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No Levy on iPods in Canada
colinemckay writes "The fight over a levy on iPods and other digital music devices ended Thursday when the Supreme Court of Canada refused to hear any further arguments on the matter. That means there will be no levy applied to digital audio recorders such as Apple's popular iPod and iPod Shuffle as well as other MP3 players like iRiver."
"The money is sitting in an account and will be returned to the importers and manufacturers of the products, said Basskin."
I think it should be going to the consumers not the corporations and distributors. I spent way too much on my 3Gen iPod when it first came out. I wouldn't mind an extra $25 in my pocket.
"Obviously we're disappointed. We felt it was self-evident that those products are sold for the purpose of copying music," said David Basskin, of the Canadian Private Copying Collective (CPCC), the non-profit agency which collects tariffs on behalf of musicians and record companies.
Yes, yes, everyone who owns an mp3 PLAYER, must have bought them to STEAL MUSIC. As opposed to, oh I dunno, LISTENING TO MUSIC.
Next thing we know everyone who owns a kitchen knife must have bought them to KILL PEOPLE.
Yup, it makes no sense at all. Most obviously, there's a bizarre assumption of guilt in collecting levies on all blank media. Why should the RIAA be paid for me burning my children's photos to a disc? What have I gotten from the RIAA for my money? More interestingly, it means that copyright holders have been reimbursed for any piracy on that media - and that they should have waived their right to seek further damages. And if you've already paid for your piracy, haven't you a license to pirate as much as you want, then? The answer is apparently nope and nope. Which, it is equally apparent, makes no sense. The music industry wants it both ways - being paid for piracy in a way that implicitly legitimizes it while insisting on its illegality. And who can blame them for trying to get as much money as they can? What's astonishing is that they're being allowed to do it.
It protects us for now. With the Canadian version of the DMCA coming out sometime this year or next, you can be sure we will be at the mercy of the record and movie industry. What do you want to bet that the tariff will remain on blank media?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
My memory is really foggy on this, but when I was a teenager back in the late 1970's, I had heard that when you buy blank cassette tapes, you paid a one cent [tax|levy|fine] for each cassette. I asked my father (whom worked peripherally with recording studios) about this. He told me that you are paying "the industry" because they think you are going to pirate music with it.
I'm thinking that this is the same or similar situation happening now.
-Scott
My other sig is a Glock
I buy the media labeled 'music' on purpose actually. Then I fire up a bittorrent client, or limewire pro, and get whatever music I want. You know why? 'Cuz Fuck em, I'm not paying twice! If you treat people like criminals, then that's what you get.
Actually I don't feel like you act like a criminal. In my opinion, buying "data" CDs and burning music from P2P on them would be criminal, but you've chosen to pay the CD tax, so you should bloody well be entitled to download 700M worth of music to put on each CD.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
If I lived in Canada, why would I want to pay for "you" to download music off the internet?