Canada's CD Tax Out of Hand?

CRIA Watcher writes "The Canadian Copyright Board has just announced that it is bringing back the tax on blank CDs, called the private copying levy, in 2007. Michael Geist demonstrates how the tax has created a huge distortion in the retail price of blank media on his blog with as much as 70 percent of the purchase price now heading directly to the music industry."

Comments

In related news...

[TripMaster Monkey]

Sales of blank CDs in Detroit area soar! Details at eleven!

Re:In related news...

[Quickfry]

Everybody knows Windsor == Canada.

Re:In related news...

[RobinH]

Sales of blank CDs in Detroit area soar! Details at eleven!

That's alright... I'll just pay the tax, thanks. :)

Re:In related news...

[Anonymous Coward]

Everybody knows Windsor == Canada.

Wait, what? Everybody knows test to see if Windsor is equal to Canada?

I'm really confused. . ..

Re:In related news...

[nurb432]

I wonder if border patrol will start shooing people that are smuggling in 'pirate media'. you know, copying a cd is so much worse then selling drugs.. or at least thats what they seem to want us to believe.

Re:In related news...

[yoyhed]

If he said "everybody knows (windsor==canada)==true" then it'd be the same thing, and he can't use a single = sign, because then he's doing the assignment himself right now. So I think he chose the best option.

Re:In related news...

[bjason82]

man, if I was canadian, I'd be pissed aboot this!

The referenced article clearly makes a law like this seem completely illogical.
What if someone wanted to burn a bunch of digital camera pics onto a cd and give them to a friend, are they to be punished for the deeds of others? In America we call that taxation without representation.

If they levied a 5 or 10 percent tax, I think people would grumble and complain, but eventually accept it. Whereas, this proposed tax might incite a reactionary response and possibly make criminals out of people who would otherwise be law-abiding citizens.

Re:In related news...

[Anonymous Coward]

I've never understood what that stereotype is all abaout.

Re:In related news...

[legojenn]

It's true. When I was working in Detroit, someone told me they liked downtown Canada.

Re:In related news...

[Quickfry]

Actually, using eq instead of == would have been a better option, as == doesn't evaluate strings, but eq does. That is, of course, assuming the section of my brain storing the knowledge of Perl is still intact..

Re:In related news...

[jo42]

So now the border patrol is going to have to go after CD runners and cigarette runners. w00t!

Re:In related news...

[yoyhed]

It all depends on the language, of course. I had just assumed windsor and canada were objects with overloaded == operators (in C++) ;-)

Re:In related news...

[LaughingJack]

I'm Canadian and a lawyer once came in one of our classes to explain to us what the copyright law cover in Canada. We were very surprised to learn that it's completly legal to have mp3s of copyrighted music on CD. But it isn't to have them on your hard drive! So, if you want to be legal, download your mp3s, burn them on a CD and then erase them from your hard drive and you are safe! If you apply this law to the letter, recording your favorite TV show on a VHS is illegal and iPods are illegal too! Soo confusing! :S

Assumed Guilt

[nurb432]

Nice culture.

Re:Assumed Guilt

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, that's why we have so many blacks in our jails and invade countries based on insufficient information!

Re:Assumed Guilt

[Anonymous Coward]

Or lock people up in foreign countries with no right to trial and abuse them because they were wearing a Casio digital watch. Don't you wish you could be civilised like that?

Re:Assumed Guilt

[nurb432]

1 - You have criminals in jail. if they are mostly black, then thats the way the card fall. You sound like a racist to me.

2 - Some of the facts may not have turned out to be as reliable as was first thought, but there was no where near 'insufficient' cause for any invasion in recent history. In this case you sound blind to reality to me.

Either way, take your garbage elsewhere, it doesnt hold water here.

Re:Assumed Guilt

[SeeMyNuts!]

Sigh. I have never illegally downloaded music. 9 out of 10 CD-Rs I use are for data backup, and occasionally I do make a fair-use copy of a CD I bought.

It has been said a thousand times that the revenue losses for piracy are basically made up. Pulled out of thin air. I know, because I was a teenager once. I went to college and lived among other students. The basic fact is that people buy the things that are important to them, and anyone who "pirated" music or games valued their collections so little that a failed hard drive or lost disc simply meant nothing. A shrug of the shoulders, and they move on. The perception of value is what drives the free market, right?

The only successful competition for Free is Better Than Free. Apple seems to have learned this. Red Hat is still in business. Somehow, GNOME and Firefox have found corporate backing. Or, am I dreaming all of this?

Re:Assumed Guilt

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, like black october and the war measures act right.

Re:Assumed Guilt

[Anonymous Coward]

...and invade countries based on insufficient information!

If by "insufficient information" you mean "an inside job, where the government murdered their own civilians swaying us to support both domestic and foreign policies, and to justify the hoax that is the war on terror," then yes, you are correct.

I DARE you to watch this film in its entirety, and tell me you still believe the perpetual lies spewed by the media and the American government.

Loose Change 2nd Edition You can legally download a copy from TorrentSpy.

Re:Assumed Guilt

[sumday]

The other week i upgraded my OS from Ubuntu 5.04 to Ubuntu 5.10. I thought i had backed all of the music i'd downloaded since installing ubuntu back in august '05, but it turns out i hadn't. So I lost about 7 gigs worth of music. When i considered that it was mostly music i hadn't really had the chance to listen to properly yet, i was completely devastated. But that only lasted for about a day, then i shrugged and moved on, scouring the blogosphere for tasty new mp3s to download.

Re:Assumed Guilt

[ReverendLoki]

Remove race from the picture, and you are left with the following facts:

1) The poor are more likely to be in jail than the wealthy.
2) A poor person is more likely to be given a jail sentence (or at least, a longer sentence) than a wealthy person who has committed a similar crime.

Wealth can buy better legal representation, simple as that. Now, to touch on race again, a larger percentation of the black population in the US is porr than in the white population. Therefore, a black person is more likely to spend time in jail than a white man. Furthermore, a man is more likely to spend time in jail if his father has spent significant time in jail.

Now, even if we are to assume that this is not an issue of race, at least at the start, it's easy to see how this can quickly evolve into a race issue. Consider how long this has been the status quo, and can you then honestly say that race has nothing to do with this?

I don't see how you can just blow off the argument about race in your first argument, and then make a claim that the other is "blind to reality" in your second.

Re:Assumed Guilt

[voice_of_all_reason]

The overwhelming majority of the others were handed over to the Americans by people who could reasonably be called bounty hunters.

And remember... NO DISINTERGRATIONS!

Re:Assumed Guilt

[Anonymous Coward]

The words "Apple" and "Free" don't even belong on the same planet, much less the same paragraph.

Re:Assumed Guilt

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm afraid that's probably a sign that your music collection is shit. I lost about three or four gigabytes of (illegal) mp3s, including some rare, out-of-print and consequently very hard to find tracks -- some of which had been ripped off vinyl and were never even released on CD in the first place. Even now I still find myself missing particular albums or singles that disappeared in that crash, and it was three years ago...

Re:Assumed Guilt

[blibbler]

I think that for the most part, race is less of an issue than poverty in determining crime. However, the fact is that in most places with white and black populations, whites are generally much wealthier. While I think race is less of issue now, it certainly was a major issue from at least 40-200 years ago, and simply maintaining the status quo isn't good enough. For example, Australian Aborigines were goverened under the "flora and fauna Act (NSW)" until the 60s. It isn't good enough to just say "sure, they are classified as people now, they should just quit complaining". These underprivileged people in our societies come from such a disadvantage that it is unacceptable to dismiss their current situation by saying it is "racially equal" (because poor whites are treated as badly as poor blacks.)

Re:Assumed Guilt

[qqaz]

how about fact #3, POOR PEOPLE STEAL STUFF. maybe if they would stop robbing people they would stop going to jail.

Re:Assumed Guilt

[Anonymous Coward]

No use using logic on what is obviously a Bible thumping, gun-lovin' uber right-wing Bushbot.

Re:Assumed Guilt

[dsgitl]

Explain Dennis Kozlowski, Ken Lay, and John Rigas, amongst plenty of others.

I think it's more apt to say that we all steal. Poor people are more likely to be caught is all.

Re:Assumed Guilt

[dsgitl]

I've watched a few 9/11 videos, one that's available on archive.org and a couple of others. The footage and information most disturbing to me is anything related to the Pentagon. There NEEDS to be a more serious discussion on why there were never any scraps of planes found at the Pengtagon site, and why -- to this day -- there is no video readily available of the Pentagon "attack."

If there were ever a Big Lie in out midst, this may be it. If they can do this, stealing elections certainly isn't beyond the realm of possibility.

Re:Assumed Guilt

[Anonymous Coward]

If it weren't for the people that died that day, that site would be funny.

Mistaking the shadow of the starboard engine on the fuselage as a "mysterious equipment pod"? Classic.
Purposefully misinterpreting 480i images which have very predictable (and explainable) results when taping fast moving objects? Astounding.

Is the guy that claims the moon landings were hoaxes because of blooming in the lunar photographs involved in this?

Re:Assumed Guilt

[nurb432]

And the point? Criminals are in jail.

Re:Assumed Guilt

[miskatonic alumnus]

And maybe if the wealthy would pay a goddamned wage that someone could earn a living on, the poor wouldn't have to steal. But, as the saying goes, steal $10, you are a thief; steal $1,000,000, you are a businessman.

Re:Assumed Guilt

[91degrees]

Nobody's assuming guilt.

They're simply assuming there is a certain amount of copying (legal or otherwise) and deducing that such copying has a cost to the record industry. As such, a logical means to recoup the losses is to charge a levy on blank media. It's not the most direct way of recouping the cost, but its easy to administer, and it does mean that in general, those who copy a lot of music will contribute more money than those who don't.

Re:Assumed Guilt

[CsiDano]

That's why when they removed the levy from mp3 players I finally bought one, and then switched to DVD backup, there is no levy from the music industry on blank dvds as of right now anyway. Uses less disks for backup. For those who may bring up car audio, my deck has a line in for other audio devices. In response to the other idea put forth about going state side, unless you are livving in a border town, it's not worth it, the savings just aren't there, the only thing accomplished by going stateside is sticking it to the Canadian music industry.

Re:Assumed Guilt

[nurb432]

Reality is not what the media feeds people like you in order to push a slanted agenda. wake up and look around. you might actually trip over the truth.

Re:Assumed Guilt

[91degrees]

and why -- to this day -- there is no video readily available of the Pentagon "attack."

A logical, non consipracy reason is simply that people visiting New York are quite likely to have video cameras since it's a major tourist destination. People visiting the Pentagon are likely not to have video cameras since it's a military installation

Re:Assumed Guilt

[Anonymous Coward]

You're an idiot. Put a banana in the blender and turn it on. How much is left? Toss a hollow tin can filled with cocktail sausages and fuel at a concrete bunker. How much tin is left? There was a B-25 that crashed into the Empire State Building, didja know that? The Pentagon was built in the old style, massive concrete and metal beams. No plane would leave much of a trace hitting that.

Are you also the kind of special retard that thinks the dust from cracking buildings are 'squibs'?

Re:Assumed Guilt

[Anonymous Coward]

There were MULTIPLE surveillance cameras pointing directly at the point of impact (this is discussed in detail in various films and all over the internet). Immediately following the "attack," these tapes were confiscated by the FBI. They have since carefully selected 5 frames from one of the videos to release.

http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/pentagon_photos_ 911.html

5 frames. I don't see an airplane in any one of those frames. Actually, I didn't see an airplane after the "attack."

Re:Assumed Guilt

[N3WBI3]

And put Danish pastors in Jail for speaking the Biblical view of homosexuality...

Re:Assumed Guilt

[qqaz]

First off, two of the three you mentioned are in jail, and the third is still on trial, so that really doesn't support the point that rich people don't go to jail.

Second, even if those mentioned did support the parent's points, it is still only 3 examples, hardly a significant sample.

Re:Assumed Guilt

[N3WBI3]

Yea I can see that: I treat you and this white person the same way but because that was not the sage 50 years ago you can still claim racism..

Re:Assumed Guilt

[qqaz]

Or maybe the people in quesstion could spend their time looking for a better job (or a job, for that matter), instead of robbing gas stations for crack money.

Re:Assumed Guilt

[Le Marteau]

Maybe they STEAL STUFF because they NEED STUFF? Could THAT be the reason why poor people steal less than rich people? I dunno... naah, it's probably just a coincidence.

Re:Assumed Guilt

[ReverendLoki]

It's obvious that the point of mentioning those three persons was not to argue that rich people never get sent to jail, but rather to counter the argument that rich people don't steal. True it is only anecdotal evidence, but itis in favor of countering this argument.

There is an extremely long list of examples of rich people avoiding jail time through monetory resources. It's how OJ could afford his dream team of defense lawyers. It doesn't always have to be a major affair - consider the rich kid getting away with a dui.

I grew up in the middle class, a bit above the mean, and I have had groups of frineds in several economic classes. Just from seeing how the police have dealt with them, it's obvious that the law treats them differently. A cop in a blighted neighborhood deal with a disturbance involving the poor a lot different than when responding to a disturbance amongst the wealthy in an upper-crust neighborhood. Anyone who claims differently is either truly ignorant or willingly blind.

The courts often take their cues from the police, so the treatment continues. And all most people do is shake their head at the "bad element", and wonder why they don't trust the system.

Re:Assumed Guilt

[blibbler]

I am sorry, but I cannot understand your statement. Can you please rephrase it.

Re:Assumed Guilt

[Jardine]

Sigh. I have never illegally downloaded music. 9 out of 10 CD-Rs I use are for data backup, and occasionally I do make a fair-use copy of a CD I bought.

Assuming you're in Canada, the only way you can illegally download music is if it's not for personal use.

Until the private copying law came into effect, you couldn't make a fair-use copy of a CD you bought because Canadian law doesn't include the concept of Fair Use. It does include a more limited concept of Fair Dealing.

As I recall, the private copying law was lobbied for by the Canadian music industry (they wanted the levy that's collected). In compensation for that levy, Canadians were granted the right to copy music for personal use. The industry liked it because they were getting paid for something Canadians were doing anyway (taping music off the radio, making copies for their friends). It was something that would cost too much to enforce anyway. Now they want to have their cake and eat it too.

Re:Assumed Guilt

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, that's easy to say. But when you're poor, hopeless, and addicted to crack it's a little tougher.

Re:Assumed Guilt

[c_forq]

Can you provide a link to that?

Re:Assumed Guilt

[N3WBI3]

Sorry, I believe its insane to call parity racism because of the past which is, in effect, what the parent was saying. "Yea we know its really about being poor and not Black but we cant ignore what thigs were like 50 years ago"...

Re:Assumed Guilt

[N3WBI3]

http://www.religioustolerance.org/hom_hat8.htm Sometime in 2003, Pastor Åke Green delivered a sermon at his Pentecostal church in Borgholm, Sweden. It was titled: "Is Homosexuality Genetic or an Evil Force that Plays Mind Games with People?" He cited the main "clobber" passages in the Bible that have often been used to attack homosexual behavior. He said that: "The Bible clearly teaches about these abnormalities. Sexual abnormalities are a deep cancerous tumor in the entire society. The Lord knows that sexually twisted people will rape the animals. ....Because of these sins, the land will vomit out its inhabitants. The political response to this in our country is then what Paul talks about: 'We know God's righteous decree that those who live that way deserve death. Still it is in that very way they live, and worse yet, they think it is good when others do it.' [Paraphrase of Romans 1:32.] " ... "All homosexuals are not pedophiles or perverts. They nevertheless open the door to forbidden areas and allow sin to take hold of the life of the mind. And the one who is a pedophile today does not start out as such. They simply begin by changing their gender relationships. That is how it began. To be 'faithful' in a homosexual relationship is in no way a better relationship than where you frequently change partners. It is equally detestable in the eyes of God. From God's perspective it is to be rejected, and from God's perspective it is as much sin if you frequently change partners as it is to live in a [committed] homosexual relationship. It makes no difference before God's Word......" ... "Those who live that way are not a child of God and cannot be one. We must say it so people hear it. Do not fool yourselves, dear people. It is deceit of the highest level if you think you can fool yourselves. For the Devil says: 'You can be a Christian, and you can be good as a Christian, and you can live like this anyway.' 'You can be faithful in your partnership,' says the enemy of souls. However, the Word of God says something else. Delusions that lead to punishment..." After trial, Green was found guilty and sentenced to one month in prison. Public prosecutor Kjell Yngvesson is reported as saying: "One may have whatever religion one wishes, but [the sermon] is an attack on all fronts against homosexuals. Collecting Bible [verses] on this topic as he does makes this hate speech." Thankfully, and eventually this conviction was overturned but it does show the way Europe and Canada are drifting when it comes to tolerance of anything outside the 'desired' standards for religious discourse..

Re:Assumed Guilt

[Anonymous Coward]

According to this article about the Empire State Building,

"One of the engines and part of the landing gear hurtled across the 79th floor, through wall partitions and two fire walls, and out the south wall's windows to fall onto a twelve-story building across 33rd Street. The other engine flew into an elevator shaft and landed on an elevator car. The car began to plummet, slowed somewhat by emergency safety devices. Miraculously, when help arrived at the remains of the elevator car in the basement, the two women inside the car were still alive.

Some debris from the crash fell to the streets below, sending pedestrians scurrying for cover, but most fell onto the buildings setbacks at the fifth floor. Still, a bulk of the wreckage remained stuck in the side of the building. After the flames were extinguished and the remains of the victims removed, the rest of the wreckage was removed through the building.

The plane crash killed 14 people (11 office workers and the three crewmen) plus injured 26 others. Though the integrity of the Empire State Building was not affected, the cost of the damage done by the crash was $1 million."

I don't get it. Why didn't the Empire State Building FALL TO THE GROWN AT FREE FALL SPEED from the fire, and why didn't the B-25 EVAPORATE on impact? There are only 3 instances in history of a building entirely collapsing due to a fire: the three WTC buildings (building 7 was an entire city block away, and was built to withstand bombings/hurricanes/etc), and plane crashes almost always leave behind both wings, the cockpit, landing gear, tail section, the TITANIUM ENGINES, and a black box. ALL OF THAT IS SAID TO HAVE INSTANTLY EVAPORATED ON IMPACT (as well as all the seats, plates, serving carts, bodies, everything). The only thing that was left were shards small enough to carry away in your hand, and parts that are PROVEN to have NOT come from any Boeing 757 EVER.

Maybe you should re-evaluate your own understanding of what exactly it is we are talking about here. If you know the melting point of steel (especially if it is entirely coated in fire retardent as the WTC structure was) and titanium (what the engines were made out of that hit the pentagon AND WTC), and the very small resulting heat of a fuel explosion, you would understand that this is physically IMPOSSIBLE.

Oh wait... I didn't see your banana in a blender analogy there... Sorry, I take back everything.

Re:Assumed Guilt

[c_forq]

Okay, after reading the linked page it said the charge was overturned in appeal. Unless the high court yet again reverses the current decision I see nothing here but a bad judge, and bad judges happen (hence the appellate court system).

Re:Assumed Guilt

[miskatonic alumnus]

Have you ever considered the possibility that for our current economic system to work, there MUST be a class of the unemployed? This keeps wages down, and keeps wage-slaves from making demands on their employers. Things are not as simple as "Get a job, bum!"

Re:Assumed Guilt

[Omaze]

Rich people don't steal. They know how to work the system and they have the money to do it. Take this guy for example.

(NYT warning) At the end of the year, he gave $165 million to a tiny charity set up to benefit the golf program at Oklahoma State University, reaping Mr. Pickens a tax deduction. Records show that the money spent less than an hour on Dec. 30 in the account of the university's charity, O.S.U. Cowboy Golf Inc., before it was invested in a hedge fund controlled by Mr. Pickens, BP Capital Management...By giving the money before 2005 expired, Mr. Pickens was able to take advantage of a provision in Hurricane Katrina relief legislation that allowed him a deduction for a charitable gift equal to 100 percent of his adjusted gross income

So not only does he get the tax deduction, which means he's not paying a dime in income taxes this year, but that money has been reinvested back in a fund that he already controls. Now what do you think a $165 million investment is going to do to his fund? It's going to make it look darn juicy to other investors who will probably end up pouring 401(k) money into it and inflating it further. Do you really think, at the end of the year, he's going to take the profits from that fund and dole them back out fairly to the charity and the 401(k)? Hell no. He knows how to work the skim. He'll take the lion's share for himself, reinvest most of it back in his own investments, and give the charity what... 8%? How much were your 401(k)s averaging last year? 7%?

So he skips out on 100% of his income taxes (which the rest of the taxpayers get to pay for) and then uses the windfall to ensure that he can continue making probably close to 12-14% on his own personal take while leaving 7-8% for the poor fools that got suckered in by the pyramid scheme. I wouldn't be surprised if, because of the verbage "adjusted gross earnings", he doesn't even need to pay taxes on the earnings for the money which his fund will earn!

And he's not the only one. That's the primary mode of operation for people who can afford both $165 million dollar donations and their own funds. What could you, as a private citizen, do? Donate maybe a few hundred to a local charity and hope that they use it for good? They sure as hell aren't going to put it back into CDs which you control.

A big assed pyramid scheme.

Re:Assumed Guilt

[Anonymous Coward]

Why didn't the Empire State Building FALL TO THE GROWN AT FREE FALL SPEED from the fire, and why didn't the B-25 EVAPORATE on impact?

(1) Impact speed. The B-25 was traveling about 1/3 the speed of the 757. Slower speed = less damage to the support structure.
(2) Fuel. The B-25 wasn't fueled for a trans-continental flight.
(3) Construction. The ESB has a lot more steel a lot closer together than the WTC and the B-25 impact took out a much smaller ratio of the weight bearing supports than the 757 did at the WTC.

Re:Assumed Guilt

[zippthorne]

hmm... perhaps.. but if you pay people not to work, they're technically not unemployed. for your theory to work, you need people -- looking for work -- not just sans job.

Re:Assumed Guilt

[blibbler]

Perhaps a better word would be "neo-racism" or "defacto-racism". Instead of saying "no blacks can live in this neighborhood" communities are saying "no poor people may live in this neighborhood" when a vast disproportionate number of poor people are black.

An interesting side effect of this is the rise of the idea of "white trash" - or poor white people who are treated as badly as poor blacks.

Re:Assumed Guilt

[theshowmecanuck]

And act smug and tell other countries how to do things but not want to get involved. And know that massacres in Rawanda are going to happen because their top general is there and keeps trying to tell the government but they don't do anything about it. Or think that they ought to get out of Afganistan because it's not 'our' business if Taliban shoot women in the head for showing their face or trying to learn to read.

Oh wait, that's Canada I'm talking about...

Dude, the War of 1812 ended almost 200 years ago. Get the fuck over it already.

Re:Assumed Guilt

[don_oles]

The man is right. As a military installation it has to be monitored by those who are inside very very thoroughly.

Re:Assumed Guilt

[91degrees]

So, what do you think happened? Someone faked videos of two planes crashing into the WTC, then set off some explosives in the building to demolish it? If so, why?

Re:Assumed Guilt

[N3WBI3]

But that is still not racism! One must not have equality of outcome to avoide being racist. That would be classism..

Re:Assumed Guilt

[jdbear]

Assumed Guild said, " Now, to touch on race again, a larger percentation of the black population in the US is porr than in the white population. Therefore, a black person is more likely to spend time in jail than a white man. Furthermore, a man is more likely to spend time in jail if his father has spent significant time in jail."

The fact is that there are more poor whites than poor blacks in raw numbers. If money was a factor, then there would be more whites in jail. As it stands, as a percentage of the population, blacks are 9 times more likely to commit a crime than whites.

There are mistakes made in the judicial system, it's true, but more often than not, the juries that convict blacks are more than half black themselves, so if the problem is prejudice, then who is it that is prejudiced?

In other western countries, the blacks DO NOT HAVE the same issues, and are not more likely to commit crimes. It is therefore not a racial thing, but a social one. To make this more topical, blacks are much less likely to burn illegal tunes onto a CD than whites.

Re:Assumed Guilt

[Anonymous Coward]

Planes really hit the WTC. A Boeing 757 definately did NOT hit the pentagon. Silverstein (who owned the WTC buildings) took out a MULTI-BILLION insurance policy on the WTC buildings against "terrorism." Tower 7 didn't fall. Silverstein said in a PBS interview that he and the fire dept decided to "pull" it, which means to demolish it. It was a full city block away from the towers, and every news agency still claims that it collapsed from fire. How they were able to demolish it so perfectly in not time at all is astounding.

It was a cover-up, and justification for "going to war."

