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Canada Quashes Copyright Tax on MP3 Players
Rippy the Gator writes "The Globe and Mail says that consumers may soon be paying less for MP3 players because the Federal Court of Appeal ruled that special copyright levies applied to digital music players are not legal. You might want to keep those receipts if you're giving them as a Christmas Gift."
According to the article, the law doesn't include any text about MP3 players, so collecting levies on them isn't allowed. As in many decisions, it has been left to Parliament to make the final choice.
The short of it is that if lobbyists get their way, the levy will be back on MP3 players; all that's needed is for an amendment to the Copyright Act to be drafted and passed.
Those extra levies on casettes/minidiscs/CD-R and apparently also MP3 players, do they really reach the artists? How do they redistrubute, and on what criteria?
It's interesting that I was just looking into this yesterday. They have a website that they've collected $80 million over that past 5 years and distributed $30 million of it. The distributions are based on radio airplay and CD sales. The funds are paid out by groups like SOCAN (an artist organization that handles royalties, etc.).
So, yes, the money is getting out slowly - unfortunately, it's being distributed to Celine Dion and Bryan Adams for the most part.
Egonis (155154) wrote:
> On one hand, yes.. copying music is breaking the law, but on the other hand...
> the levy tax pays the record industry as a whole for their "losses" --
> so there is a half-right and half-wrong to the concept of levies.
Except that in Canada it is legal to copy music for personal use
Not breaking any laws here.