Gig for anything over 20 Gigs. Note that this would apply to any media - FLASH, RAM, or "micro-hard disk" but doesn't apply to "full-size" hard disks used in non-portable devices such as PCs (they intimate that these are reserved for a future round)
Rather than detail all of the things that went on during the 18+ months since I started (due to my blood boiling while hearing a couple of coleagues discuss this at a Comdex show) I'll point you at the pages on my web site at my Media Levy pages
I'll post a summary of the actual levy as soon as I can in the morning.
In response to some of the postings here:
The current Canadian Copyright Act allows "private individuals" to make copies of music from wherever they can for their own private use. This means that my friend can loan me their retail-purchased music CD and I can make my own copy of it and give them back their original - or I can make a copy of my own retail-purchased CD for my self and give my friend the original - or I can make a copy of music I receive from whatever other medium (radio, TV, Internet) for my own use.
What I can't do is make a copy of my retail-purchased CD and give the copy to my friend
It also does not allow me to publish music I "own" to the Internet or make bulk copies and sell them - that is still "piracy".
The levy is only on products imported or manufactured for resale. This means that a private individual may import (for example) a tube of 100 CD-Rs for their own use from the US and not have to pay the levy. The Canadian Customs people at the border don't care and are not empowered to collect the levy (although they'll collect the GST and provincial sales tax). Currently it is just about a wash to order a tube of 100 CD-Rs from the US, pay the shipping and tax - but if the levy is doubled this will make the difference up to about $25 for 100 CD-Rs - well worth it for the average Canadian to learn how to use the Internet for e-commerce. This is what the retailers are upset about. With things like the Apple iPOD, the potential gain from ordering from outside of Canada is even greater!
CPCC (Canadian Private Copying Consortium) has graciously allowed for "zero-rating" for those who wish to register ($50 annual fee) as an importer/manufacturer of blank audio media that is not used to record music (i.e. is used to record data
Been there, done that, paid for the T-shirt
and didn't get it
Will send over blank media for prescription drugs.
*grin*