Days before 9/11, the amount of "put" options on American airlines TRIPPLED. A put is when you anticipate the stock price going down, and you make money if it does. That would lead many people to believe that there was prior knowledge. There are still millions of dollars that have not been claimed.

That and all the agency investigations that were suddenly destroyed when the towers collapsed.

Watch "Loose Change Second Edition" to get a complete picture.

Unfair

[spikestabber]

This is a load of crap, I'm sick and tired of paying a fortune for blank CDR's while the Canadian Recording industry is out to call everyone a criminal and lobbying to cripple our rights by introducing ludicris laws to ruin what us Canadians take for granted. Either fuckoff trying to take our rights away, or do away with this stupid tax!

Re:Unfair

[Rei]

On the other hand, if they kept the tax and at the same time passed a law (or had the courts rule) that to penalize people for copying music files while they're paying the tax would be double jeapordy for the same crime, then this could actually be rather nice.

Re:Unfair

[Raul654]

Um, no. Paying a tax does not constitute jeapardy.

Re:Unfair

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is incidentally what the Ontario Court of Appeals said, and why there was no levy for a while.

Re:Unfair

[Rei]

You're paying what is basically a fine for what they assume is breaking the law; if they sue you again, you're having to pay the same fine again. But, a poor choice of words, perhaps. Double payment, if you prefer.

Re:Unfair

[Anonymous Coward]

It is a complete pain in the butt. I have almost 2 gigs of family photos and documents for both sides of my family so far. Burning CDs is a semi-regular occurance for me for these files. Why should I subsidize legal crooks in the music industry for allowing me the privilige of making copies of my work! As an example my in-laws had their 50th anniversary last year. My wife and myself scanned in almost 1,000 photos and slides and burned approximately 25 CDs for family and friends. On my side of the family I have many original family documents that other members were interested and I burned CDs without a thought. Why? simple I own the photos and why should I pay a third party money for something that they down't own or own the rights to?

I still have over 5,000 photos, slides and negatives along with other family documents just for my side of the family. I figure it will be in the range of 1 to 2 gigs just for these. At this rate a complete copy of family documents for one person will be 4 CDs. I use CDs as not everyone has a DVD drive yet.

The above also excludes my photography work. I have done a lot of photography myself. Landscape, portrait and weddings. I have about 2,000+ images that I have yet to even start there.

Re:Unfair

[Anonymous Coward]

Your comments would hold more if you could spell jeopardy.

Re:Unfair

[stubear]

Then perhaps the online community needs to learn how to respect intellectual property holder's rights. I don;t give a rat's ass about your rights if you're going to violate mine, it's really as simple as that. You can rot in prison for al lI care, I have no sympathy for you.

Re:Unfair

[Rary]

Actually, what they did was even better than that. They imposed the levy and, at the same time, said it's perfectly legal to make copies of music for personal (ie. not for profit) use.

Of course, even better still would be to make it legal to copy for personal use and not impose the levy.

Re:Unfair

[Winterblink]

That's a great reaction, one I think most folks will share. Does posting it here on Slashdot matter? How will it make a difference at all?

Does anyone know who to contact in order to get our views voiced PROPERLY?

Re:Unfair

[spikestabber]

Thats the problem, you never care about the rights of the consumer. I guess thats why over 3 million early HDTV adopters will be screwed over.

Re:Unfair

[voice_of_all_reason]

Right, we call it "gyp-parody" instead

Re:Unfair

[Andrzej Sawicki]

No, you are paying for the security (and other) copies you might want to make on those CDs from original CDs (i.e. for whatever the "fair use" copying is allowed in your country). Call it the fair use tax if you will.

This tax has nothing to do with illegal copies (i.e. burning an ISO you just downloaded). That is a separate issue.

Re:Unfair

[spikestabber]

I think you're retarded bought and paid for rights are being more then compensated for with the millions being pulled from these levies. Your point is useless.

Re:Unfair

[PhotoJim]

DVDs aren't subject to the levy and hold more data. Of course, not everyone has a DVD reader or a DVD burner, but with burners in the $40-50 Cdn range at mail order establishments of repute, the easy solution is to switch to DVD media and only use CDs when absolutely necessary. I agree that it's ridiculous that we have to, but it's simple enough to do.

Re:Unfair

[Skreems]

Except it was ALREADY legal to make copies of music for personal use. If you're talking about distributing it to friends, that's another story...

Re:Unfair

[Crazy Man on Fire]

Why do you have to pay a tax to have access to your fair use rights? Didn't those come with the purchase of the original content?

Re:Unfair

[epiphani]

Dont complain - this tax gives us exactly the artillary we need to fight off further legislation. Right now I can download music guilt-free because every time I buy a blank CD, I pay for music.

I paid a levy on my ipod. As long as I own that Ipod, I intend to use it to listen to music I downloaded without paying for.

Re:Unfair

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmmm, I'd be blaming the crooks who accepted the bribe, not the people who offered the bribe. The root of the problem is government. They hold the keys -- they are the only ones with the "right" to employ coercion as a means to an end, and they are the only ones who can delegate that "right" to other groups.

This is a failure of government if I've ever seen one, and we'd do best to recognize it for what it is.

Re:Unfair

[Znork]

Frankly, I think a general tax would be far superior to copyright in economic performance. But change it to a percentage of salesprice, like VAT, and apply it across all distribution, blank media or not, say five percent. A few cents off a blank CD, a lot more off a commercial finished product.

Big bad corporations want to make money off music? Well, go ahead, take whatever you want, but part of your profits will be taxed and distributed to the original _creators_. Sell music over the internet? Sure, that's free too, but again part of your profits go to the creators.

Such a system would be far more compatible with a free market and competition than the current monopoly rights based one, and it would generate far better dividends for the creators of material.

Re:Unfair

[AchilleTalon]

Why not boycott the Canadian Recording industry stopping to buy any music for a year or so. Keep the money and attend shows instead. After all, the whole Recording Industry is just becoming a huge parasit or virus.

Re:Unfair

[Random Destruction]

were allowed to copy others' cds as well. I can legally burn personal copies of all my friends' music.

Re:Unfair

[jleq]

I don't find this unfair at all. Having such a tax legitimizes free copying and distribution of copyrighted works on applicable CD-R media. If we had this in America, the amount of "pirated" music would skyrocket - since it would no longer be pirated, as a royalty had been paid.

Re:Unfair

[Andrzej Sawicki]

I did not say I agree, I just explained how it works.

Re:Unfair

[Anonymous Coward]

So go after the people thar actually violate your rights.

I've burned hundreds of CDs in my life. Maybe 25% of those contained music in one form or another. Every bit of that music was bought and paid for by me. None of the burned CDs has ever been "distributed". They are mostly just compilations (because 8/10 tracks on most CDs are crap) or copies to use in the car so the originals don't get damaged.

Why should I be paying a levy on any of those CDRs???

I have no problem with copyright owners enforcing their rights. Just don't violate mine in the process.

Re:Unfair

[Anonymous Coward]

No we wouldn't, no one uses CD-Rs to pirate music. You download the music with your P2P program and leave it on your harddrive, play it in winamp or copy it to your ipod.

Re:Unfair

[belmolis]

What about all the CD's that are not used to copy music? I have NEVER made a music CD. I use blank CDs for computer backup and storage and to store non-commercial recordings of speech, primarily ones that I have recorded myself. Why should I pay the music companies? I may be unusual in never making music CDs, but there are surely large numbers of people who use CDs for things that have nothing to do with music.

Re:Unfair

[Anonymous Coward]

That just gives them more ammo.

If the boycott is actually effective, it will decrease revenue. They'll take the decreased revenue numbers back to the legislature and say "See - It's those bloody pirates. They're bankrupting us! Raise the levy!"

Throw in a few well timed campaign contributions, and you've bought yourself a pay raise.

Re:Unfair

[Andrzej Sawicki]

I know there used to be "special" CD-Rs for copying music (special only when looking at the price tag, mind you), at least that is how it worked in Poland. But that is not the case anymore, so either the tax was forced for all CD-Rs or the "special" CD-Rs would not sell, and got dropped. Judging by the subject at hand, I guess the former. As to why this could happen at all, I have no clue.

Re:Unfair

[Rac3r5]

I think you're wrong in your thinking. Not everybody uses CD for copying music. I buy my music in stores and then rip them to MP3 format and upload it to my MP3 player. I use my CDs for backups.

You know music is not the only thing people use CD's for, there are tons of other uses. What about ppl in the software industry? A lot of software is pirated, why aren't these people being compensated as well?

Maybe while you're doing that, have a tax on paper, because people could use paper to photocopy books. Or how about giving everyone who uses the road a speeding ticket, because some people speed. And the list can go on and on.

What I'm trying to get at is, the CD is a medium to store data. Why should I be made to pay for something I am not guilty of?

Re:Unfair

[DeeKayWon]

Section 80 of the Copyright Act says thus:

--

80. (1) Subject to subsection (2), the act of reproducing all or any substantial part of

(a) a musical work embodied in a sound recording,

(b) a performer's performance of a musical work embodied in a sound recording, or

(c) a sound recording in which a musical work, or a performer's performance of a musical work, is embodied

onto an audio recording medium for the private use of the person who makes the copy does not constitute an infringement of the copyright in the musical work, the performer's performance or the sound recording.

(2) Subsection (1) does not apply if the act described in that subsection is done for the purpose of doing any of the following in relation to any of the things referred to in paragraphs (1)(a) to (c):

(a) selling or renting out, or by way of trade exposing or offering for sale or rental;

(b) distributing, whether or not for the purpose of trade;

(c) communicating to the public by telecommunication; or

(d) performing, or causing to be performed, in public.

--

(emphasis mine)

Re:Unfair

[ceoyoyo]

That's what he's talking about. I could go to my friend's house and copy his 200 CD collection for my personal use, legally. I just couldn't turn around and SELL those copies (non-personal use). A court even ruled that downloading songs was legal.

Then I believe, under pressure from the US of A, the government passed amendments to the copyright act.

Re:Unfair

[evil_tandem]

1. try to act like an adult.

2. no one is going to prison for stealing music.

3. flawless logic. somewhere someone breaks into homes and steals things. therefore no one is entitled to protection from any other laws. flawless.

4. what to do when you propose an idea (be it intellectual rights or whatever) but millions of other people disagree? it's possible your idea is unreasonable or unfair to others. since you lack the actual capacity to enforce your idea of how the world should work on others it would be in your best interest to try to find common ground and work towards that.

getting morally indignant, and creating your own new laws (by taking away the traditional rights of the millions) using DRM is not meeting in the middle. since you refuse to budge no middle ground can be reached. you lack the ability to force the rest of the world to bend to your way of thinking. so your precious "property" continues to get stolen. no amount of words, moral indignation, laws or DRM is going to change this. the longer you stomp like a toddler not getting what he wants is the longer you aren't reaping the benefits that this new economic medium could provide you.

you are spending billions of dollars to buy legislation and create DRM systems to take away MY RIGHTS and you actually have the gaw to wonder why we refuse to support you anymore with our money? you take away rights that users have enjoyed for decades now in fair use, and then wonder why people aren't just gobbling it up?

it's because you live in the same world everyone else does (despite your best efforts). a world that lives by supply and demand. the demand for your products IS elastic, regardless of what you like to think. you are not entitled to make any amount of money, you have to convince the buying public that you are.

you're attitude is to blame for your predicament. not the online community.

Re:Unfair

[ceoyoyo]

Shhhh! They heard you! Now we'll have to pay more for DVDs too!

Re:Unfair

[Stripe7]

What happens to business uses of blank media? Do you get a tax refund? Ie if your media is used for backup of your HD with no music or if you are using it in a corporation do you get a refund? Also can you take that tax as a deduction from your normal taxes?

Re:Unfair

[gutnor]

They do not call everybody a criminal. It is just that nothing is copyrighted and that's fair to reward the original author of nothing with some cash...

Don't complain too much, I haven't burned a music/mp3 CD in years ( and I don't play on moral justification like it's not stealing or fair use or music wants to be free ) When you pay the tax, at least you can think that's little less you will put in CD buying and that's basically like a price increase for you music needs. For me every time I burn a backup CD, it's a little less for anything else I value more than music, I cannot spend less than 0 per year in music!

Re:Unfair

[dougmc]

I know there used to be "special" CD-Rs for copying music (special only when looking at the price tag, mind you)

No, they weren't special `only when looking at the price tag'. They were special all the time -- just not very special. And at least here in the US, they're still available.

The audio CD-Rs have a bit set somewhere that audio equipment looks at before deciding if they'll record on this media. So if you have cd writer in your stereo, it probably will only work with audio CD-Rs. Of course, the audio CD-Rs cost more, and some equipment can be hacked to not require this bit to be set, or you can swap it with a data CD-R at the right time and things will work, etc.

The cd writer in your computer, on the other hand, has no such restriction, since it's meant to store data. Of course, you can also burn audio onto your data CD-R on your computer, and people do do this.

As for the law changing in Canada, I have no idea. In the US, I know that audio CD-Rs include a tax that goes to the RIAA or the artists or somebody, and data CD-Rs do not. More on the DAT tax here. (It's called the DAT tax because it was originally written for DAT (4mm tapes) and is probably the #1 reason why we don't have consumer DAT audio drives in our stereos now.)

In any event, when I'm at Frys and I see somebody pick up a batch of Audio CD-Rs, I'll often ask them if they're going to burn them on a stereo component or a computer, and 95% of the time, the answer is `computer'. And then I tell them that they don't need the expensive audio CD-Rs -- the data ones will work just as well.

The DAT tax does have one good benefit though. From the article above --

It explicitly makes it legal (or more precisely, non-actionable) for you to copy audio works for your own use ( section 1008). That's right, it is now perfectly legitimate for you to borrow the latest Madonna album from a friend and make yourself a copy, despite the copyright. Pretty neat, huh?

Of course, this page was written pre-DMCA. I've no idea if the law has changed since.

Re:Unfair

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, yes;

http://www.parl.gc.ca/information/about/people/hou se/PostalCode.asp?Language=E&source=sm

Re:Unfair

[Anonymous Coward]

"the easy solution is to switch to DVD media and only use CDs when absolutely necessary"
'They heard you! Now we'll have to pay more for DVDs'

It's not like anybody thinks the men making laws in these countries actually understand the technology.
More likely they are just pushing the requests of their highest paying constituents at re-election time.

So at best, they might believe that 1:1 full disk duplication of audio CDs is being done on compact discs.

Re:Unfair

[g00z]

And remind me, how does that apply to working musicians that burn CD-r's of their own music to sell? Why should they pay a tax to the major record labels that won't sign them? Talk about getting both ends of the shaft.

Re:Unfair

[RelaxedTension]

This has everything to do with illegal copies. This tax's sole purpose is to compensate artists and companies for the percieved pirating to new cd's and cassette tapes that they insist the medium is for. Fair use has nothing to do with this.

I believe this tax was part of the reason that downloading music was deemed legal, while uploading it was still said to be illegal. I'd be perfectly happy if they re-institute the tax and leave downloading legal.

Re:Unfair

[JazzCrazed]

Except that early-adopter HDTV buyers were screwed, regardless of the connection restriction, because their screens aren't capable of anywhere near full HD res, anyway (and are likely only barely over the restricted resolution). That just comes with being an early adopter - you get technology that doesn't match the promise.

But all that's irrelevant... DRM is still an artificial restriction that hurts the average consumer more than it benefits the distributors.

Re:Unfair

[Le Marteau]

Why not boycott the Canadian Recording industry stopping to buy any music for a year or so.

I did! It's easy! Just don't buy any Rush, Anne Murray, Gordon Lightfoot, or Celine Dion. There is one other Canadian band, but I don't remember their name.

Re:Unfair

[stubear]

You're missing the point. I don't think we'd be anywhere near the empass we're at with copyright protection on the internet if people simply realized they have no explicit or implicit rights to all the free intellectual property they want. This is the nuclear arms race all over again and unfortunately htere appears to be no end in sight. Therefore, I don't give a rat's ass about your rights if you're not willing to give a rat's ass about my rights. It has nothing to do with me wishing for your rights to not exist at all.

Re:Unfair

[renehollan]

Either fuckoff trying to take our rights away, or do away with this stupid tax!

So, throw the thieving bastards out of power. Get a million people to protest and storm the Commons, and I'm with you.

I had tried to fight the corruption politically, and found that the most effective things to do was to leave, and stop funding the thieves via my income, goods, and service taxes. I find I have far more to contribute to real charitable causes this way.

But, what can you say about the citizens of country who accept a constitution that lets the government overrule the courts? Homilies about, "Oh, they would never abuse the power," and such.

Lemme tell you something buddy, power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

You've got an insanity where it is illegal for a sick person to contract with a doctor to help them. (Except, of course, for my son, who is an American, and is allowed to pay for service. "Nyeah, nyeah, indeed.") Because this is "unfair" to those citizens who can't afford it. Hello? What part of "having paid one's fair share of taxes" to support the poor and other "worthy" social causes have made it wrong to spend one's post-tax earnings, in the way one sees fit?

Clearly, the Supreme Court of Canada has agreed.

So, you'd think that sanity would prevail.

But, no, The Quebec government trots out the "Nothwithstanding Clause" as some sort of "nyeah, nyeah, NYEAH, nyeah".

Canadian socialists (communists is a more fitting term since they try to redirect all earnings by restricting what one can do with post-tax money) deserve to be made to pay for their thievery and the suffering they have inflicted on those that actually work and have carried the rest for decades.

Re:Unfair

[ceoyoyo]

Your last sentence would have completely baffled an MP. I'm sure the CRIA has some traitor techies working for them though.

Hm... maybe we should infiltrate them with double agents....

Re:Unfair

[seanvaandering]

Right now I can download music guilt-free because every time I buy a blank CD, I pay for music

Sounds good until, they charge 100% of the price, then 150%, then 200%, etc etc etc.

Once they have their foot in the door, it will be next to impossible to get them out. This only serves to set a dangerous precident, that is nothing but a slippery slope for consumers. It's afforable now, how about in 5 years? I'll guess they'll blame it on inflation, and you wont even remember why it costs 5x what it costs today.

Re:Unfair

[Anonymous Coward]

See, that's the thing. The levy is nothing more than a tax. If you're caught with the music obtained illegally, you are still liable for the damages caused to the industry. It's not f*ing fair at all!

Re:Unfair

[Emetophobe]

I wish they would get rid of this tax aswell. It is unfair for people like myself that don't even use blank cds for burning music, I own an ipod. All I use blank cds and dvds for is backing up data, why should I be giving any money to the recording industry for that?

Re:Unfair

[DrEldarion]

The problem is that if you want to back up some data on a CD, you pay a royalty. If you're a musician and you want to give out copies of your own music, you pay a royalty. If you want to use them all as coasters, you pay a royalty.

Why should you have to pay a royalty for a potential use of the CDs when there are so many other legitimate ones?

Re:Unfair

[agent_no.82]

I don't give a rat's ass about your rights if you're going to violate mine, it's really as simple as that. DRM and blank-CD tax are not rights at all. What is a legal "right" is not always a moral "right."

Re:Unfair

[ThePiMan2003]

I realize yyour just a troll, but I can't resist. There are way more people legitamitly purchasing music then there are stealing it. It is unfair and juvenile to punnish everyone because some people are lame.

Also, tricks like the Sony DRM debacle are only hurting your position. An eye for an eye, etc.

Re:Unfair

[NoStrings]

The question that I have is how do "they" know which artist(s) music I'm burning to that disc? Do they have a formula somewhere that determines which artists reap the benefits of this tax based on their popularity? What about all the artists from other countries that are popular here in Canada also? What about independent artists that aren't signed to a major label? How much of this surcharge actually goes to the artists, and how much to the record companies and government to compensate them for all the hard work they've done collecting the money in the first place?

OK, I apologize, that was more than one question.

Re:Unfair

[Anonymous Coward]

I copied a Cd yesterday and gave it to a friend. So this tax is my fault. Sorry, my bad.

Re:Unfair

[HybridJeff]

Well then we'll have to agree to disagree. You dont think I have the right to copy your work for free, I dont think you have the right to charge me for it. Guess what, the courts have ruled that because of these leveys I'M RIGHT not you.

Re:Unfair

[Fulcrum of Evil]

Then perhaps the online community needs to learn how to respect intellectual property holder's rights.

Call it by its right name: Copyright. IP is just another attempt to redefine the battleground in the favor of entrenched corporations. Besides, we're talking about Canada - with the blank media levy, copying is perfectly legal.

Re:Unfair

[IHateUniqueNicks]

You've got it backwards.
The levy was legitimized by the free copying law that was passed. Not the other way around.
We have that free copying law regardless of this levy.

Re:Unfair

[shmlco]

what to do when you propose an idea but millions of other people disagree?

I propose to grow food and sell it. Millions of people, who'd prefer free food, would rather steal it. Food isn't free, and costs money to produce. What to do? While not a perfect analogy, the point is that the "disagreement" may not be rational, and that someone's wants and desires may conflict with practical realities.

People give allofmp3 as an example of "reasonably" priced unencumbered music that they'd pay for, and as an indication of a pricing model the industry should follow. All well and good. They tend to miss the point, however, that it's easy to sell a song for a nickel when you didn't have to produce it in the first place. Like it or not, content creation takes money. And in some cases, a lot of it.

... using DRM is not meeting in the middle. since you refuse to budge no middle ground can be reached

What middle ground? Apparently the endpoint desired by the "consumer" is free (or nearly so) unencumbered music/video that they can share with as many "friends" as they want. Sorry, but to my mind that's not reasonable, nor practical. And as the early days of VHS have shown, people will not "honor" voluntary restrictions. That's how MacroVision came into play. You're correct, of course, that any form of security will inconvenience someone. Tough. I'd prefer not having clerks escort my purchases at Best Buy, but it seems that too many others have abused the privilege.

a world that lives by supply and demand. the demand for your products IS elastic

Yes, it is. And so are your choices. Buy it now at the price asked, or wait until it comes down it price, as it always does, or refuse to buy it at all. Unfortunately, too many apparently can't wait, must have it now, and refuse to pay the asking price. Price too high? Maybe. But a free market has shaped it into what most people will pay for that content at that time. If enough people don't buy it, the price will be dropped. Supply and demand.

But, a price higher than some might wish is not grounds for stealing whatever they want, simply because they want it. Desire is not a "right".

Re:Unfair

[Rary]

Sorry, I should have been more clear. It was already legal to make personal copies of music you purchased, but this made it legal to make personal copies of music, whether you purchased it or not. In other words, it's legal to borrow a CD from a friend and copy it.

Re:Unfair

[Anonymous Coward]

Then perhaps the online community needs to learn how to respect intellectual property holder's rights. I don;t give a rat's ass about your rights if you're going to violate mine, it's really as simple as that. You can rot in prison for al lI care, I have no sympathy for you.

I'm not quite clear on your position here. The Canadian public was paying royalties in advance in the form of the tariff authorized under bill C-32 (brought to you by, amongst others, Sheila Copps...take a bow Sheila). The rights granted through the payment (or even offer of payment) of that tariff were explicit and rather far-reaching. The recording industry was using that money to attempt to prevent the licensees from utilizing their paid-for rights. They were doing so with a mixture of technology (DRM, copy protection etc) and intimidation. Now it appears that you are arguing that someone who has paid the full shot for legal use of the content still deserves to be thrown in jail. you seem to be in agreement with the music industry here but I would venture that this kills the ability to "sell" copyrighted materials by making those rights worse than worthless to the purchaser or lessee. In your world, you would be better off to anonymously "steal" your music than to legitimately pay for it and, as a consequence, provide the goons with enough evidence to sue you.

Re:Unfair

[JourneyExpertApe]

What's worse is that this tax will benefit Alanis Morissette.

Re:Unfair

[evil_tandem]

While not a perfect analogy, the point is that the "disagreement" may not be rational,

it's not even a passable analogy. who's suggesting we shouldn't have to pay money for food? now if you invented a replicator, then you'd have people capable of making free food (nearly). what you are proposing is that could be contained which is just silly. people would start replicating food. food vendors would have to come up with new ways to compete. just selling food wouldn't be enough any more. they would have to respond to the realities of the situation, fair or not, food can be copied easily.

i'm sure papa johns and mcdonald's would go down much the same as the music industry. but they would be attempting to control something that just couldn't be controlled (like you).

...allofmp3...it's easy to sell a song for a nickel when you didn't have to produce it in the first place

that's a fair point. but compromise is not selling me a song at the same or higher price than you used to with cd's when your distribution costs have become near $0. it cannot possibly cost $.99 to bring that mp3 to market. i can get dvd's that costs hundreds of millions to make for $15-$20. sure they help off-set that with theaters, but your costs are an infintesimal in comparison to that.

you miss what people really like about allofmp3 and that's choice. you get to choose the format. you get to choose the quality. and you don't have drm restricting what you can do with it.

What middle ground?

pirating got big to start with because the labels refused to distribute their material digitally. allofmp3 and even iTunes (with it's billion plus downloads) proves people will pay for the music. they were driven to piracy because it was convenient and the way they wanted it. not because they got off stealing the music. free was just an added bonus. what i find funny is that for free people managed to build these networks and technologies. meanwhile the billion dollar industry with everything to gain did it's typical duck and cover routine (same as with vhs, casset, etc, etc...).

VHS have shown, people will not "honor" voluntary restrictions

also a good point. but then you have to ask what is enough. i understand you want to make money, but if i have a copy of a video and i want to lend it to my parents is that really that bad? with DRM that isn't even possible. sure a little "piracy" is going to occur. more importantly piracy is already occuring today and you aren't giving people any incentive to switch. you have to be a little more reasonable. i mean we have already proven we find buying the same product over and over again in new formats is acceptable. can't you concede that you don't need to make money on every single conceivable viewing by every person on every device?

but the number of movies and cd's released every year tells me someone somewhere is making money. now we're not arguing because you aren't making any money. we're arguing because you aren't making enough. well maybe the value of these products has been artificially inflated in the past due to the difficulty of copying but now are going to be forced to come down to more real levels. think replicator. new tech means new realities, whether or not you see that as fair. it's not in the interest of the rest of us to ascribe to what you are proposing.

That's how MacroVision came into play...will inconvenience someone

and thank god for that miracle huh? if they hadn't invented that it would have been possible to pirate movies! oh wait, the people who really wanted to copy it still did so (and resold it). but mom and dad got screwed. wonder why that left a bad taste in everyones mouth. the kind of control you are trying to exert here is impossible.

let me repeat: you will never control content in this way. no matter what you do it will get broken by those who stand the most to gain by breaking it.

Buy it now at the

Re:Unfair

[smwoflson]

Out of curiosity... at that price (which is totally insane), is there a reason that everyone in Canada doesn't just buy their blank CDs on ebay? I don't know very much about Canada's tax laws, and it would be great if someone could shed some light on this.

Re:Unfair

[msobkow]

In other words they're taxing a legal activity -- not a big surprise with government.

What I do object to is the fact that 90% of my CD and DVD blanks are for data backups. Literally hundreds of backup CDs going back many years. The earliest CDs are just consolidations of even older floppy backups.

What has the recording industry done to deserve a tax on my data?

Re:Unfair

[shmlco]

"...w if you invented a replicator, then you'd have people capable of making free food..."

While most of your comments are relatively fair (even if I disagree with some) I did want to comment on the often-quoted replicator analogy. Yes, if we had one we probably could solve many of these issues... but we don't. So what we have is a imbalance, because we do have a replicator (of sorts) for content.

However, a replicator can only replicate something for which an existing pattern exists. So content must still be created. Further, it must be created in an environment in which other replicators do NOT exist. So cash is still needed on the creation side of the equation, because cash is needed to buy food and pay the rent.

You claim that prices have stayed the "same", and have not gone down. Odd, because, I can buy a lot of DVDs on sale for $6 at WalMart, and many more for $9.95. Even if the retail price of a CD had not gone down over the last several decades (it has, but ignore that) you seem to forget that the price of nearly everything ELSE (food, clothing, housing, transportation) has gone up almost 100-200% during the time the price of a CD has decreased. So, inflation-adjusted, you're paying roughly $5 for that $15 CD on the shelf.

Finally, do I think loaning a book or CD to a friend is fair. Yes. Unfortunately, too many people have 10,000 "friends". In short, like my Best Buy example, too many people have abused the privilege.

Perhaps the ISPs should charge per byte, not for downloads, but for uploads. Because, in a way, the proliferation of torrents is similar to that of spam. There's no cost to breaking the law. But perhaps if it cost money to share that music with those 10,000 friends, some might revert back to "sharing" with their real friends.

Re:Unfair

[Anonymous Coward]

Simple solution to that - insist on a jury trial. For your defense, insist that there be several people on the jury who have purchased blank CDs since the tax was instituted.

In the trial itself, haul out a few stacks of CDs, and tell the jury that the music industry is paid for the content you put on the CDs when you buy the CDs, and that they are persecuting you for going out and getting what you've been paying them for. Point out that the music industry is subsidised, and no longer has to actually sell any music to have a source of income.

Re:Unfair

[Minwee]

"the amount of "pirated" music would skyrocket - since it would no longer be pirated"

If music was no longer pirated then the amount of "pirated" music would plummet. It's the amount of legitimately copied music which would skyrocket.

Re:Unfair

[bubkus_jones]

Paying ber byte? That would certainly kill broadband internet. Again, you're trying to argue for punishing everyone for the actions of an increasing few (an increase that can be directly attributed to your attempt to increase your control).

There are too many legitimate uses for the internet, BitTorrent and the like to justify charging for data transferred. What about people who run websites off of their systems (legitimate websites)? What about those who need to transfer large files for work or school reasons?

What about those who create their own CDs/movies/programs and wish to distribute them online for free (even if it's just to some family or friends)?

[quote]Odd, because, I can buy a lot of DVDs on sale for $6 at WalMart, and many more for $9.95.[/quote]

Yeah, I've seen those, too. My question is why would you WANT to buy those? Most of them are C-movies at best. Any "decent" film is still $20 or more. A lot of those are probably writeoffs from the suppliers because they couldn't sell at a regular price, so they get written off, and sold for practically pennies.

Re:Unfair

[shmlco]

Reread my reply. I said charge (as in surcharge) by byte (kilo, mega, giga, take your pick) for UPSTREAM usage. Like cell phone charges, your first N "minutes" would be free.

As to some of your other complaints, most of the big ISPs don't (for good or bad) let home accounts run websites anyway. And I suspect the profile difference between a worker or student who needs to upload a "large" file and a torrent server is rather significant. Yes, there are "legitimate" uses, but you know, I suspect every computer on the planet ought to be running Linux by now... given the number of "legitimate" distros being downloaded off bittorrent.

And as to $9.95 movies, there are a lot of bad ones, but a lot of popular movies only a few years old are available that way as well. Including a lot of "classics". BTW, I get most of my new releases at Target for $16, others get them even cheaper at Costco. Serenity is $17 at Amazon. Who pays retail prices for movies?

Finally, as near as I can tell, "the actions of a few" are why I have to lock my house and car, spend hours in line at the airport, and why parents have to go through what seems to be the same level of security just to pick up their kids out of day care.

My question to you is why, instead of ranting at me, are you not ranting at the people who think they're entitled to whatever it is they want, without charge or consequence, and who're escalating this thing just as much as the "labels" who simply want to protect their investments. Talk about "the actions of a few" who're spoiling it for everyone else...

Re:Unfair

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing, no, no, and no.

Re:Unfair

[jibjibjib]

"Paying per byte" doesn't imply that it would be expensive, or that it would "kill broadband". It could be 0.000001 cents per byte, or less.

Re:Unfair

[Anonymous Coward]

I swear I've seen this exact post somewhere before... You've written that before, haven't you?

Re:Unfair

[cogg]

Well, isn't that ironic.... (Sorry, couldn't resist)

Re:Unfair

[bentcd]

What about all the CD's that are not used to copy music?
Or worse, I would say, those CDs that are used by non-cartel-affiliated musicians to record their own original music . . .

Re:Unfair

[evil_tandem]

However, a replicator can only replicate something for which an existing pattern exists. So content must still be created.

this is 100% true. but the analogy still holds. would that change the fact that once something is created people could/would be copying it? my point is no matter how much whinning papa-johns did, people would be copying the pizza. the value is no longer in putting the physical ingredients together. there would still be a demand for new foods. but papa-johns would have to come to terms with the fact that they were no longer filling the same role. people are not going to value the bits of recipes the same they did all the work that went in to bringing the pizza to their door. you are doing less work, why should you expect to get the same amount of money?

There's no cost to breaking the law. But perhaps if it cost money to share that music with those 10,000 friends, some might revert back to "sharing" with their real friends.

the reason there is not cost is your fault. you're back at blaming everyone else for the problems but the people who caused them. this would never work because people would figure out a way to get around this as well. every attempt to artificially limit this is going to fail now. bits can be copied for free. there's nothing you can do to put that rabbit back in the hat. instead of trying to make the parts you can't control more draconian, why not concentrate on making there be an advantage to buying it?

p2p/torrent/etc is not very user-friendly, convenient, or high quality (you can get those things, but it requires lots of time spent searching around). you could compete on all those fronts. allofmp3 and iTunes proves we all prefer a well designed-intuitive interface, and are willing to pay for the content. If you would just stop giving the pirates all the competitive advantages that really matter (no drm, higher quality, any format) we would have a reason to shop with you (easier to use).

the piracy is already happening, so what do you have to lose?. today i can go online and get anything i want faster, cheaper, easier, and more convenient than i can buy it (at least legally). that is your fault. why should i agree to pay some sort of upload tax on everything i do because you can't seem to come to grips with reality? again what you are proposing is short sited and good for you, but it's not in everyone's best interest. believe it or not people upload lots of content that isn't yours.

whine and stomp and plead all you want that the replicator has now been invented. it won't change that there is no more value in putting together physical items and bringing it to my door.

Finally, do I think loaning a book or CD to a friend is fair. Yes.

by advocating drm you are clearly saying you do not. i can't lend/give my mom a copy of my iTunes mp3 or video any more. you have admitted to unilaterally taking away a right we both believe i should still have. it's in my best interest to hit up torrents and steal the content i want so i can share it with my mom. if i steal it i can get it in whatever format, whatever quality i want, for whatever devices i have that can play them. cheaper. there is absolutely no incentive to go buy it from you.

my Best Buy example

when someone steals a physical item in best buy it makes the price for everything else go up for the rest of us. it's better for all of us that the stealing stops to keep the prices lower. conversely the prices of the albums are unchanging. if anything the more popular stuff costs more to buy because more people are buying it and you respond to that. so really there is no advantage to the rest of us to stopping the piracy. it doesn't seem to affect prices one way or another (the only price drop i've seen in my lifetime came thanks to the piracy. so it is actually in our best interest to allow it.)

physical items do not equal intellectual property. any analogy that tries to claim it does is flawed. there is no replicator for real things yet. there is a replicator for content. real things carry a heavy cost of producing, the replicated things do not. why should they be treated the same?

Re:Unfair

[jdbear]

Did you just call the entire online community theives? I believe you just did, or at least claimed the everyone in the online community (including yourself, interestingly enough, since you are online) is disrespectful of other's intellectual property rights.

I beg to differ. There are many in the online community who respect IP rights, but who do not use CD's to record music. I do not often listen to recorded music, even though I have about a hundred purchased CDs. I recorded all of them onto my hard drive, then put the originals in storage. I do not EVER listen to the CDs, and rarely listen to the hard drive recordings.

I do, however, burn pictures from my camera, burn ISO's of Linux distributions, archival copies of my emails, etc, to CD. I object to sending money to the RIAA every time I purchase a CD, but they seem to have a lock on the industry, and powerful friends in Congress, so I'm stuck. To retaliate, I have decided to never, ever, buy music again. I listen to the radio, instead. The last time I purchased music, it was through the iTunes music store. I have bought about 25 individual songs through iTunes, that I can now not use, because I no longer use Windows, and they don't have a Linux version of the software.

I kept the files, since I may one day buy a Mac, but do not plan to buy any more music. If I want music, I turn on the radio, or listen through XM digital. They get paid, but they would get paid whether I listened that way or not, so there is nothing I can do about it.

Re:Unfair

[dougmc]

You've written that before, haven't you?

Yes, I believe so. It wouldn't be the exact post, but with the same information.

Since I've probably written it several times in the last few years, I really should just write it once and put it aside and save myself the trouble of writing it up each time :)

Re:Unfair

[bubkus_jones]

[quote]Reread my reply. I said charge (as in surcharge) by byte (kilo, mega, giga, take your pick) for UPSTREAM usage. Like cell phone charges, your first N "minutes" would be free.[/quote]

I did reread your reply, and I still didn't get this out of what you wrote. If you're saying that it would be like cell phones, then SAY IT. People can't read minds. Also, a lot of broadband ISPs have policies like that in effect already. Mine, I technically get 15 gigs of data both ways (split 10 down 5 up) and they charge per gig for additional data transferred. Now, I don't know what they charge per gig as they've never actually charged me (even though I generally go 20+ gigs per month), but they have the "policy" in place and part of the User Agreement.

[quote]As to some of your other complaints, most of the big ISPs don't (for good or bad) let home accounts run websites anyway. And I suspect the profile difference between a worker or student who needs to upload a "large" file and a torrent server is rather significant. Yes, there are "legitimate" uses, but you know, I suspect every computer on the planet ought to be running Linux by now... given the number of "legitimate" distros being downloaded off bittorrent.[/quote]

Most ISP's I know of may say that they don't allow home users to run servers on their systems, but they also don't stop you if you do (as long as you dont go nuts with it). I've run FTP servers, web servers, chat servers, game servers, and a bunch of other crap, and I've never had a problem.

And what you suspect is flawed. A download does not equal installation. I myself have downloaded 15+ distros in the past year. I only have two computers, one dual boots between Debian and Win2k (for games, though it is an old hunk of crap) and the other is my test bed system for trying out different distros and OS. What happens to the other 13? Sitting on a spindle collecting dust.

Of course, that could be balanced out by those who download once, copy it several times and give them to friends/family.

[quote]Who pays retail prices for movies?[/quote]

A lot more than you'd think. Hell I see people pay $40+ (Canadian) for a movie which was $20 a few weeks earlier, just because they're in the store and don't want to waste time hunting for a cheaper price (which would require time, and transportation, both of which cost money, bringing the "cheaper" price closer to the higher price).

[quote]My question to you is why, instead of ranting at me, are you not ranting at the people who think they're entitled to whatever it is they want, without charge or consequence, and who're escalating this thing just as much as the "labels" who simply want to protect their investments. Talk about "the actions of a few" who're spoiling it for everyone else...[/quote]

I'm ranting at you, here, because I disagree with what you've been saying. I rant to the freeloaders elsewhere (work, school, etc.). I'm also ranting at you, here, because from what I've read, you seem to think that the RIAA (and other nation's equivalents) should have their cake (suing 11 year old Timmy for downloading the Spongebob theme) and eat it too (forcing through legislation giving more power to the corporations and taxing/levying law abiding citizens for crimes they didn't commit).

That is wrong, that is not fair, that is not a middle ground. A middle ground would be to have the blank media levy, but make free, unencumbered downloading legal.

Another middle ground would be to not have the levy, have "illegal" downloading still illegal, but don't force those of us who actually buy the music/movies and don't distribute them locked in with unnecessary restrictions that just make our lives more difficult.

As many have said, those who ignore the laws about this will continute to do so, and will always find a way around any restriction put in place, a lot easier and faster than what it took to implement the restriction. It only hurts those who abide by such law (like gun control/registration. The bad guys will still buy them out of the back of vans, where the good guys have to jump through loops and treated like they're going out to kill babies).

Re:Unfair

[Anonymous Coward]

Then DVD-R's will be cheaper than CD-R's (because DVD's aren't subject to the levy)

Re:Unfair

[bigpicture]

But there is a flip side to this coin. How many RIAA sue me cases have you heard of in Canada. That is because it is not illegal to download, only illegal to provide copyrighted material for up load. Hence free downloads but offsetting taxes on the copy media.

Re:Unfair

[rtb61]

Here is the rules for one of the society's who gets a share of the money.

public performances at specified venues licensed by SOCAN

Radio performances broadcast and surveyed by broadcasters licensed by SOCAN

television performances broadcast or transmitted by broadcasters licensed by SOCAN

cinema performances.

So the distribution is carefully stacked against independent music creators who self distribute. Not only do you pay a tax to ensure those you are competing against (other music distributors) have an immediate financial and competitive advantage as they are not paying that tax because they don't use CDR to record their music and your competitor will now have money derived from your music to use in their marketing and promote their music against yours. As an independent they will make sure that none of your music ever gets near their "approved" places of revenue recovery. Anti-competitive practices specifically legislated by government, with no hope of recovery, disgusting.

re: Cheap CD's

[AviLazar]

Hello Canadian, Please click on this link to buy cheap CD's from the US. This is perfectly legal, and a great way to save money.

Canadian could always use...

[ColdCoffee]

...their Olympic gold medals for recording media!

Re:Canadian could always use...

[belmolis]

Unfortunately, they wouldn't be useful as recording media: gold has the virtue of not oxidizing, but it is too soft.

Re:Canadian could always use...

[Jugalator]

I wonder if it's enough gold in those medals for softness to matter though. :-)

I still don't understand this

[rlthomps-1]

Even if I set aside the flawed logic, why does the music biz get it all? What about other businesses that are hurt by "copying". Surely some of this money should go to software companies, as well as private media/content producers that distribute their work via CDs.

Re:I still don't understand this

[hackstraw]

Even if I set aside the flawed logic, why does the music biz get it all? What about other businesses that are hurt by "copying". Surely some of this money should go to software companies, as well as private media/content producers that distribute their work via CDs.

Thanks for being on their side.

So, now the tax will go up another 50%.

This is proof that 2 rights don't make a left, but three do.

The government has no right or reason to insure or protect the profit of a privately owned business with tax or insurance that is paid for by the citizens and then given to the privately owned business.

Re:I still don't understand this

[Eightyford]

Wow your reading comprehension skills are great. "Even if I set aside the flawed logic..."

Re:I still don't understand this

[Znork]

"The government has no right or reason to insure or protect the profit of a privately owned business"

Well, 'intellectual property' is, essentially, taxation rights handed out to private interests. So, it's not like it's a new thing.

Re:I still don't understand this

[HunterZ]

Even if I set aside the flawed logic, why does the music biz get it all? What about other businesses that are hurt by "copying". Surely some of this money should go to software companies, as well as private media/content producers that distribute their work via CDs.

The other parties listed don't have good enough lobbyists, nor enough money/interest/low moral fiber to bribe lawmakers for a piece of the pie.

Re:I still don't understand this

[JohnnyGTO]

Not to mention all the companies around the music industry that miss out on profits. Everyone from the shipping company to the retail store!!!! Hey music stores, time to demand your far share from the recording industry!?

Re:I still don't understand this

[hackstraw]

Well, 'intellectual property' is, essentially, taxation rights handed out to private interests. So, it's not like it's a new thing.

That is different. Unless its something important like a movie or music, intellectual property laws are civil matters, and even in the case of movies and music, those too are mostly civil maters.

I do not pay extra to the government for patent protection or copyright protection via an explicit tax that is given to the patent holders or the copyright holders (yet).

I believe that "music" CDRs in the US have this tax, and the ones mentioned in this discussion in Canada. I pay $25 for 100 CDRs, so they are .25 a piece. I don't care at that price. If a CDR lasts me a week its paid for.

I have yet to of found a cheaper way to listen to music. It does take my time to burn a CD though, but I have a script that burns them with the syntax of "burn file1 .. fileN" that decodes the files into wav, burns them, and ejects the disk. It usually takes 8 to 10 minutes to burn the first disk, and once the files are in wav format, I can hit the up arrow and burn multiple copies in 5 minutes or less each copy.

Geist is slashdotted ...

[kwandar]

Michael Geist's page seems to be slashdotted - can anyone post?

Re:Geist is slashdotted ...

[L3on]

Having no luck here either... slashdotted?

Re:Geist is slashdotted ...

[Anonymous Coward]

He ya go:

The Private Copying Levy Distortion

The Copyright Board of Canada last week released its proposed tariff for 2007 for the private copying levy. The numbers remain unchanged: 21 cents per CD-R. As prices have dropped, however, the levy now frequently comprises a significant percentage of the retail price. Consider the purchase of 100 blank Maxell CDs. Future Shop retails the 100 CDs for $69.99. The breakdown of this sale is $48.99 for the CDs and $21.00 for the levy (even worse is a current Future Shop deal of 200 blank CD-Rs from HP, which retails for $59.99. The levy alone on this sale is $42.00 (200 CDs x 21 cents/CD) which leaves the consumers paying $17.99 for the CDs and $42.00 for the levy).

This results in a huge distortion in retail pricing when compared to the U.S. market which does not have a levy system. For example, the same Maxell CDs retail for US$34.99 at CompUSA. When you add in the exchange differential, the Canadian cost is just over $40.00. Obviously the price is slightly lower in the US even without the levy (35 cents per CD vs. 40 cents per CD). With the levy, the price increases by another 50 percent.

Given how little Canadians get for their money (the private copying right doesn't cover copying CDs to Apple iPods) is it any wonder that countries such as Australia are considering allowing for such private copying without a levy scheme? The solution in Canada is obvious: either ensure that the levy covers the full panoply of private copying as is the case in France or drop the levy altogether and institute a fair use user right.

Re:Geist is slashdotted ...

[BamZyth]

When I click on the link I get a blank page. Did I forget to pay my taxes?

Market Distortion...

[paulthomas]

Taxes cause market distortion and deadweight loss.

Video at 11.

Re:Market Distortion...

[Anonymous Coward]

They are also a form of government intervention designed to reduce negative distortions of the market mechanism. Ya win some, ya lose some.

Re:Market Distortion...

[RexRhino]

If, by "designed to reduce negative distorions of the market mechanism" you mean that the people who create taxes use some sort of vauge "public good" rhetoric to justify them, you are correct.

But there is no reason to believe that any tax causes the market price of something to more accuratly reflect supply and demand, or consumption. Taxes are pretty much just a system for a government (or powerful lobby, such as the music industry, operating through the government) to get revenue... a politician isn't going to say "We are creating this tax because we want your money, bitch!", they are naturally going to give some excuse on how the tax is of great benifit to humanity and anyone who opposes it hates children and puppy-dogs.

In this case, the tax on CD sales goes to powerful music lobbies, and the money is funneled to big corporations. The system distortes the market because the way that the tax money is distributed doesn't nessicarily reflect consumption. The money goes to big record companies, not to who produces the music that a lot of people enjoy. An indie artist could be a very popular download and be enjoyed by millions of people, but recieve no money from this system because they are not part of the big industry machine.

Re:Market Distortion...

[Abcd1234]

Translation:

GP: "X is true!"
You: "no, X is false!"

Either way, you're both makin' shit up to fit your own world views. The truth is, in fact, likely somewhere in between.

Re:Market Distortion...

[Elkboy]

Market distortion isn't automatically a bad thing. If taxes can "distort" the market away from CO2 emissions, I say go for it.

That is good

[Anonymous Coward]

That is why it is legal to copy/download CDs/mp3s up here. We pre-pay. That CCB body distributes collected $$ among artists world-wide.

Re:That is good

[Anonymous Coward]

It isn't as simple as "it is legal to copy and download mp3s".

First of all, it only applies to artists that are part of the program: if the copyright owner doesn't recieve any sort of payment for the music through the tax (they are an indie artist... they are from a foreign country, their music is out of print, etc.), you are not allowed to copy their music.

Second, you can only make copies of music that you legally own. For example, you may make a copy of a CD you own and give it to a freind... but your friend cannot make a copy of their copy and give it away. You cannot share an mp3 through filesharing for a record that you do not own.

It is not legal to fileshare in the way most people fileshare on the internet - trading mp3s they haven't purchased. Of course, for all practicle purposes you can file share all you like in any country, so long as you take reasonable percautions, jut because it is so hard to track people on the internet.

Re:That is good

[Rary]

"Second, you can only make copies of music that you legally own. For example, you may make a copy of a CD you own and give it to a freind... but your friend cannot make a copy of their copy and give it away."

Are you sure about that? Perhaps they changed the rules recently, but the way it was originally written into the copyright act was that you could make a copy of any musical recording, regardless of whether or not you owned the original, but only if you made the recording for your own personal use. In other words, you cannot make a recording of a CD you bought and give it to a friend. But, the friend can borrow the CD from you and make a copy for themselves.

I haven't kept up to date on this lately, so perhaps it has changed. If you have some links regarding changes that make it the way you described it, I'd love to seem them.

Re:That is good

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it is illegal to make a copy for a friend, but if it's your friend who put the CD in the writer and click on "burn" then it's legal. The reason is you can't make a copy of a song except if it's a copy for personal use. In that case, the copy is legal. But since the law never talked about the possibility of making a copy from an illegal source, it means that if you make a copy from something that you got illegally, then the copy is still legal. So the idea is get something illegally, make a copy, throw away the illegal copy and... tada! You now have a legal copy.

Man ! You have to admit that the law is really fun.

Of course it won't last. The new law was already made and you can be sure that Harper will be really please to continue the work of Martin.

Re:That is good

[MadHobbit]

> Second, you can only make copies of music that you legally own.
> For example, you may make a copy of a CD you own and give it to a
> freind... but your friend cannot make a copy of their copy and give
> it away.

I can't speak for the rest of your post, but this, at least, is incorrect.

Canada's Copyright Act, Part VII, Subsection 80:

---

Subject to subsection (2), the act of reproducing all or any substantial part of
        (a) a musical work embodied in a sound recording,
        (b) a performer's performance of a musical work embodied in a sound recording, or
        (c) a sound recording in which a musical work, or a performer's performance of a musical work, is embodied

onto an audio recording medium for the private use of the person who makes the copy does not constitute an infringement of the copyright in the musical work, the performer's performance or the sound recording.

---

In other words: If you make the copy for yourself, and keep the copy, you're in the clear. It doesn't matter if you own the original media or not - you can borrow it from a friend, or take it out of the library, or sell the original to someone else.

You may NOT, however, make a copy of a CD you have and give the copy to a friend. To my reading, it looks like anything approaching distribution of a copy is illegal. You may, however, lend the original to a friend and let him make a copy.

The subsection (2) referred to in the quote above stipulates that you may not take the copy and sell it, give it away, broadcast it, communicate it to the general public, etc. etc.. The copy is for your private use.

ROTFLMAO

[l3v1]

70 percent of the purchase price now heading directly to the music industry

LOL, that sounds peculiar indeed, Canada's music industry now gets rich from blank media instead of music content :D Kiddin' of course, but still, it's hard to keep from [uneasy] smiling.

Re:ROTFLMAO

[HermanAB]

Well, that's cause a blank CD sounds a whole lot better than Celine...

Re:ROTFLMAO

[Dystopian Rebel]

Canada's music industry now gets rich from blank media instead of music content

Obviously you do not appreciate the melodies of Avril Lavigne, the emotional maturity and unpretentiousness of Alanis Morrisette, the economy of expression of the Bare Naked Ladies, the understated phrasing of Céline Dion, or the raw production style of David Foster.

Tear off your ears, Sir! You are not using them, anyway.

Re:ROTFLMAO

[the_Bionic_lemming]

Obviously you do not appreciate the melodies of Avril Lavigne, the emotional maturity and unpretentiousness of Alanis Morrisette, the economy of expression of the Bare Naked Ladies, the understated phrasing of Céline Dion, or the raw production style of David Foster.

Funny, that was the reason I inserted large steel spikes thru my eardrums..

Re:ROTFLMAO

[Anonymous Coward]

The aforesaid list is also why the canadians require stronger beer.

Re:ROTFLMAO

[h4ck7h3p14n37]

Don't forget the official Ambassadors of Music. Okay, Rush actually is a great band and doesn't belong on that list.

Re:ROTFLMAO

[dantheman82]

I think they should apply this tax to those who buy Britney Spears and similar "music content". After all, they could really be marketed as frisbees...

Re:ROTFLMAO

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously you do not appreciate the melodies of Avril Lavigne, the emotional maturity and unpretentiousness of Alanis Morrisette, the economy of expression of the Bare Naked Ladies, the understated phrasing of Céline Dion, or the raw production style of David Foster. Your ommission of Gordon Lightfoot from this list is inexcusable.

Re:ROTFLMAO

[dsands1]

Obviously you do not appreciate the melodies of Avril Lavigne, the emotional maturity and unpretentiousness of Alanis Morrisette, the economy of expression of the Bare Naked Ladies, the understated phrasing of Céline Dion, or the raw production style of David Foster.

Hey, I thought Alanis and Celine were US citizens?!?!

Re:ROTFLMAO

[fixinah]

Or the awesome rush of .... Rush. goddamnit.

Trade for Prescription Drugs

[cpirate]

That is until their computer industry reveals reports that American blank CDs are not as safe as Canadian ones.

Re:Trade for Prescription Drugs

[Anonymous Coward]

The only problem with blank Canadian CD it's the addition of "hey" at the end of each sentence in the music lyrics, hey.

Re:Trade for Prescription Drugs

[SetupWeasel]

I think you got that wrong, eh?

Re:Trade for Prescription Drugs

[Mr. Underbridge]

Yeah, I've always loved that argument from the big pharmas. Why has no one asked them why they're shipping unsafe drugs to Canada?

Re:Trade for Prescription Drugs

[Ced_Ex]

It's "eh". As in, "I need a little more gravy on my cheese curds and fries, eh!"

Can everyone get in on the racket?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a indie film maker and semi-pro photographer. How can I get my cut of the Extortion? I'm losing money because of the rampant copyright violations too.

Gimmie?

please?

Clarify

[Lord_Dweomer]

As an American, I was wondering if someone could clarify something on this law for me...

Since this tax goes to the recording industry to apparently make up for "lost sales due to copyright infringement"....where can independant Canadian artists who are not affiliated with the labels sign up to receive their cut of this tax? I mean...people use these blank CDs for things other than the music of the labels...

And if this tax applies to ALL CDRs, rather than just the music CDRs that nobody buys in America...how does a Canadian citizen dispute the tax on something they've never used (assuming of course they don't burn music to CDs?

Re:Clarify

[stlhawkeye]

And if this tax applies to ALL CDRs, rather than just the music CDRs that nobody buys in America...how does a Canadian citizen dispute the tax on something they've never used (assuming of course they don't burn music to CDs?

You don't. I don't get food stamps, a welfare check, my kids don't go to public schools (I don't have any), but I pay taxes that go into these programs. My real estate tax goes straight to the school district. I don't use that service.

The majority of my taxes go towards causes, programs, or institutions whose services I neither need nor want, and a handful to which I have serious ethical and/or moral objections. But there's no recourse. If I say all of this and want my taxes lowered or changed so I can keep more of my own money, I'm called greedy. When somebody else wants my money for some purpose, they're just needy.

And politicians arrange the transfer. Welcome aboard, Canada!

Re:Clarify

[Kombat]

You don't. I don't get food stamps, a welfare check, my kids don't go to public schools (I don't have any), but I pay taxes that go into these programs. My real estate tax goes straight to the school district. I don't use that service.

Don't forget that parents who send their kids to private schools can deduct the tuition and get their tax money back, since they're "relieving the burden on the public system" by sending their kids to private school.

But those of us who choose not to have kids at all, we can't get our (school) taxes back. It's incredibly frustrating.

Re:Clarify

[mag46]

In addition to these questions, I was wondering if it is now legal to copy music in Canada, as you've already paid for the music in a sense, in that you paid the tax on the destination media? Does this tax make it legal to copy music, or can they tax you and arrest you?

Re:Clarify

[massivefoot]

So, let's get this straight. This tax starts from the assumption that you're copying CDs? Fine, I say. I'm sure Canada has "double jeapody" clauses in it legal code, so you can't be punished again for the same crime. So, copy away. Hold a weekly session with your friends (I think this is called a "consumers' cooperative") where you get together and work out what CDs the majority of you would be willing to pay for. Split the costs, and copy them (ok, let's say we fairly share out who keeps originals).

Sorry, what's that you're saying at the back? "It's wrong"? Yeh, sure it is, and you're being punished for it already, so all's fair!

Re:Clarify

[Dr Caleb]

where can independant Canadian artists who are not affiliated with the labels sign up to receive their cut of this tax?

I think you are under the impression that artists see any of this money. This year was the first that any artist has seen any of the collected levy and less than half of what was collected was distributed.

Re:Clarify

[Foobar_]

I went to school in Canada to be an audio engineer. I know about the workings of the Canadian recording industry.

SOCAN (the Canadian equivalent of ASCAP/BMI) handles royalty collection and distribution for Canadian music authors. If you're a Canadian composer, songwriter, or lyricist, you must do this to get royalties:
1. Apply for membership with SOCAN
2. Register your copyrighted works
3. Sit back and wait
You don't have to be owned by a record label to get your royalties. Also, SOCAN has arrangements with other performing rights organizations around the world, so if your music is played in the USA, or Germany, or Japan or whatnot, you'll still get royalty payments from SOCAN but on the accounting it states that the money is coming from that territory.

Royalties are only paid to the "writers" and the "publishing company". The "writers" are composed of the songwriter (who does the music) and the lyricist (who writes the words). A songwriter and lyricist can be the same person. Usually it gets split 25% songwriter/25% lyricist/50% publisher respectively, which means that if a composer wants to get more money, they start their own publishing company.

There are simple yet comprehensive materials available on SOCAN's site. Quick links:
*SOCAN Overview for Music Creators and Publishers
*How your music makes money
*Private Copying Royalties update

Up until recently, the money collected from the media levy has sat in SOCAN's accounts while writers and publishing companies fought viciously to get it all for themselves. Seems the writers have won; the "private copying royalties" now go 100% to writers by default. This of course doesn't stop publishing contracts from specifying that lots of money goes to the publisher...

By the way, I finished the audio engineer training, said "I don't want to do this as a job" and have just opened a computer repair shop. I'll be selling those taxed CD blanks soon enough...

Re:Clarify

[niXcamiC]

But those of us who choose not to have kids at all, we can't get our (school) taxes back. It's incredibly frustrating.

Thats what you get for not helping to stop our population drop. In a wierd messed up way it does make sense.

Re:Clarify

[swimmar132]

Society as a whole is benefited from the availability of free public schools. I'm surprised that you don't want to give money to the teachers that teach our youth.

What would you prefer, everyone paying $10k per year per kid for their education? Sorta puts poor people in a bind and their kids would likely get screwed.

Re:Clarify

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, you are a greedy little bastard, so why are you complaining about the label?

Re:Clarify

[John Whitley]

I don't get food stamps, a welfare check, my kids don't go to public schools (I don't have any), but I pay taxes that go into these programs.

The programs you cite are elements of a public welfare system available to all citizens equally based on need. The argument of the grandparent and other posters is that the CD-R tax unfairly impacts the taxed (e.g. anyone not copying music industry copyrighted content) given its stated motives. Further, the distribution of the tax's proceeds is discriminatory against large classes of the allegedly impacted (e.g. independent artists or other non-music industry content creators whose works are copied onto CD-R media).

Re:Clarify

[digidave]

That's exactly what I do. I actually record hundreds of CDs and leave them lying on the ground outside the high school. I figure I have the right to give away music I paid for.

In all seriousness, I like these taxes. I don't have a lot of extra money to pay for music, so after paying this tax I can feel good about downloading music. The Canadian courts ruled years ago that the recording industry can't sue people who've paid the tax, so it makes me happy knowing that I'm a law-abiding citizen.

And if the artists have a problem with that they can take it up with their record company.

Re:Clarify

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you telling me that in no point in your life did you go to school. This is a classic case of "shut the door behind me"?

Also, does the economy benefit that you are a part of not benefit from an educated workforce that is globally competitive.

It is a bit like vaccinated If the governement did not force me to get mine, it probably would not affect me or anybody else as everybody else around me is vaccinated. So the government has taken away my individual rights for no benefit. However, if nobody is vaccinated, we would still have polio and smallpox in our society.

This is the price you pay for living in a society.

Re:Clarify

[matthewr84]

It is definitely in your personal interest for other people to both have kids and have them educated, though. You don't live in a bubble. Parents shoulder plenty of financial burden already, tax cuts for private education doesn't make the little rugrats profitable, it just takes a little of the burden off. The fact that you don't have kids means you're not contributing to the future of society. If enough people decide to imitate you, we're far more screwed than just having to pay a few more bucks in taxes.

Re:Clarify

[brunes69]

The majority of my taxes go towards causes, programs, or institutions whose services I neither need nor want, and a handful to which I have serious ethical and/or moral objections. But there's no recourse. If I say all of this and want my taxes lowered or changed so I can keep more of my own money, I'm called greedy. When somebody else wants my money for some purpose, they're just needy.

It's called "Caring about someone other than yourself for a change".

You may not need schools now, but someday when you have kids you might. You may not need food stamps now, but when you get fired from your job and can't find employment for a few years despite all your best efforts, you'll be damn well glad we have our social saftey net.

We're human beings, we're supposed to be evolved. With modern technology and our overly affluent society there is no real need for poverty *anywhere* anymore, the "every man for himself" concept is an evolutionary hold over that the whole world would benefit from if it disappeared.

Re:Clarify

[Dysproxia]

Welcome to modern society, where education is not just for the elite and those looking forward to chanting Latin. Think of those taxes as paying retroactively for your own school years.

Re:Clarify

[corbettw]

The Canadian courts ruled years ago that the recording industry can't sue people who've paid the tax, so it makes me happy knowing that I'm a law-abiding citizen.

That's freakin' sweet! So it's actually legal in Canada to download songs from the Internet, burn them to a CDR, then sell them at a profit? Or do you still have to buy a copy of the song, first, before recording?

Either way, I see a potential business model in there. If you can get your cost per CD down below $1, you could actually undercut iTunes pricing.

I wonder if those legal copies would be legal in the US, too? And is there a comparable tax on DVD-R blanks, that goes to the movie industry?

Re:Clarify

[Anonymous Coward]

If I say all of this and want my taxes lowered or changed so I can keep more of my own money, I'm called greedy. When somebody else wants my money for some purpose, they're just needy.

Well I'd substitute greedy and needy with Republican and Democrat. But otherwise right on.

Re:Clarify

[mrisaacs]

I don't know about Canadian policy on private schooling, and I can't speak for everywhere in the states, but Icknow first hand that there's no federal deduction, and no local or state deduction in New York. I pay taxes to support the public education system, because that's the way the system works. The service is there if I want to use it. It's my choice to send my kids to private school, and therefore my financial burden as well. The CD tax is something else entirely, it's an assumption of guilt on the part of the purchaser. An ssumption that all CD-R buyers are going to be used to make illegal copies of copywritten works.

Re:Clarify

[lawpoop]

"The majority of my taxes go towards causes, programs, or institutions whose services I neither need nor want, and a handful to which I have serious ethical and/or moral objections. But there's no recourse "

There certainly is recourse. Travel to the jungles of South America, Africa, or Papua New Guinea. Go deep enough in, far beyond roads. You will find people who live there without taxes, education or police. The average age of men in those societies is 35 -- due to being killed in revenge cycles. Hey, if you're tough enough, you might be able to steal a wife from her family and live to see grandchildren. Otherwise they will just avenge your death.

You will find how sorely you need public education to keep young men running around, forming gangs, and terrorizing everyone. I love how these civil libertarians say nobody needs taxes, yet they stay far clear of headhunter tribes or civil war zones. Hey, why aren't libertarians flocking to these regions? There's no taxes (just protection money paid to tough guys and warlords). There's no intrusive government laws -- there aren't any laws at all! If you don't like what someone does, hit him. Make sure you hit him real hard, so he doesn't hit you back.

You live in the lap of luxury, plainly due to the fact of taxes and our civil institutions, yet you naively believe you don't need or want them. You could easily live in one of these places for the price of about a $1000 plane ticket, yet you haven't migrated to any one of these lawless, taxless paradises. Interesting.

Re:Clarify

[colin_young]

IANAL, and I don't live in Canada any more, but IIRC, it is legal to make a copy for yourself, but not make a copy for someone else (e.g. I can go to a friend's house, and copy CDs to my heart's content, but he can't make a copy and give it to me). So making copies and selling for a profit would definitely be a no-no.

Re:Clarify

[epiphani]

The majority of my taxes go towards causes, programs, or institutions whose services I neither need nor want, and a handful to which I have serious ethical and/or moral objections.

Thus is the nature of living in a democracy. If you expect to be a part of a society, then you must realize that society will not always agree with you. You pay taxes to be part of that.

I disagree with roads, because I dont drive. I think there should be bike paths instead of roads. I disagree with indoor plumbing because technology goes against my religious beliefs. I dont want to pay for peoples roads and cities sewer systems.

You may not gain from expenditures our governments make, and you always have the choice to leave the country. Move to an egregarian society somewhere else. If you wish to stay, then you must be prepared to realize that your tax money may not go to something that directly affects you. Saying "let me keep my taxes", you should be prepared to loose some of those things you consider most important - roads, plumbing, health care, employment insurance, capped electricity costs, reduced tuition costs, public education, military. I promise you, one of those things out there is the -MOST- important thing out there that someone pay their taxes to. You get the whole package, you dont pick and choose.

Re:Clarify

[corbettw]

Thought it sounded too good to be true. Thanks for the clarification.

Re:Clarify

[JDAustin]

Don't forget that parents who send their kids to private schools can deduct the tuition and get their tax money back, since they're "relieving the burden on the public system" by sending their kids to private school.

This is totally incorrect.

Only private kindergarden can be deducted on federal tax returns. Tuition for grades 1 through 12 is not tax deductible. Sending your child to public only gets him a better education, it doesn't take any money out of our broken public school system.

Re:Clarify

[Anonymous Coward]

I had this really long response explaining why Public education benefits everyone even those without kids instead I will give you a list:

Education reduces the number of criminals

Education teaches life skills i.e. Reading, writing etc

Education provides the tools to become tax paying adults

Education teaches kids social skills and communication skills

Education provides the tools to allow kids to become productive adults. Which we all benefit from.

Therefore it's in the best interest that we work on making sure not only that Kids get an education, but also to keep an eye on the types of people that push for legistation that undermines our kids education and wastes our tax dollars.

No Child Left Behind does nothing to help our kids get a better education, just like The Patriot Act does nothing to make Americans more Patriotic.

Re:Clarify

[vertinox]

You don't. I don't get food stamps, a welfare check, my kids don't go to public schools (I don't have any), but I pay taxes that go into these programs. My real estate tax goes straight to the school district. I don't use that service.

Therin lies the problem. One cannot control how his taxes are spent.

However, one can control how much taxes one pays.

In fact, my recommendation is not to pay them at all if you can.

How you may ask? Well... It depends. I know plenty of people who don't pay taxes.

In theory, you just have to not own anything, buy anything, or make any money. However, my employer reports me as making money, so I can't use that theory.

I can however say I made less money (in theory). However, sometimes this requires paying an accountant sums of money and in the end I end up saving more money by paying taxes.

Re:Clarify

[zx75]

From Digital Home Canada

quote:
"tax on blank CD-R and CD-RW discs will remain at 21 cents per unit"
"29 cent tax on blank tapes and 77 cent tax on blank CD-R Audio, CD-RW Audio and MiniDiscs"

Copyright Board of Canada Fact Sheet for more info.

Re:Clarify

[Zontar_Thing_From_Ve]

I disagree with indoor plumbing because technology goes against my religious beliefs.

Interestingly enough, it would appear that using technology to be on the internet somehow does not go against your religious beliefs.

I assume that your post is a bit of hyperbole and not meant to be taken as 100% factual. It reminds me of something my brother told me. Before a law was passed in the USA to limit telemarketing calls, my brother told me that he got a call from a lawn care service. He had no interest in the service nor did he have the extra money to pay for it each month, so he told the caller that using a lawn care service went against the Bible because "that's not how the Lord wants things done". The caller was shocked and had no idea how to respond to that, so he told my brother just to be sure to water his lawn regularly and it would probably be OK. I love that story.

Re:Clarify

[Kombat]

Are you telling me that in no point in your life did you go to school?

Of course not. You, and most of the other people who responded to my post are missing the point. I'm not objecting to paying for schools. I went to public school as a child, and yes, I agree that it's fair that I know pay back into that system.

What I'm objecting to, and what you and most everybody else is ignoring/missing, is that parents who send their kids to private schools get their taxes refunded. Why? How is that fair? Those kids are still perfectly eligible for the public system, but the (rich) parents want little Billy to have an "elite" education. Public school's not good enough for little Billy. They want him to go to private school.

Fine. Then let them pay for it. So far, so good. No objections from me. Billy's allowed to get a better education than everyone else, because he's rich. However, why should his parents be EXCUSED from paying into the public system? Why do they get their tax money back?

The answer is, "because little Billy is not using the public schools. He's using the private schools. So why should his parents have to pay for the public system their child isn't using?"

To which I ask, why am I still forced to pay for a school system my nonexistent kids aren't using?

Do you see my argument yet? Do you see why I'm upset?

And don't even get me started on how this is completely hypocritical when contrasted with the arguments against private for-profit health care in Canada.

Re:Clarify

[dal20402]

God damn, where are my mod points when I need them? (Score:6, Insightful)

Rationalization is a powerful force. It's absolutely amazing how many people really believe that eliminating civil society would improve their lives despite pervasive evidence to the contrary... when what they really want is just to keep a few extra bucks a month. They complain they don't use public services.

Then they drive on fancy new roads, call the fire department to rescue their treed cat, expect the plane they're getting on will be well-maintained mechanically (even though they will shop for hours for a $1 lower fare), buy beef in the grocery store without a second thought, and feel free to insult /. posters without the fear of being shot to death.

Show me a non-hypocritical anti-government libertarian and I'll show you a survivalist wacko.

Re:Clarify

[Anonymous Coward]

"Royalties are only paid to the "writers" and the "publishing company"."

You're partially right. There are three different kinds of rights associated with sound recordings, and all three involve royalties.

Actually, the royalty collected by this tax is different than the royalty collected by music publishers like SOCAN.

SOCAN handles Publishing royalties/rights. CRIA is collecting Mechanical and Performance royalties through the tax, not publishing rights. So, signing up for SOCAN won't give you any Mechanical or Performance royalties, only publishing royalties. The CRIA will pocket your mechanical and performance royalties. I don't know if they have an agency like SoundExchange in the US for independents to sign up for, but I am sure if they do, independents in Canada will get just as many checks as US independent musicians have from SoundExchange: 0.

Re:Clarify

[Kombat]

Think of those taxes as paying retroactively for your own school years.

OK, fine. But why do the parents of a kid attending private school not have to "pay retroactively for their own school years?" Why do they get their taxes back?

Which is it? Are my taxes paying for my kids' schooling, or retroactivately paying for my own? You can't have it both ways. Make up your mind. Pick one. And then explain to me how it could possibly be considered fair that a rich couple sending their kid to private school gets their public school taxes back, but a childless couple does not.

Re:Clarify

[ashitaka]

Don't forget that parents who send their kids to private schools can deduct the tuition and get their tax money back

This is not true.

In Canada the only way you can deduct any private school tuition expenses for dependents is if it is a religeous school who are registered as a charity and even so this only applied in Ontario. The deduction started at 10% of the tuition amount in 2001 and was supposed to have increased by 10% each year until it reached 50%. This has been vehemently opposed from various quarters.

My son goes to a private school here in BC and that is our choice and our financial burden.

Re:Clarify

[Kombat]

Thats what you get for not helping to stop our population drop.

What makes you think the population must keep growing? Do you not see the obvious, inevitable result of continuous, unchecked population growth? What's so bad about letting the population drop, other than triggering the collapse of the state-sponsored pyramid scam known as "social security" or the "Canada Pension Plan" (depending on where you live)? Heaven forbid people take responsibility for their own retirement. Ignoring that wake-up call, what's wrong with holding the population at its present levels?

Re:Clarify

[Errandboy of Doom]

1) The CPCC decides who gets paid and not, and they simply won't pay non-Canadian performers, though they graciously pay non-Canadian songwriters and record companies, for what it's worth. I believe there's an application process for smaller Canadian artists, but don't know how fairly the levy is distributed.

2) It's a bit odd, but you can receive an exemption to the levy only if you have some sort of disability, or are an organization buying on behalf of the disabled.

This may seem to blatantly disregard notions of just taxation, but I don't think they maintain any delusion that this is a fair system. They are not a governmental organization, and are not beholden to democratically reviewable notions like "fair play" or "common decency."

See The CPCC homepage.
Also this CopyLevy FAQ.

Re:Clarify

[spun]

Completly OT, but many tribes such as you describe are non-violent. The average age is not 35, the average lifespan is. This is due to the fact that most people in these tribes never live beyond childhood due to disease. If you want to read more about life in tribes such as these, I would recommend "The Continuum Concept" by Jean Liedloff. If you want to understand why some tribes are violent and some aren't, I recommend "Saharasia" by James DeMeo.

Re:Clarify

[ashitaka]

Please indicate where the CCRA states that private school tuition is tax deductible.

I think you are confused with the Ontario's tax deduction introduced by Mike Harris is 2001. This only allows a percentage of the tuition to be deducted and only for specific types of schools.

Re:Clarify

[dsgitl]

Stop paying taxes. Then stop using public roads. I'm sure that'll be the end of that.

Re:Clarify

[Kombat]

I'm surprised that you don't want to give money to the teachers that teach our youth.

Spare me the red herring. My mother, mother-in-law, 2 aunts and an uncle are/were all teachers. I certainly do not resent paying into a system that educates our children.

What I object to is rich people being allowed to opt-out of that system by arguing that their kids aren't using the public system, so they shouldn't have to pay into it. To hell with that. Of course they should still pay into it. If they still have some money left over, and they really want Billy to go to private school, then hey, more power to them. Go for it. I'm a capitalist at heart, I can get behind that. But I certainly don't think MY taxes should go up, to cover the taxes that are taken out of the system when the government refunds them their portion of public school taxes.

Re:Clarify

[Peter La Casse]

You will find how sorely you need public education to keep young men running around, forming gangs, and terrorizing everyone.

Public education is neither necessary nor sufficient to keep young men from running around, forming gangs and terrorizing people. Some places with public education have that activity, and some places without it do not. If there is any negative correlation between the presence of public education and the formation of gang activity, please share some evidence of it.

I love how these civil libertarians say nobody needs taxes, yet they stay far clear of headhunter tribes or civil war zones.

That's crazy talk. There are good reasons for staying away from headhunter tribes and civil war zones. Your suggestion that headhunter tribes and civil war zones are a necessary result of minimal government is absurd.

The libertarian (not civil libertarian; look up the difference) position on taxes is that they should be lower because government should do less stuff. That's a far cry from anarchy.

You live in the lap of luxury, plainly due to the fact of taxes and our civil institutions

Libertarians object to excessive taxation, which has a negative effect on our quality of life. Some of our civil institutions are good, and some of them are unnecessary, wasteful and actively harmful to society. Dumping money down a hole only helps your quality of life if you own the hole (and guess what, you don't.)

Re:Clarify

[Kombat]

Please indicate where the CCRA states that private school tuition is tax deductible.

Only if you first indicate where I said it was a federal tax provision.

I think you are confused with the Ontario's tax deduction introduced by Mike Harris is 2001.

Yes, that's the one.

This only allows a percentage of the tuition to be deducted and only for specific types of schools.

Yes, the percentage is "100" (up to $3500), and the "specific type" is "private" (of which there are now over 700 in Ontario).

Re:Clarify

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't have an account on /., but I'll add my voice to the others who replied to you. YOU are GREEDY. It's time for you to wake up. It's like those racist people who say "I'm not racist. I have a black neighbor."

Re:Clarify

[RexRhino]

Society as a whole is benefited from the availability of free public schools. I'm surprised that you don't want to give money to the teachers that teach our youth.

It isn't really an issue of public good, or benifiting society as a whole. Nearly all government programs will provide some sort of benifit to someone, in some tiny vauge way at least. Almost every government policy, from the Iraq war to Medicare will be endorsed as "benifiting society" or "being for the public good". The question is if the program in question is the most efficient way to provide for a need, if the costs of such a program are worth the benifits, and if there is any unforseen complication of the program - Usually none of these things are considered by the advocates of a government program (they just declare "You don't support the Iraq War because you want the terrorists to win", or "You want old people to die, that is why you don't support Medicare", and the program becomes a disaster.

For example, "Free Public Schools" != "Government Monopoly Schools". Just because we want all kids to be educated, doesn't mean that we need to do so with a violent government monopoly. There are any number of systems that could garantee every child an education, just like there are any number of ways that music can be funded without a government tax on CDs. Just because education or music is a public need does not justify any action that someone claims provides for that need. I could claim that pagan-style child blood sacrafice will boots our crops, and that the government should require child sacrafice of all farmers, and that anybody that doesn't support the program is "anti-farmer"... but that doesn't mean that sacraficing humans to grow crops is something we should do.

In the case of the United States, the amount of money paid into education is far beyond the results achieved. Most industrialized countries can provide a far better education at a fraction of the cost of the United States educational system - the U.S. is #1 in government educational spending, and at the very bottom of industrialized nations in achedemic performance. The U.S. educational system is failing to provide a proper education to children, yet it is charging more than it costs anywhere else in the world. Clearly, the government taxing and spending a lot of money arguably for education != providing education. The person above is not complaining about having to educate children, they are complaing about a violent monopoly system that compels participation. Clearly, at least in the example of the U.S., forcing people to pay for education does not benifit society.

In the case of Canada, the extra amount of money that is put into the music industry because of this CD tax doesn't seem to be stimulating a brand new cultural explosion of music. Not only does the government of Canada have this system of taxing CDs and redistributing the money to certain record companies, but the Canadaian government has all sorts of other programs in order to promote music and the arts. It subsidizes music, it has it's own government subsidized TV and radio networks to promote music and culture. And what is the effect? Music isn't any cheaper, or more accessible, or better than anywhere else in the world. The justification of this tax is to help produce music, but it is not doing anything of the sort.

Part of the reason why both public education in the U.S., and this whole CD tax for music thing in Canada is such a failure, is that the costs are not paid by those who enjoy the benifits, and that distorts value. Everyone pays a CD tax, even if they are not burning music to the CD... and those people whose music is burned to a CD have no garantee of being paid for the music they produced. In public education, those who pay for the education are not the ones recieving the most benifit... it distorts proper cost/benfit evalutions of the system (meaning, if you are poor, and your kids recieve a crap education, you are not that upset because you didn't pay much... even though

Re:Clarify

[belmolis]

The difference is that there are good arguments that society as a whole benefits from things like public education even if particular individuals don't benefit directly. The case for public education is a lot stronger than the case for subsidizing high profit margins in a particular business model for music. It isn't a law of nature or even an obvious social good that music companies and their executives should make such large amounts of money, nor is there any good reason to keep this business model. If music as a commodity is not workable as a business model, musicians could, for example, make their money from live performances, as they did not so long ago before audio recording existed.

Re:Clarify

[geobeck]

...where can independant Canadian artists who are not affiliated with the labels sign up to receive their cut of this tax?

They can't, because these greedy independent artists are taking money out of the hands of hard-working recording industry exectutives. The recording industry needs to hunt down these indie pirates, who in some cases are actually making a substantial profit by the abhorrent practice of selling their music directly to their fans, and take their rightful cut!

Damned musicians, making money off their own music! Won't someone please think of the poor starving children of the record company execs?!

Re:Clarify

[Kombat]

If it is a non-religious school (also known as an independent school), then you can not deduct any tuition from taxes.

Yes, you can, in Ontario.

Re:Clarify

[ashitaka]

Please note that Ontario != Canada. You did not state it was applicable to only one of Canada's provinces and territories. Readers from other parts of the world may have assumed otherwise as your original post was vague. It also sounded like a significant portion of tuition was refundable.

I have just as much reason to be pissed. Why should parents in Ontario get this wonderful tax break when parents in the other provinces do not?

I have a feeling this will disappear as soon as Mike's out of office.

Re:Clarify

[ivan256]

I'm surprised that you don't want to give money to the teachers that teach our youth.


I would love to do that. Too bad I don't have that level of control. Instead when the ballot says they want to raise the tax to pay "for schools", I have no way to make sure that money is going to go to books, supplies, and teachers instead of to bloated administration, and sports. Given where I live the latter are more likely too.

Re:Clarify

[Kombat]

Please note that Ontario != Canada. You did not state it was applicable to only one of Canada's provinces and territories.

OK, fair enough, I should have been more specific.

I have just as much reason to be pissed. Why should parents in Ontario get this wonderful tax break when parents in the other provinces do not?

You could always move to Ontario. I suspect that was part of the justification for the tax break in the first place. :)

I have a feeling this will disappear as soon as Mike's out of office.

Mike Harris? I think you might be a little behind the times. Mike (a Conservative) was gone a while ago, then Ernie Eaves (another Conservative) took over, then the Conservatives lost the election 2 years ago to Dalton McGuinty (the Liberals), who proceeded to break over 200 of their election promises (there are websites documenting each one, it's kind of funny) and impose a new $900/year health care tax on the hardest working Ontarians.

Re:Clarify

[croddy]

Well, the doom-and-gloom Malthusian predictions about population growth may come to pass; the economic effects on the Social Security ponzi scheme are significantly more likely.

But that's not really the issue here. The state needs taxpayers to fill its gluttonous coffers; children grow up to be taxpayers. It follows that the state will never willingly provide an incentive to stop the growth of its captive taxpaying base, and in fact will probably to all it can to encourage the fastest achievable growth in that population.

Re:Clarify

[ceoyoyo]

It does mean you can get all your music for free though. Downloading from the Internet counts as "going to your friends house and copying his cds." You just don't get to turn a profit on it.

Re:Clarify

[Anonymous Coward]

It's people like you who think that just because you don't need it now you shouldn't have to pay for it at all...

While you may not have children now, educating *YOU* wasn't free. Either you are one of the select few Canadians who had parents rich enough to pay for your completely private education (private primary, secondary and a nice US college), which might explain your "don't take my money" attitude *OR* you actually freeloaded off the property tax paying citizens in your neighborhood to pay for it, which in turn afforded you the money to stand high on the stump and bitch about how you shouldn't have to pay back into society.

You *DO* have recourse, you can vote for the Canadian republican party lead by Mr. Harper which promises to lower your taxes... no wait... they're in power now and they're raising your taxes to give it to a corporation... hmm... well you can always move the the USA where taxes lower and freedom is fleeting or how about Hong Kong (I hear the income tax rate is only 15%)?

You don't. I don't get food stamps, a welfare check, my kids don't go to public schools (I don't have any), but I pay taxes that go into these programs. My real estate tax goes straight to the school district. I don't use that service.

The majority of my taxes go towards causes, programs, or institutions whose services I neither need nor want, and a handful to which I have serious ethical and/or moral objections. But there's no recourse. If I say all of this and want my taxes lowered or changed so I can keep more of my own money, I'm called greedy. When somebody else wants my money for some purpose, they're just needy.

Re:Clarify

[catzpjz]

the CD tax only applies to media mark for audio, or multimedia, blank media marked for DATA are not subjected to this.

Re:Clarify

[jasonditz]

I'm just going out on a limb here and taking a wild guess... but I'm thinking it's because they're stealing his money.

Re:Clarify

[Anonymous Coward]

Welcome to a social democracy. If you don't like the taxes and the programs they support, vote for a candidate who agrees with you. Or run yourself. Or find some creative accounting to pay less in taxes. Or move. There are always options.

I paid enough in income tax alone last year to pay 3 people a reasonable salary. Heck, I paid enough in taxes to pay MY OWN salary (I work in a bonus-heavy industry). That doesn't include property tax, or the sales taxes that are all over the place. Guess what? It hurts to see that large a number get donated away from me. However, I don't really complain about it. *I* WENT to school, and it was paid for/subsidised by people's taxes, it's only fair that I pay for this generation.

I go to my doctor every year for a check-up and all I have to do is show them my health card. I've been in the hospital with a serious allergic reaction in the past year, and again, all I needed was the card. My brother almost died and was in and out of hopsitals for nearly a year, my grandmother is currently recovering in a rehabilitation ward at a hospital after a serious fall. All of this care? Thanks to the taxes paid by me and others.

It's been as cold as -30 celcius this winter and there are jobless families that are still able to keep the heat on. There are seniors that live alone but still get a cheque from the government every month to help make sure they can eat.

So, unless you were home/private-schooled (or just not schooled), plan to never get sick, and expect to die before you're 65 (or are positive you'll have the means to support your retired self despite any possible catastrophic events that may wipe out your savings)... you might want to be careful about claiming you have no need for the services your taxes pay for.

Re:Clarify

[ashitaka]

You're right. I've been away too long (over 20 years)!

I found one of those fun "Which promises did they keep or break" websites and actually one of the promises they did keep was to scrap the Equity in Education Tax Credit (EETC) as it was known. Details here.

One less reason to move back to Ontario. :-(

Re:Clarify

[Anonymous Coward]

Because it may be that they assume the childless couple will someday have children that will go to school in the area, and therefore are typically happy to contribute for their childrens' futures.

Whereas the couple that send their children to private school are lightening the load on the area school district, therefore are entitled to a reimbursement.

The thing I would like to know is in actual fact how much is deductible from your taxes.

Re:Clarify

[mikelambert70]

Hong Kong max income tax rate is 16% but there are deductions which bring the median to around 10% only.

No other taxes at all, only stamp duty on real estate sales and duties on some very few items, like HK Customs and Excise Department puts it: HKSAR is a free port. There is no tariff on general imports. However, there is duty on liquors, tobacco, hydrocarbon oil and methyl alcohol. See more here http://www.customs.gov.hk/eng/major_dutiable_freep ort_e.html

Western societies as a whole are way too heavily taxed. Even the US is practically a socialist nation by taxation amount.

Re:Clarify

[qwijibo]

And the rich don't think they should have to subsidize your children going to public schools. Education is a commonly used reason given to increase property taxes, which are disproportionately paid by the rich. Once the government has the money, education is the first budget item cut to pay for politicians' other pet programs. It's a vicious cycle where education is used as a pawn to manipulate the public.

Should you be required to pay increased taxes to support large corporations? That's exactly what this CD tax is about.

I find arguments more convincing when they don't boild down to "I want someone else's money." I think both of these issues have the same greedy nature at heart, but most people have a hard time admitting that they're inconsistent.

Re:Clarify

[posterlogo]

There is a big difference. Yours is a debate over legitimate uses of public money for the greater public good. The Canadian tax is about giving money to a private industry, which I don't believe government should be involved in. The next time you drive through a pothole and get pissed off about, see someone in city hall about paying for it yourself. Otherwise stop complaining about taxes. Taxes have been the basis of civilized society for since civilization itself. Without it, see how many people would voluntarily pay for the services they currently take for granted. By the way, all that money you have with which you can buy your own food, education for your kids, and all those other "causes, programs, or institutions" you despise so much -- it was all built on the backs of those programs. You can't pick and choose.

Re:Clarify

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't get food stamps, a welfare check,

If you did need these things, you wouldn't be able to pay the taxes for them in the first place.

Re:Clarify

[LordEd]

The parents of the privately schooled kid have opted to pay for 100% of their kid's education. As a result, that cost is not burdened across the Canadian tax base. As long as the kid is in school, they get a tax credit on their tuition amounts. I am not familiar with the credit (and other replies seem to indicate it doesn't exist anymore), but i would assume that when the kid is done, they lose their tax credit.

In contrast, parents with a kid in public school are paying their taxes as normal, which would be only a fraction of the cost of the education.

Re:Clarify

[agentcdog]

I think we need logic 101 here. We pay for roads, schools, etc. that we may never use because they are considered PUBLIC. The music industry (in US) is NOT public, and therefore there is NO parallel between the two sets of taxes.
If Canada's music industry is not public then the same applies.

Sheesh.

Re:Clarify

[renehollan]

HEAR HEAR!

I left Canada to find my fortune in the U.S. Just a somewhat lesser evil, tax-wise, perhaps, but "lesser" enough, to make my family and I leave so I can feed them with my earnings instead of a bunch of welfare lardasses and corrupt politicos.

Cherist, it got so bad in Canada, that we were vilified for spending our money after taxes if there might be someone, somewhere, who could not afford to spend their earnings the same way. Hire a kid to mow your lawn in Whitby, ON, and you might just find your neighbors trying to lynch you for engaging in "slave labour of the youth".

My parents came to Canada poor as shit, losing everything to communists in easternb Europe, when there was no social safety net, and still managed to pick themselves up by the bootstraps, only to be once again robbed.

Socialists and communists everywhere are a parasite on society and need to be eradicated.

Re:Clarify

[smithwis]

Whoa, Slow down there partner.

Lets start with the easy stuff. You're right, this is not a black and white world and thus to find fault in any government policy, Education and Terrorism included, does not equal a condemnation of the underlying principles. Also, there is undoubtably more effecicient ways to be running all of our governmental agencies and we should always strive to improve them.

I take exception with your claim on how expensive the US eduction system is. What are we talking about here, primary, secondary, university level eductaion? Which states are we reffering to? Does this include things like research grants? How are we measuring the results of said education systems? Is it by standardized tests? Are we looking at the average, the top, bottom or middle quartiles? Are we making like for like comparisons with other countries. There's so many variables here and you have glossed over all of it. So much so, in fact, I wonder if this is a researched supposition or just your politics masked as fact.

As far as costs coming from those who benefit, I can certainly empathise with that sort of desire. Yo must realize that a fundamental ideal of our tax system, and many others' lies on what is called progressive tax. That is, those who can afford it most pay progressively more in taxes. The idea is, that the wealthy can afford more than the poor, pretty obvious really. The alternatives being flat or regressive tax systems. The worry wth those systems is that it favors those who are already privelidged and thus encourages a widening gap between the haves and the have nots. Wether our current tax systems are truly progressive is very debatable, however, my argument is that you and I as wealthy US citizens pay more because that's the way the system was designed, and a lot of people like that particular design feature.

Re:Clarify

[starnix]

"I don't get food stamps, a welfare check, my kids don't go to public schools (I don't have any), but I pay taxes that go into these programs."

While technically true, this is not remotely the same thing. Just imagine if you had to pay a tax to support the car dealership down the block from losing money.

Taxes should not go to private companies to put off them having to get their shit together and actually modify their obsolete business model.

I put these people lower than Microsoft in the "get rich without having to do anything" category.

Re:Clarify

[CanadaRox]

First of all it's not a tax, it's levy. It applies only to certain types of media. The levy is not collected by the "big labels" and artists are compenstaed based on their sales.

Re:Clarify

[nblender]

I don't want you spending my tax money on medical bills related to your smoking, or alcohol, or poor driving. Didn't I see you jaywalk last week? If you'd been hit by a car who didn't expect you to be in the intersection, you wouldn't have paid your own hospital bills. You'd have used my tax dollars to fix your legs.

Thank you for sending my kid to school. I love you.

Re:Clarify

[renehollan]

What I'm objecting to, and what you and most everybody else is ignoring/missing, is that parents who send their kids to private schools get their taxes refunded. Why? How is that fair? Those kids are still perfectly eligible for the public system, but the (rich) parents want little Billy to have an "elite" education. Public school's not good enough for little Billy. They want him to go to private school.

Several reasons.

1. Little Billy removes overcrowding in the public schools. His absense improves that system and yet, because he still gets an education, he is not becomming an undeducated future burden on society.

2. Little Billy, with his supposedly "elite" education, can be expected to earn more and this be taxed more than the average Canadian. His "elite" education will produce precisely those people who are productive to carry the burden for those who aren't.

3. Even if Littly Billy grows up to be Big Bill, and has kids of his own, and sends them to a private school and gets refunds for all of them, this is likely a very small effect on the taxes he pays.

The real losers here are the middle class, who want a better education for their children (and, indirectly, by removing them from the public school system, relieving overcrowding), and who can't because of the high taxes they already pay.

If Mom (or Dad) stays home to raise the kids, while Dad (or Mom) goes to work, they are not rewarded for relieving pressure for subsidized day care. Instead, Dad (or Mom) get's taxed as a single, with a token tax credit at the lowest marginal tax rate of some $7500 for supporting a spouse. One can't file jointly in Canada.

The public schools are absolutely awful. In the year that my daughter attended a public school in Ontario, we had to remove her because of sanctioned physical abuse she suffered after it was learned she lived in the U.S., and found that no public school had a caffeteria where children could purchase a hot lunch -- there being no caffeterias or dual duty gyms/cafeterias. Children had to eat cold sandwiches in their classrooms. The reason we learned was that having a mechanism where kids could purchase meals was "unfair" to those that could not. This despite the fact that the competition between catering companies to supply school lunch programs in the U.S. is so fierce that much of the economies of scale trickle down to discounted meals -- I can't feed my kid at the price she pays to eat lunch in school.

Canadians, increasingly, are getting fed up at the outragous taxes they pay, for poor services.

No one minds subsidizing the truely needy. But when a large percentage of that subsidy ends up feeding not the needy, but the state bureaucratic apparatus, something is very wrong: Just look at the percentage of people employed in the public service in Canada. It's what, one out of seven, in the province of Quebec?

Our tax dollars were robbed, and the services they are supposed to pay for are abysmal.

Even the Supreme Court of Canada agrees that delay in getting health care justify seeking it privately (which is generally illegal in Canada, being "unfair" to those who can't afford it).

But the real telling measure is that (a) the very rich and (b) elected politicials who supposedly represent the substantially less rich masses are unaffected by all of this.

If any country needs a tax revolt, it is Canada.

What I wonder is this, if one starts, how many expats living in the U.S. will start to stream over the undefended Canadian borders, AR 15s in hand, to reclaim what was stolen from them?

Re:Clarify

[Fulcrum of Evil]

And the rich don't think they should have to subsidize your children going to public schools.

Just ask them who they expect to hire in 20 years.

Education is a commonly used reason given to increase property taxes, which are disproportionately paid by the rich.

That makes sense - they get the good schools.

Re:Clarify

[Fulcrum of Evil]

Completly OT, but many tribes such as you describe are non-violent.

I very much doubt that. I recall an anthropologist who spent some time interviewing a bunch of tribes, and she found that all or nearly all had died in these revenge cycles.

Re:Clarify

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm... how do you get a chunk of the CD-R tax? Is it tied to your album sales? Do private (i.e. peer-to-peer) sales count, like if I'm selling my CDs off of my website or out of my trunk? Or can you just register and let the checks roll in?

Re:Clarify

[MacDork]

artists are compenstaed based on their sales

I thought all the greatest artists were loosing all their sales to piracy. Isn't that what the RIAA always says? The artists being affected least by piracy will be the ones selling the most... therefore, the money should be distributed in inverse proportion to sales. ;-)

Re:Clarify

[renehollan]

In contrast, parents with a kid in public school are paying their taxes as normal, which would be only a fraction of the cost of the education

And there's the rub.

Many parents have kids in public schools, and pay far more in the portion of their income tax earmarked for education, than the cost of that education.

Note, I wrote "far more". Not an amount that would include a 10% or 15% subsidy for the poor.

Re:Clarify

[renehollan]

The thing I would like to know is in actual fact how much is deductible from your taxes.

Well, I don't think it exists anymore, but if it were like all other non-refundable tax credits, probably the lowest marginal tax rate multiplied by the amount paid.

So, if you were paying 25% federally, and 18% provincially, you'd get bach 17% federally and 3% provincially, or some such. And that assumes it was deductable at 100%. I've heard it was deductable at 10% and was to increas 10% over time until it reached 50%. And, there was a cap.

It really was peanuts compared to the cost of the private education.

Re:Clarify

[spun]

Read the books I mentioned for a dissenting view. More than likely, the tribes interviewed by your writer all had similar backgrounds and lifestyles. While "The Continuum Concept" discusses only a single tribe in depth, "Saharasia" represents research on over 1,000 cultures around the world.

You have one unnamed writer who you think you remember showing all tribes as violent, while I have refered to two specific books by different writers that contradicts that view, yet you still choose to believe what you believe without even checking the evidence I present (you can google both titles for synopsis or overviews on the web).

I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that your world view is based on the concept that humans are inherently prone to violence and need some sort of civilization forced on them through coercion. Needless to say, I disagree, and I have actual research by actual named sources to back me up.

Re:Clarify

[yndrd1984]

It's called "Caring about someone other than yourself for a change".

When I choose to give to charity, that's called caring for others. When someone else forces me to "give", that's called robbery. If it doesn't come from the heart, it isn't "caring".

the "every man for himself" concept is an evolutionary hold over...

that we can't get rid of. We can create a culture that encourages empathy and charity, we can punish people that don't participate, but the disire to improve yourself and your lot in life will always be greater than the desire to improve another person's, because it's your life.

Re:Clarify

[yndrd1984]

God damn, where are my mod points when I need them? (Score:3, Interesting/Overrated)

Rationalization is a powerful force. It's absolutely amazing how many people really believe that "civil society" is the same thing as "government run society". They can't imagine a state where government exists to preserve human rights and has no other legitimate purpose, so to make themselves feel morally superior they pretend that it's impossible.

when what they really want is just to keep a few extra bucks a month

Wait a sec, that's what the parents are doing! Some might not be able to support their own kids education, but most are just trying to save money on the backs of their childless neighbors. Forcing people who choose one lifestyle to fund people that practice another is pretty close to (a mild form of) slavery.

There's no intrusive government laws -- there aren't any laws at all!

Which is called anarchic not libertarian. Libertarians want a government that is strong, but with that strength conterbalanced with strict limits on the areas of life it can affect. In liberal (free) societies, we keep our legal system mostly separate from our religious system, our cultural system and our mating system, because we believe that those kinds of freedom are important. Why are our economic and educational freedoms so much less important?

Then they drive on fancy new roads...

Their money is already gone, and because competing with government services is often illigal, always highly regulated and hard to build a business case for (you're competing against "free") there aren't any alternatives.

Show me a non-hypocritical anti-government libertarian and I'll show you a survivalist wacko.

You might as well call communists hypocrites for cashing their paychecks. Both Commies and Libbers want to change the system, but until they do, they don't have an alternative. If you just want to insult them, fine, but if you want to point out the error of their ways, try harder.

Re:Clarify

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you attend public schooling in Canada? The people before you paid for you. Now you are paying for the generation behind you. Same as the Canadian Pension Plan. You are not paying for your retirement, you are paying for the retirement of the already retired generation. Same as how the generation behind you will pay for your retirement.

Re:Clarify

[LordEd]

Many parents have kids in public schools, and pay far more in the portion of their income tax earmarked for education, than the cost of that education.

I just wanted to get some numbers. For a local school district here in bc, i grabbed a budget presentation. (http://www.sd23.bc.ca/FinancialReports/Presentati ons/06-07%20Budget-Presentation.pdf)

I found an operating budget (145 M) and a student(21,000) count and divided the two to come up with the number $6797 per student.

Now, I don't know your income tax level, but I'm pretty sure that my entire income tax doesn't come to that number, and i know the portion of tax going to education is not 100%.

Granted some may pay more, but when a certain percentage of the budget is allocated to a cause, its based on the entire pot, not each individual.

The rebate in ontario is/was marked as up to $3500, so basically that amount is tax free, not a cash rebate. If they person is taxed 30% on that amount, that means a rebate of 1000, not 3500. If they can afford to pay $10,000 for a private school, that means they are still paying plenty of tax for education.

Re:Clarify

[Rix]

No. They *may* be able to write tuition to private school off (I'm not sure). That just means they pay less (or no) tax on that amount of income. Though there is a fairly heavy lobby for it in some communities, you do not actually get the amount the government would have spent on public education back, nor should you.

Re:Clarify

[renehollan]

I routinely paid around CA$30k in income tax. I have two kids in school, support them, and my wife (who does not work). So, in Canada, I basically got taxed as a single, got 20% ($17 Fed and 3% Ontario) of some $7500 or $1500 non-refundable tax credit for my wife, and nothing because of the kids, because I earned too much. Any social benefits got clawed back. The thing is, I hardly made CA$100k a year, or around US$75-$80k. That might seam like a lot, but is close to the poverty line in some places in the U.S. (where a modest three bedroom home costs over US$1 million).

In the U.S., I can (a) file jointly with my wife, (b) deduct the mortgage interest on our home, (c) get a tax credit of $2k for our kids, (d) earn at least 30% more in US$ than I did in CA$, (e) have gold-plated health case via my employer, (f) actually manage to save for retirement, and (g) contribute thousands of dollars a year to various charities. I can actually have a housekeeper and pay people to care for my lawn. Bourgous? Hardly, that's a middle class life. And the monies I pay for these service help these people own their own homes as well. (Don't kid yourself: lawn care runs around $35 an hour, and maid service $30-50. The self-employed in these areas can do quite well for themselves).

What's interesting about your numbers is the cost per student: $6797. That's way more than the tuition to many private schools that offer a better education. Not the best private schools, to be sure, but typical ones (and excluding room and board, obviously).

I am opposed to socialism in principle, being a libertarian. However, if the state actually made effective use of my tax dollars to support what I would anyway, I could not complain much from a pragmatic standpoint. But, Canada and the provinces have done an abysmal job keeping the promise of the social contract.

Re:Clarify

[niXcamiC]

How the heck did you read growing in to my sentace? I said stoping decline, there is a distinct difference between not going down, and going up. As the other poster said, the goverment need tax payers, and our older non-working non-tax paying populating is quickly rising in perportion to our non tax paying population, if the goverment has all those dependants and no income, what are they supposed to do?

Re:Clarify

[Kombat]

How the heck did you read growing in to my sentace? I said stoping decline, there is a distinct difference between not going down, and going up.

Yes, one of them includes "staying the same" which is the only other possible alternative to not declining. I assumed you weren't suggesting we keep the population the same, because no intelligent person would suggest that it is possible to control a population of 6 billion people to keep the population from either growing or declining.

As the other poster said, the goverment need tax payers, and our older non-working non-tax paying populating is quickly rising in perportion to our non tax paying population,

Yes, that's called a Ponzi scheme, and it's a terrible model on which to build a social program. Now that the mistake has been made (several decades ago), and the numbers are finally catching up with us, the solution isn't to frantically reproduce and put off the inevitable, but rather to wean ourselves off a flawed system.

if the goverment has all those dependants and no income, what are they supposed to do?

Why would the government have "no income?" Now who's the one putting words in the other's mouth? You were all offended because when you criticised me for "not stopping the decline," I assumed you wanted me to help the population grow, when in reality, you're apparently suggesting we keep it the same. But now you seem to be inferring that since I suggested maybe the population could deal with a few years of decline, then suddenly the government will have "no income?"

Hypocrisy, thy name is niXcamiC.

Re:Clarify

[aeroplanos1]

You don't. I don't get food stamps, a welfare check, my kids don't go to public schools (I don't have any), but I pay taxes that go into these programs. My real estate tax goes straight to the school district. I don't use that service. The majority of my taxes go towards causes, programs, or institutions whose services I neither need nor want, and a handful to which I have serious ethical and/or moral objections. But there's no recourse. If I say all of this and want my taxes lowered or changed so I can keep more of my own money, I'm called greedy. When somebody else wants my money for some purpose, they're just needy.

This is of course, absurd. The writer, if they are Ameircan, like 95% of Americans, went to public school him or herself. There is also no jusristiction where real estate taxes go only to the schools, indeed the average is less than 25%. Public Schools are a basic social contract. However screwed up they are, everyone "uses" them including and in some ways, especially people without kids. This is like saying you don't have a car and resent taxes for roadways. How does that milk get to your supermarket? I will bet the writer consumes public services I don;t yet I pay for. We alread can assume they went to school on the taxpayer's dime.|

Re:Clarify

[aeroplanos1]

And then explain to me how it could possibly be considered fair that a rich couple sending their kid to private school gets their public school taxes back, but a childless couple does not. The childless couple enjoys the benefit of having an educated society. They are employefd by and or employ people ecucated in that system. they sell to and buy from people educated in that system. Public educatio is a basic and explicit part of the social conttract in the US along with only a handful of other explicit responsiblities.

Re:Clarify

[Kombat]

The childless couple enjoys the benefit of having an educated society.

So does the couple with the child. You still have not offered a logical explanation for why the couple with the child should be allowed to pull their funding from the public school system, but the childless couple should not.

Public educatio is a basic and explicit part of the social conttract

Right. So why is the couple with the child allowed to opt-out of paying for such contracts, while still being allowed to benefit from it (by virtue of employing, and being employed by, people educated in the public system)?

Re: Cheap CD's

[Chris Tyler]

...buy cheap CD's from the US. This is perfectly legal, and a great way to save money.

Yes, but as an 'importer' I'm liable for the levy on imported CDs. Excuse me for a second, the doorbell's ringing...

Price Distonrtion?

[brunes69]

I'd like to know where this guy does his shopping. Around christmas time you were able to buy spindles of 200 CDs for like 25 bucks CDN at many major retailers. That's 12.5 cents a disk before tax. I don't remember getting CDs that cheap *before* the levy.

I have seen no noticeable impact of any levy whatsoever. Blank CDs are still dirt cheap.

Besides, with car audio and portable players all moving toward using memory-based media nowadays anyway, and DVDs offering vastly more storeage for the same price, CDs are rapidly going the way of the dodo bird.

Re:Price Distonrtion?

[Amouth]

in the US you can get them aroudn 2.5-3 cents per disk.. even after the conversion to the lunnie.. you are getting screwed

Re:Price Distonrtion?

[brunes69]

Maybe I am. But who fucking cares? 2 cents a disk, 15 cents a disc? If you can't afford $25 bucks for 200 CDRs, then you probably shouldn't be spending $$$ on your internet connection to get all the shit to burn on them to begin with. I mean come on. No one burns data onto CDs anymore, it's all DVDs. And who burns 200 music CDs in a year, let alone 6 months? That's almost a new CD every day. I personally have't bought a spindle of CDRs since I got my dvd burner in 2003. And I still have like 400 blanks in the house. There's a lot more important things we Canadians get raped on compared to the U.S. (electronics prices, gas prices, food prices...), any of which costs you orders of magnitude more a year.

Re:Price Distonrtion?

[jdcope]

Please let us know where you can get blank cds for 3 cents ea! Even the crap no-name Chinese-made discs at Frys run about 7 cents ea. Best name-brand deal I had lately was 200 TDKs at Costco for $19.

Re:Price Distonrtion?

[dsgitl]

I burn about 100 music CDs per month. They're all freely traded live music performances available at websites like archive.org and several live music torrent trackers.

Re:Price Distonrtion?

[brunes69]

I question your ability to even listen to 100 CDs in a month, let alone why you would bother burning them on CD when you could archive much more on DVD.

Re:Price Distonrtion?

[dsgitl]

Some people buy DVDs, others baseball cards, others beanie babies, still others video games. 100 CD-Rs can easily translate into 40-50 actual performances, plus CDs left over for trades. Do I listen to everything I burn? No. But it is nice to be able to catalog historical performances.

And I prefer having CD-Audio discs, so DVD-Rs for solely backup and listening on computer purposes are out.

Use one problem to solve another

[dcavanaugh]

Maybe the Canadians can get their pharmacies to fill prescriptions for US customers and accept payment in blank CDs!

Re:Use one problem to solve another

[Clod9]

That's called barter. It evades taxes, so we can expect that such activity will be outlawed.
The government demands its cut of every transaction!

Re:Use one problem to solve another

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny, but if you look a little closer, you'll see that creating problems is the business model of any "successful" government. After all, if there were no more problems to solve, what need would anyone have for government?

Bottom line time: It's in the interest of government for problems to exist, and for problems to worsen as time goes on. Of course they wouldn't dare admit it, but the more theft, fraud, violence, and general crime, the more government benefits. Makes you think, doesn't it?

Re:Use one problem to solve another

[Belseth]

Maybe the Canadians can get their pharmacies to fill prescriptions for US customers and accept payment in blank CDs!

Been there done that. I'm making a CD exchange run this weekend. A case of CDs will bring a hundred count bottle of Viagra or half a kilo of medical Marijuana. Both items are easy to move in this country. I'm hoping the tax extends to blank DVDs. I should be able to get double for DVDs. If business keeps up I hope to hire a lobbyist to push for tougher laws. Last time they dropped the law it put me out of business. I was going to file a restraint of trade protest but I thought that might be pushing it. It's easier and safer to just hire a lobbyist to push for tougher laws like the big corporations do.

Re:Use one problem to solve another

[Lugor]

Barter doesn't evade taxes, it's covered under the IRS barter section, here: http://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc420.html 2 out of 3 sentences correct, not bad. And oh, if you play WoW, check this out: http://www.boingboing.net/2006/01/06/irs_to_tax_yo ur_worl.html, IRS to tax your swords, armor and other magical items.

Commerce, its not national anymore

[hackstraw]

Its easy. Just do what we Americans do for prescription drugs. We buy them from Canada because they are about 1/2 the price.

Why can't Canadians buy their CDs from places that have lower taxes?

I drive to a neighboring county to buy cigarettes because they have cheaper taxes. I buy things online to escape state sales tax. I buy my prescription drugs from Canada.

Many retailers advertise and/or strategically place their storefronts right across borders for this reason.

Re:Commerce, its not national anymore

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea but you still have to drag it back across the border..

Meaning you still pay duty / taxes / tarrifs on the goods.. which kinda defeats the purpose of going there in the first place.. unless the Duty Free stores start carrying boxes of CD's.

Re:Commerce, its not national anymore

[Anonymous Coward]

No need to go across the border. There are Indian Reservations everywhere....

Re:Commerce, its not national anymore

[robertjw]

I heard about some people that order cigarettes from Russia because they are so much cheaper than here in the US.

I seriously hope that people do avoid these taxes this way. Perhaps it will give our governments a clue about collecting taxes. All these sales/use/luxury/sin taxes are a PITA for businesses to collect and annoying for consumers to pay. If our governments would consolidate and simplify the tax collection procedures to make it easier on businesses and limit the beauracracy it would be better for everyone.

Re:Commerce, its not national anymore

[garcia]

Its easy. Just do what we Americans do for prescription drugs. We buy them from Canada because they are about 1/2 the price.

The State of Minnesota asks that its employees purchase their prescription drugs from Canada for savings. That's great and all if Customs would stop seizing them.

I love being told by my Governor to break Federal Law. Awesome.

Re:Commerce, its not national anymore

[stupidfoo]

Let me guess... Nick Coleman is your hero.

Re:Commerce, its not national anymore

[RexRhino]

Because Canada has postal nazis who aren't afraid to levy an import fee on just about anything coming in the mail. When I was living in the U.S., I could order stuff worth $5,000, and not pay a cent of duy. Now that I live in Canada, I am not suprised when I have to pay 200%+ duty on things ordered from outside Canada.

Re:Commerce, its not national anymore

[garcia]

No, I just don't believe that one of my options for inexpensive prescription drugs should include breaking Federal Law.

Re:Commerce, its not national anymore

[hackstraw]

In the US, the Federal law regarding chemicals that people put in their bodies is just wrong.

Many of the "FDA" approved drugs are horrible, expensive, have side effects up to and including death, etc.

In 5 years, I will be free from having to take FDA approved drugs on a daily basis. The medication that I am on now gives me dry heaves, makes me insane at times, gives me headaches, disturbs my sleep, gives me vertigo to the point that I have almost died in a car accident, and being that it is a relatively new drug on the market, nobody knows what the long term affects are.

I have much better results and fewer side effects from uncontrolled and/or "illegal" drugs than the FDA ones.

I'm probably the only one that has these issues though.

Re:Commerce, its not national anymore

[Malc]

Both you and the person you replied to should have been paying your state's use tax. Although most people don't and are thus liable for tax evasion.

Just what exactly are you buying that receives a 200+% duty? The most expensive electronic items I've bought from the US were up to $1,000 - the ones that came via the postal service weren't taxed, the ones that came via courier had PST, GST and the courier's stupid brokerage fee (which, BTW, is something small like $5 when the postal services bothers to do things properly). Just this morning I received a not on my door from the post office demanding something like $17 for something shipped to me from Germany that cost me €59 + €55 shipping (which I think works out at GST + PST on the item, and GST on the shipping).

Re:Commerce, its not national anymore

[RexRhino]

I have paid close to 200% duy on music I ordered from the U.S... and I have paid 100% duty on video games... this is total cost, so it includes PST, GST, duty, brokrage fees, inspection fees, etc., I do not know the exact breakdown, as I don't have the invoices in front of me. I also used to work for an online retailer in the U.S., and can confirm my experiencies are not unique... out of all our orders to Canada, we couldn't figure out any real hard fast system to help our customers in Canada know how much duty they might pay - The only way we could cover our ass was to warn Canadians that they might in fact pay up to 200% in duty in some cases.

But all that is beside the point. The point is, U.S. customs almost never charge duty (I have never paid duty while living in the U.S.), and Canadian customs charge duty all the time. Canadians aren't going to be able to buy cheap CDs from the U.S., the same way people in the U.S. buy cheap drugs from Canada.

Re:Commerce, its not national anymore

[Malc]

What kind of music? I get half my CDs from the US, and have hardly ever been charged anything extra (perhaps taxes on one occasion). Amazon.ca's/HMV's market place often has me ordering CDs from caiman_usa.

The best thing one could have done for one's customers was avoid couriers like FedEx and UPS like the plague, *especially* for items less than $50. Instead always use the US PS. I've bought thousands of dollars of stuff from the US over the years and I just don't see how it could add up to so much. Maybe your 200% includes the extortionate FedEx shipping costs ;) Or perhaps exchange rates where people seem to like comparing the numeric value of what they paid in USD$ to the CAD$ charges... which a few years ago was a bad comparison when CAD$1 only bought USD$0.63.

I've never seen duties beyond PST & GST, although that's not to say it doesn't happen or that there are different rules in other provinces/territories. My worst experience was when a friend in Denver sent me a picture. UPS screwed up and put the insured value at USD$12,000. Their brokerage fee that they tried to charge me was about CAD$150. Plus GST & PST on CAD$19,000 and I said no way and returned it to the sender for them to send to me again with the correct declared value (USD$250 - less than UPS' orginal bill).

I'm afraid you can't really include brokerage fees in your 200%. That's down to the courier *you've* chosen to send by. For Canada Post (i.e. via USPS), it's a flat $5 or $8 fee, although I've only seen it applied rarely. I've also heard it mentioned that people can do their own brokerage and so avoid paying couriers that big money maker, although who has time to go to the correct Canada Border Services Agency location? When buying stuff from eBayers in the US, always ask them if they will send USPS, if they don't I generally don't bother bidding as I don't want to be ripped off by the couriers.

And BTW, there could be brokerage fees importing in to the US too. UPS has such charges.

Put a one character text file on them and then....

[digitaldc]

...resell them as 'almost new'

Fair Trade....

[vwjeff]

We go to Canada for the cheap drugs, they come here for the cheap CDs. Sounds fair to me.

Re:Fair Trade....

[Skapare]

Just take lots of blank CDs with you when you go to pick up your drugs.

Been bitten before

[Dzimas]

I got bitten by the copyright board's $25 levy on iPods several years ago. Luckily, it was overturned and Apple was *very* quick to refund my money - it was the only rebate claim I've ever had processed in less than a week. ;)

As for the CD tax -- it stinks. I use a dozen or so CDs (and DVDs) for project backups, photos, home movies, and so on. I no longer use a tape-based VCR; It's much nicer to burn timeshifted TV shows to DVD/CD with DivX compression. Why should I have to pay a levy on that?!

So what

[slummy]

A pack of rolling papers costs as much as a pack of cigarettes. This type of taxation has been around forever.

Re:So what

[RobinH]

Well in Canada, the taxes on things like alcohol and tobacco are supposed to support the public health care system, so the more bad stuff you do to your body, the more you're (likely) going to use the health system in the long run.

It works even better with gas tax going towards road repair.

What I don't like is paying a levy on my CD-R's that goes to recording artists when I'm actually using them to burn porn or hollywood movies... just kidding! :) But you get my drift. I'm OK with a point of sale tax/levy where it's 95% effective in doing what its supposed to do because it does the job and protects my privacy (I don't want a GPS device installed in my car to track my driving, or blood tests every year where the government keeps the results on file to see how much health care tax I should pay) but in the case of this blank media levy, it's absolutely wrong.

Re:So what

[Verteiron]

Interesting. Do rolling papers cost so much due to a tax on them? Do the proceeds of said tax go directly to Philip-Morris?

Re:So what

[klang]

...how much good is a pack of cigarettes going to do your bag of weed?

Re:Dumb Canadians...

[Anonymous Coward]

Because CD taxes are so much worse then the DMCA?

So if I buy my CDs from Canada...

[uniqueUser]

So if I buy my blank CDs from Canada, Can I legally illegally-download music here is the States?

Re:So if I buy my CDs from Canada...

[Recovery1]

No..

The laws only work in Canada. Take the Blank CDs to the USA and you are subject to american law -- not to mention you just paid extra for blank CDs.

I suppose you could take a bag of dirt from "the land" and spread it on the floor around your computer and then claim you are on "canadian soil" when the police come knockin', but somehow I doubt it would work. Still it would be a good read on Fark.com

Re:So if I buy my CDs from Canada...

[Anonymous Coward]

Only songs by Canadian bands

Then they'll convieniently forget

[MrPerfekt]

When it's reinstated and they're making millions upon millions of dollars per year on a product that isn't even theirs, they'll still insist that the recording industry is dying and it's all because of you downloading/burning scum! "Never mind the fact that we're making a profit on that too".

Re:Then they'll convieniently forget

[shark72]

"When it's reinstated and they're making millions upon millions of dollars per year on a product that isn't even theirs, they'll still insist that the recording industry is dying and it's all because of you downloading/burning scum! "Never mind the fact that we're making a profit on that too"."

I don't follow. The money goes to the performers and the songwriters... their work is most definitely "theirs." They took the time to think up the words and music. Perhaps being a successful performer or songwriter is harder than you think.

Most singers and songwriters do not make "millions upon millions of dollars." Songwriting, in particular, is typically one of the lowest income professions, right down there with authors and poets. To claim otherwise is, frankly, out of line.

Lastly, I've rarely, if ever, heard an artist complain about how the recording industry is dying. That sounds more like the standard line of the record labels... but they're not the ones who get the tariff money.

Re:Then they'll convieniently forget

[i_should_be_working]

I don't have hard evidence at the moment, but I've been told repeatedly that no Canadian artist has ever seen a dime of that levy money.

Unless you count some round-a-bout reasoning that the levy money lets the music industry produce more musicians.

Re:Then they'll convieniently forget

[shark72]

"I don't have hard evidence at the moment, but I've been told repeatedly that no Canadian artist has ever seen a dime of that levy money."

I've heard the same thing. The money is apparently tied up in paperwork and is very rarely disbursed. And when it it is, it doesn't amount to much for most working singers and songwriters, as it's distributed in proportion to sales. Name the top five Canadian performers and songwriters (I sure can't) and that's your list of who's getting most of the tariff.

When many people read "Canadian artists don't see the money" they falsely assume that it's because the record companies get to keep it. The record companies are out of the loop on this one. The evilness of the Canadian record companies has absolutely nothing to do with this debate.

"Unless you count some round-a-bout reasoning that the levy money lets the music industry produce more musicians."

That doesn't even make sense. The money doesn't go to the record companies, either.

Re:Then they'll convieniently forget

[shark72]

Eek -- I'd better correct myself. Turns out that 15% of the tariff does indeed go to the record companies!

Let's at least hope that the same paperwork hassles are preventing them from getting their share in a timely manner, too!

Re:Then they'll convieniently forget

[Anonymous Coward]

This is true. All of the money collected so far from this levy has been used to lobby the copyright board to increase the levy. I shit you not.

Re:Then they'll convieniently forget

[i_should_be_working]

Well that's much better than what I though previously. I thought the record companies got it all and that it was their responsibility to get it to the artists.
 
If they only get 15% it makes me not mind the levy as much.

Re:Then they'll convieniently forget

[fair_n_hite_451]

It's worse than you think. The money is received by the CRIA (a collective of record labels). They hold it, they are the ones tieing it up in paperwork and using it to fund their ever-escalating battles against the fair use rights that the levy entrenched. The artists see none of it. The fact that labels don't get it either doesn't make it any better.

Re:Then they'll convieniently forget

[MrPerfekt]

I was referring to the lobbying groups, not the artists.

Re:Then they'll convieniently forget

[shark72]

You're correct that the CRIA is a collective of record labels -- Canada's version of the RIAA -- but they're not the ones who get the money first. It's the CPCC that gets it first. They're not a record company or association of record companies.

The CPCC distributes it to three groups: songwriters/music publishers (that is, people who write the words and music), performing artists (the people who sing and play the words and music), and record companies (the people who make and distribute recordings of the words and music).

If you want to think of it as a pyramid, with the CPCC at the top dispensing money (or not), the record labels are on the same level as the artists and performers. This is important to understand, as there's a lot of misinformation going around about the record companies keeping the tariff money from the artists. It's two separate streams.

This page has more info. I hope this helps.

Who uses blank CDs?

[Zeinfeld]

I have several spindles of blank CDs that I doubt I will ever use. These days I back the computers up to a portable 400Gb drive and if I was going to use disks for backup I would buy a DVD-RW burner.

I do not use CDs as anything other than a distribution medium for buying music at this stage. I listen to most music on my MP3 player or occasionally a computer. This seems to be what most people do.

Re:Who uses blank CDs?

[TheRaven64]

Blank CDs are still useful when you want to give someone a large blob of data. I generally don't like to send more than a few tens of MBs over the Internet (less if the recipient is on dial-up). Burning a disk that you can give to someone and not worry about getting back is sometimes very convenient.

Re:Who uses blank CDs?

[temojen]

That's nice. I DO use CDs, because often I have less than 600MB of photos (that I own the copyright to under Canadian Law) that I want to give to someone else, but it's too much data to email (80MB tiffs).

Just because YOU don't use something does not mean that EVERYONE does not need it.

Re:Who uses blank CDs?

[fugu]

Large blobs of data like all those TV shows that I downloaded ;)

Re:Who uses blank CDs?

[NamShubCMX]

I do.

I play in a small punkrock bands. We produce everything "D.I.Y." which means we burn all our CDs on blank CDs and sell them for 3$.

We don't care about the CRIA. We don't care about their crap and we don't want to be on their labels. It seems they'll still have a cut off of every CDs we produce... awesome.

Re:Who uses blank CDs?

[temojen]

Which is Legal in Canada.

Re:Who uses blank CDs?

[pjbgravely]

Never use?

Don't you burn your favorite Disto's to send to your friends still on Microsoft Windows? That is where 99% of my CD-R's go, I use CD-RW for my personal install disks, but they are too expensive to mail out.

Re:Who uses blank CDs?

[Y2]

I play in a small punkrock bands. We produce everything "D.I.Y." which means we burn all our CDs on blank CDs and sell them for 3$.

We don't care about the CRIA. We don't care about their crap and we don't want to be on their labels. It seems they'll still have a cut off of every CDs we produce....

Great. Take your story to court and be a hero like Fred Rogers was in the Betamax case!

Re:Who uses blank CDs?

[ceoyoyo]

You can get an exception from the levy. It's a bit of paperwork and you don't just get to go to Future Shop and pick up a spindle of CDs, but there are ways for people like you not to have to pay. I work in a lab and we once got a bunch of non-levy cds.

Re:Who uses blank CDs?

[stanmann]

Or if you want to change-proof the data you are passing on so it doesn't get corrupted by virii or such. I've got several recovery disks that are around 100MB

Re:Who uses blank CDs?

[00Dan]

Don't quote me on this, but I think you can only get the exception if you are a non-profit, school, etc. I work for a law firm and I regularly burn CD's of documents, etc. only to wind up giving Celene Dion a few more quarters every time I do.

Re:Who uses blank CDs?

[ceoyoyo]

That may be the case... we definitely qualify as a school. I think there's a reasonable chance you can get an exemption as a business, especially one producing your own music though. Probably not worth the hassle for less than a few thousand blanks.

Re:Who uses blank CDs?

[kesuki]

I too have several spindles of blank data CDs that i will likely never run out of. unlike you i periodically use them, but i bought the spindles when i was using them for backup purpouses, only backing up became too complicated and difficult. I still use them for making the occasional audio CD (for use in a car etc) or copying files i might need on another computer not networked to mine, etc. but really, for most people one spindle takes a long time to go through.

Re:Who uses blank CDs?

[Anonymous Coward]

Note: "once"... and then you decided that the paperwork wasn't worth the hassle when you need the blanks NOW. That's exactly what they rely on and you knew it when you posted you mischievous little troll. :)

Re:Who uses blank CDs?

[ceoyoyo]

Well, it's useful in some cases. If I were an organization that used a somewhat predictable (large) number of cds or I had a strong ideological reason it would be worth it.

As it is I figure I should be paying the music industry SOMETHING. ;)

You beastly little coward. :)

Re:Who uses blank CDs?

[NamShubCMX]

Which is the whole problem. We're not into paperwork, especially not of the legal kind. I'm talking about a very small project (about a 1000 Cds) but the problem is that we're not alone. There are 100s of band the same situation. That's not counting all the legal backups every company in this country do every day... I believe all the money they make out of this is ILLEGAL and IMMORAL. I dont get to pay the writer's guild for every sheet of papaer made?
You can get a discount (or maybe not?) but that's a hassle, a hassle I shouldnt go through because I want to produce MY OWN music.
Not replying to you or anyone, just publicly venting off :)
The problem isnt about the money. I dont care if a cd goes 1$ more expensive, but I sure dont want the CRIA (or anyone else) to get that money they dont deserve1

Re:Who uses blank CDs?

[ceoyoyo]

I definitely agree it's immoral and should be illegal. The whole "industry association" as more than a group for SELF-regulation should be illegal too.

If it's any consolation I doubt the CRIA thinks that the levy is a fair trade for legalized music file sharing.

Re:Who uses blank CDs?

[garwain]

I'm in the same situation. I have a small fortune invested in recording equipment, and I produce CDs for a few town bands, and my cousin's rock band. For bulk orders, I usually sell the final copy for $3-$5 depending on whether I was paid for my recording/editing time in advance and the quantity ordered (and expected orders).

I am not really happy that Unkle John 3-tooth who produced one CD 5 years ago that sold 3 copies is still getting paychecks because of tax on the blank CDs I purcahse, but I'd rather pay that that out than face a RIAA style lawsuite... Worst part is that these bands pay a fortune for sheet music to have the right to perform the music... On the other hand, I can also LEGALLY take on projects converting tapes to CDs and VHS to DVD...

Re: Cheap CD's

[AviLazar]

Yes, but as an 'importer' I'm liable for the levy on imported CDs. Excuse me for a second, the doorbell's ringing...

LOL. I am sure there is something for importer fee's...though how is the gov't supposed to know that the UPS package you are getting is CDs and not say a CD case holder?

I was, however, mainly making a joke referring to all the spam mail we get about Canadian drug companies..I guess it was not written well enough :(

Other Works

[darthservo]

I haven't been able to read the article yet (/.ed), but I do agree with you.

What about simply backing up my personal data that doesn't contain music? If I backup my pictures from my camera, or documents, why is the music industry benefitting from it?

And if the Canadian government is concerned with media itself, why are CDs strictly the ones being targeted? There are plenty of other forms of media out there (flash, DVD, hdd), blank CDs happen to be the cheapest.

As long as they....

[MeanE]

don't start charging tax on blank DVD's. A few years ago I would of ( and was ) more incensed with the CD tax, since I primarily used them for data backup. These days, with the price of DVD burners and media being so cheap I have bought exactly one 50 pack of CD's in the last six months.

My greatest worry is if they somehow manage to bring back the horrid mp3 player tax. That tax was the worst one. They were going to run into mp3 players with more tax in the price then the mp3 player was worth as the storage media incrased in sized, but the tax was not scaled to the price drop of the storage media.

Re:As long as they....

[Anonymous Coward]

A few years ago I would of

I believe you mean "would've" which is a contraction for "would have." Not "would of."

If I'm paying anyway...

[xtal]

be stupid not to copy as much as I can get my paws on, eh?

I got mad enough before to start dreaming up "piracy booths", where you could burn cds from a "collection" - for free, of course, with your own hands. My understanding is this would be completely legal..

Re:If I'm paying anyway...

[Anonymous Coward]

I just plan to use this as a defense if I'm ever taken to court over copyright infringement...

"But your honour, I didn't 'steal' the music! In fact, look, I have receipts here showing I paid them X dollars per CD, even for the CDs which did not end up containing music! In fact, I'd like them to pay ME money!"

21 cents per CD-R/CD-RW

[Anonymous Coward]

If you check the "What's New" page of the Copyright Board of Canada, you'll see that there's a PDF near the bottom called "Private Copying 2007". In it, it states that the levy rates are going to be raised to the following levels:
(a) 29 cents for each cassette over 40 min in length;
(b) 21 cents for each CD-R or CD-RW;
(c) 77 cents for each CD-R audio, CD-RW audio, or MiniDisc.

Re:21 cents per CD-R/CD-RW

[stupidfoo]

IN-fucking-SANE

Verbatim copy of the post

[Tester]

The Private Copying Levy Distortion

The Copyright Board of Canada last week released its proposed tariff for 2007 for the private copying levy. The numbers remain unchanged: 21 cents per CD-R. As prices have dropped, however, the levy now frequently comprises a significant percentage of the retail price. Consider the purchase of 100 blank Maxell CDs. Future Shop retails the 100 CDs for $69.99. The breakdown of this sale is $48.99 for the CDs and $21.00 for the levy (even worse is a current Future Shop deal of 200 blank CD-Rs from HP, which retails for $59.99. The levy alone on this sale is $42.00 (200 CDs x 21 cents/CD) which leaves the consumers paying $17.99 for the CDs and $42.00 for the levy).

This results in a huge distortion in retail pricing when compared to the U.S. market which does not have a levy system. For example, the same Maxell CDs retail for US$34.99 at CompUSA. When you add in the exchange differential, the Canadian cost is just over $40.00. Obviously the price is slightly lower in the US even without the levy (35 cents per CD vs. 40 cents per CD). With the levy, the price increases by another 50 percent.

Given how little Canadians get for their money (the private copying right doesn't cover copying CDs to Apple iPods) is it any wonder that countries such as Australia are considering allowing for such private copying without a levy scheme? The solution in Canada is obvious: either ensure that the levy covers the full panoply of private copying as is the case in France or drop the levy altogether and institute a fair use user right.

Re:Verbatim copy of the post

[Jardine]

Given how little Canadians get for their money (the private copying right doesn't cover copying CDs to Apple iPods)

I've seen Michael Geist say this before but I can't seem to find any reason in the law that this isn't allowed. An iPod is an "audio recording medium", isn't it? Of course, I'm not a lawyer and he is so there's probably something subtle I'm missing.

Re:Verbatim copy of the post

[fair_n_hite_451]

Apple applied for, and was granted, a specific exemption from the levy. So, no levy on iPods brought into the country. However, the law also doesn't say that "paying the levy is the mechanism which grants the right to copy", it's merely the vehicle by which compensation is routed to the supposed injured party.

iPods are best of both worlds - we retain the right to fair use copying, but don't pay for the privelige.

The irony

[Anonymous Coward]

I occasionally burn bunches of CDs for my musician friends. None of them are major recording artists. They need demo disks and a few copies to sell at their gigs. I usually supply the copies for free (or just the cost of the disks) so I end up subsidising the competition every time I buy disks. That's gotta be a rip off.

Re:Dumb Canadians...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, much worse than the protection afforded the pharmaceutical industry in the US.

BTW, I hate this proposed levy and will protest with a letter to the Copyright Board of Canada.

Re:Dumb Canadians...

[garcia]

If that law was passed in the U.S.A., people would be protesting in front of Congress by burning blank CDs on their laptops and tossing them at their representatives.

Yeah, in the same country where we went to war on questionable intelligence and are still there fighting for who the fuck knows what reason. Or in the same country where e-voting fraud could occur and no one could give a shit. Or in the same country where the President authorized wiretaps on American citizens and no one batted an eye. Or perhaps in the same "free" country where protesters are told where they can and cannot protest and are removed for exercising their right to freedom of expression.

Right. Like anyone in America gives a fuck about their rights and how they are losing them.

Re:Dumb Canadians...

[halivar]

Better get your bus ticket to DC now, then.

On the plus side...

[clevershark]

...it's not far-fetched to interpret this tax as an implicit acknowledgement and even legitimization of piracy. Gentlemen, start your downloads.

Re:On the plus side...

[Anonymous Coward]

Implicit? An Ontario court threw out a piracy case due to the existence of the Levy. Levy, or sue, not both.

Seems fairly explicit to me...

Re:On the plus side...

[kadathseeker]

Sure. Just charge enough tax that a CD-R cost the same as a music cd, a DVD-R cost the same as a DVD movie, and make software free to download but require a key that you can purchase on line to activate it (and have the key verified over the net). And make hard drives more expensive (50% more?).

The key would be to harvest old hard drives out of old computers and use them like floppies.

I'm for it (especially since I have a head start on hard drives and on data).

In other news...

[coastin]

Canadians angry over the return of a "Tax on Blank CDs" rally for a for a "100% Tax on dumb-ass taxing schemes"

Can sign up with record label ...

[AHumbleOpinion]

... where can independant Canadian artists who are not affiliated with the labels sign up to receive their cut of this tax? ...

At one of the record labels.

I used to be mad about it

[whitehatlurker]

(Or how I learned to stop worrying and love the ... uhn .. tax)

I was quite unhappy about the tax when it was first implemented, but this tax prevents (or should) RIAA style tactics in Canada. Yeah, sure it's another tax, but CD blanks are not that expensive. (Cheap at twice the price, eh?)

It is unfortunate that Geist's site is unreachable. I'd've liked to have RTFA before posting, but hey, this is /.

Re:I used to be mad about it

[Anonymous Coward]

Better double-check that, colonel.

The RIAA/etc. are complaining about the SHARING of files, not the downloading of files.
so pay all the levies you want, if you share the file, the RIAA will be around with their 5000lb abuse-bat.

What you need is some enterprising young hot-shot lawyer to claim that you were sharing it with another levy payer, and thus the RIAA was properly reimbursed for the copy given.
once they cannot prove that it was shared to someone who pays these levies or not, their lawsuits will go away.

Pssssst.... wanna trade?

[i_want_you_to_throw_]

Some of your prescription drugs for blank CDs?

Who says Canucks Are Crazy?

[ROOK*CA]

In other news Congress is considering a Bush Administration proposal to impose a 100% levy on sales of Monitors and Televisions... The Administration explained this proposal by saying "Concievably any display device has the potential to spread the scourge of pornography, therfore the only expediant thing to do is impose a levy which can be redirected to American Christian Churches in order to subsidize the cost of saving the souls of those victimized by pornography".

Congress is slated to vote on the measure before ending it's current session.

Similar situation in Spain

[rg3]

In Spain, a blank CD costs about 50 euro cents, more or less. Of those, a small percentage go directly to the SGAE (Sociedad General de Autores y Editores), which is the Spanish equivalent of the RIAA. This "tax" (it's not a real tax because it's not for the state) is mandatory, according to Spanish laws. It also applies to other media like blank VHS tapes. It is based on the assumption, as the SGAE mentions in its webpage, that for every copied CD, obviously (?), a sale is lost. Yes, there's a lot of controversy about this. More information (in Spanish) at the Spanish Wikipedia:

http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canon_por_copia_priva da_(Espa%C3%B1a)

Re:Similar situation in Spain

[16K Ram Pack]

Boycott it, then.

I'm sure there are organisations selling blank media in the UK who would be glad of your custom, and you would avoid the tax by doing so.

It might mean that you pay more, but if enough people do it, something will change.

Proceeds will go to porn industry

[AHumbleOpinion]

As long as they don't start charging tax on blank DVD's.

They will, but the proceeds will go to the porn industry not the record industry.

Hey Canadians!

[Roofus]

I'll trade you blank CDs for perscription drugs.

Deal?

Representative Democracy?

[Baldrson]

How anyone can conceive of this sort of law being "representative" of the people's will is beyond me.

Re:Representative Democracy?

[adam.dorsey]

How anyone can conceive of this sort of law being "representative" of the people's will is beyond me.

It's representative of the people's will. Just, not all the people. Only the ones running multi-million dollar corporations or representing some special interest. It represents them fine.

Unfortunately, there's the other 99% of the population to worry about...

Re:Representative Democracy?

[ratboy666]

Um... and why would you think that it is NOT?

Quite a few people (including me) SUPPORT the personal copying provision, and the levy.

You pay a bit, and then go ahead and share.

Personally, I want the provision expanded to cover DVDs (and allow sharing of movies).

Ratboy.

As a Canadian ...

[guysmilee]

As a Canadian ... I hardly find this a problem ... I can fit about 500 mp3's on a CD at 5 MB each ... so if you do the math the cost per song is about what I'd be willing to pay for a legal download service. Bring on the tax and free the torrents is what I say!

Re:As a Canadian ...

[spikestabber]

Unless you magically found some new compression algorithm that nobody has discovered yet, how can you put 500 mp3's of 5mb each on a 700mb CDR?

Re:As a Canadian ...

[djpenguin808]

Really? You can put 500 songs on a CD-R at 5MB each? Where, pray tell, have you found these magical CDs with 2500MB or more of storage space?

Re:As a Canadian ...

[guysmilee]

Ahhhh hem ... your pardons ... that would 5MB x 100 songs per disc ... still within my budget ...

Re:As a Canadian ...

[barefootgenius]

Err....5MB X 500 = 2500MB? Thats one big CD!

Artists aren't getting the Money

[failedlogic]

If I recall, another problem with this levy is that its supposed purpose - to collect funds and give them to Canadian artists is being hoarded by CIRA. Something which isn't supposed to happen. And its taken a long time for artist to get paid if at all (I'm sure the money is only going dispraportionately to more "popular" artist).

The other problem with this argument, is that the collection of funds is being used to protect Canadian artists. Frankly, there's only two or three Canadian singers (contemporary) that I actually listen to. I don't download - let alone listen to other Canadian artists, most albums are like the rest of the music industry. I don't want to give money to bad artists simply because I want to backup my university work or my webpage (for which I've done all the work), or make mix CDs of albums I already own.

I'd concur: some of the monies should go to software developers and book publishers. Maybe they can start a turf war with CIRA. So long as I don't pay more.

Re:Artists aren't getting the Money

[Malc]

The Canadian Internet Registration Authority. Really?

Grah!

[AnimatedMonkey]

This is the most ridicolous tax I've heard of all week! What about the independant artists? What about people who use blank optical media to, oh, I don't know, store some sort of data that isn't audio? Wouldn't happen. Everyone knows that all blank CDs are used for is music piracy. Stuff like data back up, photo storage, etc, is al bullcrap. It's all those filthy pirates! Seriously, this is almost worse than the iPod tax levis, except with iPods ypu have a guranteed chance that they'll atleast be used for music.

Re:Grah!

[91degrees]

What about people who use blank optical media to, oh, I don't know, store some sort of data that isn't audio?

What about them? When I visit other countries, I pay sales tax on a number of purchases. I had no right to (or need of) many of the services these taxes paid for. Should I have received a refund?

Taxes being abused and misused? Never!

[MasterC]

How can anyone be surprised that a tax is being abused, misused, and poorly managed? (If indeed it is, the article was /.'ed so I haven't a clue what it's claiming.) Especially one driven to fruition by a company!

1) Company A claims/lies/stretches-the-truth that X hurts their business.
2) Company A gets a tax passed on X that benefits A.
3) PROFIT! And lots of it.

I would love to hear a reason why company A should be responsible about the tax; make sure all those "hurt" by X benefit (when A can reap it all); and why politicians should care about a nameless consumer lemming when the companies that put money in their campaign funds would be mad if they did care.

And I'm not asking in the happy, perfect little world that we dream existed, but the cold, hard reality of today where politicians are bought, and the rights of the person are trumped by the rights of a company.

Use DVDs for Data in Canada

[Chris Tyler]

...the absence of a levy on DVD+/-Rs explains why they are the same price or cheaper than CD-Rs here.

Infringement on your own works

[fishbowl]

The angle to approach this from, is the infringement of your own copyrights when you use this media to produce, copy, and distribute your own creative works where you reserve all rights under copyright. This would be the position from which to have the tax law struck down, on the argument that it abridges your rights.

tax on blank cds = fee for legal music copying?

[caseih]

So if I was a Canadian living in Canada, and am forced to pay this tax, then copying music cds for personal use should be perfectly legitimate, since I've already payed for the music with each blank disk. That's always the problem with this kind of tax. It is implicit acknowledgement and condonement of the behavior that the tax was intended to curb. Especially in this case where the tax is largely going to a non-governmental body. So if the canadian music industry association tries to bring civil suits against end users for supposed piracy, I hope the courts would recognize this. So maybe Canadians should welcome this tax as it opens the way to legalized music sharing. Of course that is just a pipe dream.

Re:tax on blank cds = fee for legal music copying?

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you for pretty much describing exactly what this levy does. Do you think we pay it because we're sheep? (Okay, don't answer that) The levy makes the assumption that everyone is a criminal. In exchange, we are granted a limited set of rights of private copying.

It's not entirely unreasonable. What gets my goat is now they're trying to pass laws to explicitly retract those rights, but also keep the levy in place. It's enough to make me want to shoot someone.

Re:tax on blank cds = fee for legal music copying?

[Anonymous Coward]

U don't even have a gun! LOL!

u r teh hoser

Tax Me...I'm Canadian...

[canfirman]

If they bring the levy back, means I've paid my levy for the copyrights of my downloaded songs. That means I can give up my iTunes account in favour of a torrent account and get my music that way. Why not? I've paid the "levy", so I no longer in "violation" of fair use - I've paid for the copyright.

Re:Tax Me...I'm Canadian...

[shark72]

"If they bring the levy back, means I've paid my levy for the copyrights of my downloaded songs. That means I can give up my iTunes account in favour of a torrent account and get my music that way. Why not? I've paid the "levy", so I no longer in "violation" of fair use - I've paid for the copyright."

I think you're confusing your music industry and your health care industry. Canada has lots of socialized programs in which 100% of the operating costs are paid for by taxes (many more so than the US), but the existence of the tariff doesn't mean that Canada's music industry has been socialized. The performers, lyricists and songwriters (the recipients of the tariff) can't survive on the tariff alone -- it's a drop in the bucket. If you like a performer's work, buy their stuff.

Re:Tax Me...I'm Canadian...

[Rod Beauvex]

Your sarcasm detector needs fine tuning.

Re:Tax Me...I'm Canadian...

[canfirman]

If you like a performer's work, buy their stuff.

Oh agreed (and I do though iTunes). I was just trying, in my lame attempt, to create some humour. However, the last time this "levy" was applied, the Canadian Supreme Court (I believe) ruled that the levy effectively covers the copyright issue, and that downloading was therefore legal in Canada. Bringing this back will only do the same thing. Some politician wing-nut is not thinking this through.

So this means copying onto these 'taxed' CDs is OK

[frinkacheese]

I do not understand. Since when you buy a blank media, does this mean that you can legally leech some mp3s and stick them onto this CD, since you already paid for the content?

Same goes for this ipod tax that have too..

This is so lame...

[slantyyz]

When iTunes opened up a Canadian store, I stopped buying pre-recorded CDs. Now I've got to pay an extra levy for my purchased music to put them on media I can use in the car.

Considering that 10% of my CD burning involves music, it's nice to know that such a large portion of the levy is going to the music industry. I can imagine a lot of Canucks leeching even more music just to "stick it to the man."

Site Down

[canfirman]

Either it got slashdotted or the owner couldn't pay the taxes.

Anybody got a mirror site?

You're paying to remove the songs.

[raehl]

People need to realize that blank CDs don't just grow on trees. In order to sell a blank CD, you have to take a regular CD and remove the content. It doesn't make sense to remove content people want, like software, so most blank CDs are originally Britney Spears or N'Sync CDs with the songs taken off. The music industry gets the money because only the music industry produces CDs with content so poor that it's worth paying a little to remove it and resell as a blank.

Re:You're paying to remove the songs.

[digidave]

Thank you for explaining it to me. I will happily pay whatever it takes to not hear pop music. I wonder if I can pay for some dead air radio stations?

Re:You're paying to remove the songs.

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod parent up as hilarious! I think the people in the lobby here are looking at me funny, I Lol'd! Thank you for cheering up my day.

It's not nearly as bad as it sounds

[Lexor]

If it's the same as it was before, it only applies to blank CDs that are specifically designed for CD-Audio use, not bulk (eg. spindle) packs that may or may not be used for music.

More importantly, this levy goes hand-in-hand with the philosophy not of assumed guilt, but of "fair use" that includes sharing. Yes, sharing your tunes is perfectly legal in Canada, as it's simply assumed that people will continue to make copies and mixed CDs for friends, etc. in the new digital world.

Re:It's not nearly as bad as it sounds

[mark*workfire]

i do believe it applies to all CD's regardless of whether they're bulk-spindle or not, however, the amount of tax varies. CD-Audio discs are much higher than CD-Data which area taxed lower.

either way, the consumer is bent over by the music industry.

Re:It's not nearly as bad as it sounds

[hswerdfe]

dude, when I was buying blank CD's in BC by the spindle back in 2002 I paid the tax.

Re:It's not nearly as bad as it sounds

[n6kuy]

Other than the tax, what's the difference between CDR-audio and CDR-data disks? Is there any real difference? If not, why would anyone bother with CDR "audio" discs?

Re:It's not nearly as bad as it sounds

[Lexor]

There are some embedded flags that ensure that only these expensive "CD-Audio" recordables work in consumer CD audio recorders. Generic blanks won't function in these devices.

As far as I'm concerned....

[SteveWhitty]

... now as soon as I have the blank CDs in my hand, I've already paid for whatever music I feel like downloading and putting on them. Still illegal, but at least now I don't have a guilty consience.

Since I'm labeled a

[future assassin]

thief and a pirate as I use cd's to back up my photos I might as well put on an eye patch, hold a fork in my hand and steal the fucking cd's now to live up to the name.

Any why the fuck am I forced to pay these fuckheads for my own copyrighted work? I wonder what would happened if I send in a copy of my images on a cd and request my money back from the levy sice there is no music on the cd only my own copyrighted work.

Taxes on blank CDs.

[LoyalOpposition]

I think the Canadian manufacturers should retaliate by putting Canadian music on all their blank CDs.

-Loyal

The continuum

[poeidon1]

10 cents on CD-R, 50 on CD-RW, 100 on DVDR, 1000 on a Hard disk...., but they will still keep on complaining the revenue they lose on piracy.

Re:Dumb Canadians...

[idobi]

You should get your tossing arm ready, because the AHRA was passed in 1992. Your blank CDs are already being taxed...

Good!

[Eightyford]

License to burn cds. Fuck the record labels. I already paid for the stuff when I bought the cds.

The industry focus must shift.

[Anonymous Coward]

The music industry must accept the root cause of the piracy problem as human nature and give up trying to control distribution. The music industry must embrace a shift in the profit strategy from record sales to live performances; this is the only thing they really have any realistic control over anymore without inadvertantly creating inconsistent and problematic legislative solutions.

No.

[temojen]

It's legal to copy music in canada, but not legal to make it available to copy, or to give someone else a copy. Thus I can lend someone a CD (without knowledge that they're going to copy it (...looking other way and whistling...)), but not give them a copy or put the MP3s on a ftp server.

Oh yes, and it's perfectly legal to walk into a library with a laptop and snarf their entire collection into mp3s. If they have any music worth snarfing.

Re:No.

[bill_mcgonigle]

Oh yes, and it's perfectly legal to walk into a library with a laptop and snarf their entire collection into mp3s. If they have any music worth snarfing.

Hey, does that only apply to citizens? I see a great tourism opportunity here. Set up a chateau on the top of a hill with a nice view and 40,000 CD's in the guests' library.

Re:No.

[temojen]

No, it doesn't apply only to Canadian citizens, but US customs might not look too kindly on your collection when you return.

Re:No.

[bill_mcgonigle]

iPod in, iPod out.

Re:No.

[slazzy]

They could lend you their computer and broadband connection, with a nice sftp client to transfer to your home server

Re:No.

[Anonymous Coward]

My public library has a suprisingly good selection (even American music) and some Indie and lesser known contemporary artists in their CD collection. Its surprisingly good. I take some CDs out and bring them back a week later - having fully appreciated the content. Ahem.

I'm not so brash as to walk in with a laptop.... though it does increase productivity. LOL.

What About Data Storage?

[IflyRC]

If I am purchasing a pack of blank CDs to use as family photo picture storage, family video transferred over from the camcorder and backing up data such as tax records, etc. this tax has no bearing on what I would be using the CDs for. I don't see how they can justify that a percentage of the tax should go back to the recording industry when they cannot prove that the CDs are being used to copy songs. Also - even if I am burning songs or copies of songs that I own the right to (purchased online or an original CD) through fair use provisions I see it as totally illegal to charge me an additional tax for the specific reasons they have laid out.

Re:Similar situation in Poland

[sayret]

The Polish Copyright law provides such payment for all electronic devices (HDDs, Pendrives etc.) and media (DVD, CD, DAT, etc.) which may be used for digital copying. But because of such regulation there is an article 23 of the Copyright law, which has very broad definition for pesonal use of digital works (movies, music, _but_ computer programmes are excluded). It means that you may download (and only download, you can not distrubiute it, sell it) and burn such movies, music and any other digitalized work (as I wrote earlier - computer programs are excluded). The payment goes to organizations for collective management of copyrights (lets say very similiar to RIAA and others). Such organization distribute money between authors, producers etc.

TR
http://www.rychlicki.net/

Re:Put a one character text file on them and then.

[duke12aw]

it is writeable, not RE-writeable. once that one file goes on, you cant record anything else, whats burned is burned and you cant add or remove

Doesn't Really Cover Non-Canuck Artists

[Firewalker_Midnights]

I think this assumed guilt thing is a bit "too much" since it doesn't benefit artists that aren't Canadian (with the exception of those paid through the AMF, which aren't that many in comparison to the rest of the world).

CPCC Royalty Distribution Info

I would think that if we're paying that much on CD's it should go to every organization possible instead of a select few.

Not a problem for me,

[Sr. Pato]

I live a twenty-minute drive away from the border; I can very easily just go for a quick run and pick up some Marlboro's / Blank-CDs. Although, knowing how complacent and unmotivated Canadians are, they'll just pay the extra money to avoid troubling themselves any more and come up with some excuse to validate doing so. I'm not bashing here, just stating a hypothesis based on previous observations.

Re:Not a problem for me,

[PenGun]

You probably shop at WalMart too. Anything including destroying your local economy ... just to save a few cents. Pitiful ... really pitiful.

    PenGun
  Do What Now ??? ... Standards and Practices !

Re:Not a problem for me,

[Sr. Pato]

Who says to save a few cents, asshole? Are you gonna call Ghandi cheap for walking miles to grab his own salt instead of buying it? Civil Dissobedience: I don't want record labels to take my hard-earned money when they don't deserve it.

Re:Not a problem for me,

[PenGun]

Any Canadian who shops at WalMart is a fucking traitor, quaint term but it fits here.

  Supporting WalMart is just as, if not more, fucked as supporting the record companies.

    I guess Bush will be visiting a shrine to Ghandi, you will fit right in.

    PenGun
  Do What Now ??? ... Standards and Practices !

Re:Not a problem for me,

[Sr. Pato]

Who the fuck mentioned Wal-Mart here but you? I think you just like ranting at other people to feel more important. This thread is dead, no more replies here.

What next? A tax on BLANK PAPER?

[Astart�]

Lord know what copyrighted material can be put down on a blank piece of paper?

MOD PARENT UP

[squarooticus]

Very insightful comment, something unusual for Slashdot.

This gives me a great idea...

[pigs,3different1s]

1) Have my son sing his "ABCs"
2) Record his song on a CD... voila, I'm a music company!
3) Canada sends me my cut of the CD tax
4) Profit!!!

Re:This gives me a great idea...

[zotz]

You forgot the ??? step... Can you revise the business plan in keeping with slashdot tradition?

all the best,

drew

Re:This gives me a great idea...

[pigs,3different1s]

Sorry, I had too many steps to adjust it to the Underwear Gnomes business plan model.

Problem with that....

[Anonymous Coward]

Future Shop advertizes the price not including the levy, then adds it at the till.

Practices like this (and buying up lots of discontibnued stuff from the manufacturers, and including ALL the rebates in the advertised price (including ones tht are onerous to qualify for), and refusing to sell products without additional (non-advertized, pay-for) warranties) are why Future Shop appears to have better prices, but usually actually has higher prices.

Import declaration

[PCeye]

- "how is the gov't supposed to know that the UPS package you are getting is CDs and not say a CD case holder?"

You are responsible for accurately and truthfully declaring what you import into Canada.

You need a Canadian Customs Invoice and supply the correct tariff code to identify and to allow the government to apply the necessary tax. If products are falsely or incorrectly declared, you would be subject to a rather large fine against what you've imported, and the fine is not relative to the cost of the goods.

The government likes to collect their GST, and supply Statscan with data. If you have not been compliant, and haven't been recently caught, consider yourself lucky and hope customs does not challange you on what was shipped in.

I switched to DVD's sooner because of the levee.

[WoTG]

I would have held off on buying a DVD burner for a while longer; but it became ridiculous.

A DVDR became cheaper than CDR (after levee) a couple years ago -- and it's only gotten worse since. And I'm not talking about price per bit.

They don't even sell 5 or 10 packs of CDs in the smaller stores anymore. A while ago, I had to buy some CDRs for a client to burn those stupid Gateway recovery CD's (which is a whole other rant). I had to visit a few nearby stores before I finally gave up and bought a spindle of 50 CDs.

I can't wait for them to try and put a levee on DVD's... lets see, 6 times the capacity... say $1 per blank?

Nothing really new

[Anonymous Coward]

They're already doing this for years in The Netherlands via the 'Stichting Thuiskopie' ('association for home/personal-copies') :( And they want to expand this sick idea to other media carriers as well.. http://www.engadget.com/2005/04/28/dutch-ipod-tax- could-squash-digital-audio-player-industry/ Should be fun to see how much our government will have to pay lost revenues to the artists now that the EU internet data retention law has passed if this tax will also become a reality once. I'm wondering how life in Norway would be sometimes. ;o

Re:Put a one character text file on them and then.

[jridley]

I add data to discs all the time.
See: multisession.
Not sure if you can add audio tracks and make a hybrid multisession or not, but probably.

Re:So this means copying onto these 'taxed' CDs is

[shark72]

"I do not understand. Since when you buy a blank media, does this mean that you can legally leech some mp3s and stick them onto this CD, since you already paid for the content?"

Nope. Many non-Canadians assume that the tariff means that Canada has a socialized music industry, in which the performers and artists are compensated only through the tariff. That's not the case... the tarrif is seen by its supporters as a way of supplementing performers and artists for presumed non-compensated copying of their work, but it's a drop in the bucket.

Similarly, here in the US, we pay taxes to keep the police departments running, but this doesn't give us the right to commit crimes.

Someone should push for this improvement

[erroneus]

I don't know nearly enough about 'law' but I think it is extremely illogical for the consumer to pay for crime of which they haven't been found guilty. However, this is a 'tax' and isn't a criminal matter. And I am unfamiliar with the Canadian constitution, but I have a feeling they have the same "no taxation without representation" rule that we have in the U.S. And if that's the case, I'd like to know what 'service to the people' is being bought through these taxes? My assumption would be that the services are in the form of musical licenses since this is all about copying music.

These taxes essentially make copying music to canadian-purchased blank CD media legal.

I'm sure this will take a huge team of lawyers and a lot of public outcry to make it happen, but one way or the other, the music industry will have to give something up -- they can't have both a 'tax' and pursue additional civil penaties against individuals at the same time. If a person who downloaded music can show that he did so in order to utilize his rights granted to him by purchasing blank media from Canada, then I doubt there's much more damage that can be claimed. If this idea holds up, I predict a huge increase in the sale of blank CD media from Canada.

Re:Someone should push for this improvement

[ubergamer1337]

The United States does not have a "no taxation without representation" law. For instance, my father worked in Massassachusetts while living in New Hampshire for a while. He had to pay income tax to both Mass. and NH, but was not allowed to vote in Mass. It's taxation without representation, and its perfectly legal.

Re:Someone should push for this improvement

[LocalH]

No, it's not a law or anything, just one of the founding tenets of this country. That's all.

Just buy online...

[Anonymous Coward]

They can tax all they want. The majority of people who are savvy enough to burn cds, should be savvy enough to purchase their media online and avoid this ridiculous tax anyway. So, let them raise the tax, buy everything online, and cut their money that much more. Eventually they might get the idea they can't bully the population into buying their overpriced products.

Re:Just buy online...

[Anonymous Coward]

If you buy CD media via mail order or online or whatever Canadian Customs will apply the Levy on them for you. The only way would be to Drive across the border buy a the CD's and than drive back into Canada and lie to the custom agent that you have nothing to claim and hope they dont search your car.

The entire thing is BS. This levey at one point was being put onto Devices as well.....MP3 Players / CD Burners etc..

FREE?

[aukxsona]

So now will it be legal to download free songs in Canada? If so....so what. If not...raise hell.

Re:What next? A tax on BLANK PAPER?

[GoofyBoy]

Er... we already have that tax; the G.S.T.

Re:Put a one character text file on them and then.

[idonthack]

Because of the way the CD filesystem works, you'll waste about 13 megabytes of space.

The authour is on crack.

[brunes69]

Consider the purchase of 100 blank Maxell CDs. Future Shop retails the 100 CDs for $69.99. The breakdown of this sale is $48.99 for the CDs and $21.00 for the levy (even worse is a current Future Shop deal of 200 blank CD-Rs from HP, which retails for $59.99. The levy alone on this sale is $42.00 (200 CDs x 21 cents/CD) which leaves the consumers paying $17.99 for the CDs and $42.00 for the levy).

For example, the same Maxell CDs retail for US$34.99 at CompUSA. When you add in the exchange differential, the Canadian cost is just over $40.00.

Umm... excuse me

This article is on crack. Maybe if the authour was actually a Canadaian he'd know WTF he was talking about.

See above links. You can get 200 blank CDs for 40 bucks anywhere. And when they are on sale you can routinely get them for less, like 20 or 25.

So that means either this guy doesn't know WTF he is tlaking about RE the actual cost of the levy, or all these stores are selling CDs at a loss constantly.

I think option A is more likely.

Re:The authour is on crack.

[Anonymous Coward]

Um. You'll have to explain. Looking on the futureshop.ca link you posted, and looking at the Maxell CDs, the prices listed were correct. Though the 59.99 was after an 'instant rebate.'
Not being a Canadian, I'm not sure of the relevance of the NCIX link, especially as it was to nGear (a brand of which I've never heard) CDs. Not Maxell or HP.

So you'll have to expound if you want your post to make any sense at all.

Re:The authour is on crack.

[Jardine]

Umm... [futureshop.ca] excuse [ncix.com] me

This article is on crack. Maybe if the authour was actually a Canadaian he'd know WTF he was talking about.

Geist is Canadian. And your link to Futureshop goes to the exact same 200 CD deal he mentions.

See above links. You can get 200 blank CDs for 40 bucks anywhere. And when they are on sale you can routinely get them for less, like 20 or 25.

So that means either this guy doesn't know WTF he is tlaking about RE the actual cost of the levy, or all these stores are selling CDs at a loss constantly.

Neither of the links you posted works out to 200 blanks for $40. The first is 200 for $60. The second is 100 (plus a 96CD case) for $30. That works out to $60 for 200. The cheapest CD-Rs I can find on ncix.com is 50 for $12.75. That works out to 200 for $51.

Yes, every once a while a store will have CD-Rs for less than the cost of the levy. That means they either aren't paying the levy or they're using it as a loss leader. A loss leader is a product sold at less than cost to get you to come to the store (or website) and buy something else while you're there.

Re:The authour is on crack.

[Braxton_the_Covenant]

The only places where you can get anything close to 200 CD-Rs for $40.00 Cdn is at small computer stores who import the CDs from abroad and then (illegally) sell them without the added 21 cent per disc tax. However most people do not have convenient access to small-time computer stores that do not add the levy to the final price, and instead must buy them from Future Shop (or worse, Wal-Mart or Loblaws) which the article accurately reports. Future Shop could never get away with selling these discs at the "American" prices, since some busy body would report them to the government and they would be fined millions of dollars.

My advice to fellow Canadians who plan to on doing a lot of CD burning is try to find a computer store that will sell you generic CD-R discs at what is obviously a levy-free price. Otherwise the lowest price Future Shop seems to ever go is something like $17.99 per 50-pack, which ultimately sucks compared to what the Americans pay for their discs.

Who's encouraging copying?

[xtal]

I just put my collection out by the curb. Where I work on my car..

New Business Venture!

[Anonymous Coward]

I am a Canadian so technically through this tax I am allowed to burn music CD's all I want to. Now since these CD's are my property I am free to sell them to whomever wants them.

So I could setup a web site that automatically creates custom music CD's and sends the CD ala snailmail to my customers at greatly reduced prices.

Re:New Business Venture!

[Jardine]

I am a Canadian so technically through this tax I am allowed to burn music CD's all I want to. Now since these CD's are my property I am free to sell them to whomever wants them.

Uh...no. You can copy music, but only for personal use. That means you can't sell the copies or use them as a DJ.

Re:New Business Venture!

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you stuipid? No you can't make copies and sell them, that is illegal you half-wit. That is distribution and you are not protected, you can face huge fines and prison for that. Idiot.

Don't Worry - CD's Are On the Way Out

[Anonymous Coward]

More and more people are using flash memory to transfer files. CDs are on the way out, becoming obsolete just like floppies. DVD+/-RW are the storage medium for a while until flash memory catches up. If I lived in Canada, I'd just not bother burning CDs anymore. I'd keep my music on hard drive only, using a USB thumb drive or iPod for when I need to physically transport files.

Re:Don't Worry - CD's Are On the Way Out

[BungoMan85]

Exactly. That's what I do. I got a 1GB flash drive for Christmas and it has effectively replaced CD-Rs (except for the one time I had to mail someone a CD-R with data on that for screenprinting purposes). The 1GB of flash after all the rebates (the reason I love Fry's) was like 35 bucks. Granted I can't archive huge amounts of data on it. But that's what DVD-Rs are for. All my music I keep on my hard drive and I just use my iPod. Portable CD players are really lame once you've gotten used to having an iPod.

Re:Don't Worry - CD's Are On the Way Out

[ceoyoyo]

Your iPod is subject to the levy too. I think the thumb drive is exempt, so long as it doesn't have music playing capabilities.

I kind of like the levy though. I think it amounted to something like $20 on my iPod and a few cents on each CD (which I rarely use). However, since I paid that $20 I've given the music industry their cut so now I don't feel bad at all about not paying them any more. I'll support bands I like directly though, because the CRIA isn't so good at giving them the proceeds from the levy.

Re:Don't Worry - CD's Are On the Way Out

[rainman_bc]

I'll support bands I like directly though

I do that by going to their concerts instead. They get a helluva lot more money from the live shows than off their CD sales... And at least the CRA doesn't get a cut...

Re:Don't Worry - CD's Are On the Way Out

[ceoyoyo]

Yup. Live concerts, buy the t-shirt, etc.

Most artists never see this money

[Foobar_]

First off, it's not a tax, it's a levy. Taxes are collected by the government and have public oversight. The money from this levy goes directly to a private organization which then distributes it as they see fit.

From Canadian Private Copying Collective:

What is the distribution methodology?
The distribution process adopted will ensure that royalties are fairly distributed to the tens of
thousands of rights holders whose recorded music is in current use.
Since information is not available concerning exactly what tracks of recorded music are copied,
CPCC has used the two most comprehensive available sources of information - data indicating
the recorded music that is sold in retail outlets in Canada and data concerning the recorded
music that is broadcast by commercial radio stations and CBC. Airplay and sales are weighted
equally.
Internet downloads are not currently used as a basis for distributing private copying royalties as
there are no data available at this time. Airplay and sales data are believed to provide the best
available indication of the titles that Canadians typically copy for private use.

Independent artists with no promotion, no radio/TV play, no licensing (songs in movies, etc.), and no retail sales stand a snowball's chance of getting their share.

Nice Scam

[Hoi Polloi]

Isn't it nice to know that the government can use something intended for the public benefit (taxation) and turn it into a profit generator for private interests. What next, a tax on visiting the capital building that gets passed onto Disneyworld, since if you are visiting the capital instead of Disneyland then you are stealing POTENTIAL profits from the Disney Corp. The assumption is that you absolutely would've bought something from them otherwise, therefore it is a certainty that you are stealing by default. People used to bitch about "welfare moms", where is the outcry against welfare corporations?

How about a tax on bank accounts that gets passed on to banks to cover robberies? Why do we have law enforcement of economic crimes then? Just pass another tax!

Re:Nice Scam

[Anonymous Coward]

>>People used to bitch about "welfare moms", where is the outcry against welfare corporations?

Guess which group has better lobbyists.

In the end, those that have the gold make the rules...and the rules usually make sure that they accumulate more gold.

CDs are old news

[gavriel407]

We're still using CDs? I thought people used DVDs for archiving, and iPods for music.

Joking aside, I haven't purchased a spindle of CDs in over a year. They cost more per unit (in Canada) than a blank DVD, yet yield more than 6x the capacity. This move might just force many people to do the same... and buy a few CD-RWs to still have that "legacy" capability.

smuggle them across the border!

[madnuke]

Psstt want to buy some cds? Seriously I can not belive that, I can't read the article as its been slashdotted does this apply to other blank media, floppy disks, dvds, usb pen drives? I might buy some cds for my cousin when he comes as a present.....

Re:Dumb Canadians...

[TheGratefulNet]

what was the middle thing again?

If you can't beat 'em...

[CrazedWalrus]

If their concern truly is about these discs being used to unfairly copy their music, to the detriment of the artists, maybe I have a solution.

The MusicBiz has all the infrastructure in place to make CDs, right? Maybe they could *get into the CD-R/W business*. That way they could make money from the people who are *obviously* (ergh!) trying to steal from them -- and even those who don't. They can then divide up the profit according to some Fair Formula (double ergh!), keep some portion, and distribute the rest to the poor-starving-artists.

They can then proceed to shut the hell up. See? Free market solution to a free market problem. Of course, I'm sure the next "logical" step would be to lobby through a law prohibiting the sale of CDR's not manufactured by *IAA.

Bring it on!

[TheSkepticalOptimist]

I don't burn CD's or even DVD's anymore. I own a bunch of rewritable media of both types, I have an iPod, and I use my laptop to view movies and content on my TV. I am waiting for a good network multimedia box so I can stream content from various PC's in the house to my home theater system. Either that or a decent HTPC. I rarely, if ever, have a need to buy blank media anymore.

The bottom line is, why not tax the CD's and DVD's with Hollywood content on them? I mean, why not impose a tax on people buying the content as a pre-emptive strike against the possibility of them copying and distributing the content for free. Why tax a blank CD or DVD that may or may not be used in piracy and instead tax the content that IS being pirated? I mean this is why most retail software is generally expensive because software makers are recuperating the expected loss of sales of software piracy by forcing legitimate software buyers to pay more. The same should go for those people still buying pre-recorded CD's and DVD's.

I am being tongue in cheek about this, but it just shows how out of touch the entertainment industry is with reality when they start imposing and expecting profits off of media that many people never use to pirate their content. If your worried about losing sales with CD's and DVD's, then charge more for them. Its been working for the software industry, they are a multi-billion dollar industry because of it.

I move to introduce the concept of Open Source music and movies. Every song should have posted the sheet music and lyrics and every DVD should have posted its screenplay online so that you can build your own free music and movie library legitimately. Open Source IS the solution for everything after all!!!!!!

Socialism - Gotta Love It!

[Anonymous Coward]

Q: What do you call private health care insurance in Canada?

A: America.

Re: Cheap CD's

[brunes69]

Obviously you have never tried to cross the border. It's actually kind of humerous because you can tell the cultural difference immediatly. You head from the US to Canada, and the Canadian customs officers are more concerned with collecting the GST and import duties then they are about looking for drugs and weapons. You head from Canada back into the US, and the US customs officers are out sniffing for drugs and and worried if your beard looks too long that you mgiht be a terrorist.

Will you just SHUT UP?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh ... my ... God! Will you SHUT UP?! What -- you figure that you didn't karma whore on Thursday and Friday, so you're making up for it today?!

Re:Will you just SHUT UP?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Eh, at least she didn't use one of those girlish anime smilies like she used to use all the time.

Re:Will you just SHUT UP?!

[c_forq]

You don't get karma for funny posts... if this is to be labeled any such behavior I think it is attention whore.

Re:Will you just SHUT UP?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Fair enough.

Re: Cheap CD's

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but as an 'importer' I'm liable for the levy on imported CDs.

Dead wrong. If you import for your own use (even use by your company, as long as it's not for resale) no levy applies.

The levy only applies if you will SELL the blank disks in Canada.

So go ahead and order from the USA. Customs will still charge you GST :)

Even with your new gov't?

[2think]

Didn't Canada elect a new party to power? Why isn't this matter brought up with local student groups to write their MPs? I'm wondering if this makes any sense since I don't understand how blank CDs automatically qualify for something going to the recording industry. After all, with the amount of people burning home movies and photos as well as documents, this doesn't seem to be fair at all. Just my two cents.

Understanding

[Deliveranc3]

Apologizing for Canadian socialism, yes you are being taxed for CD's you buy and likely aren't using to make music CDs (Most hardcore pirates have Mp3 players anyway)

The money is being sent primarily to the recording industry (The Enemy)

Mitigating Factors, there is a system in place to analyse piracy and try and determine how much of each artist is being downloaded and dividing the funds accordingly, a not insignificant portion goes to artists sponsored by the Canadian government (Making sure that this money gets spent wisely will become more of an issue as there is more funding).

So basically the Canadian government has resolved the problem of the recording industry and created a system to replace the current music model... not without it's own problems of course but with promise.

More Info, and Yes, it's unfair.

[Errandboy of Doom]

Here's one FAQ on this.
The independent non-profit that collects the levy, the CPCC, has some additional information.

This levy:
a) penalizes non-infringers and discourages fair use
b) only compensates a select group who are harmed by illegal copying
c) is managed by a group with no democratic oversight
d) is confusing so as to encourage double-taxation
e) only taxes a select group of infringers, those who copy to certain types of media
f) is easily avoided through poor construction (you can legally self-import all your CD-Rs and avoid the levy)
g) other reasons?

Canaduh

[Anonymous Coward]

I run multiple websites with miles of code, tons of files, hours of video, and well over 20,000 high resolution photos. I currently use blank DVD's for backup. I must burn through at least twenty discs a week. If I had to use CD's, it would take a shitload. If the CD tax sticks the DVD tax wouldn't be far behind. Thank allah I don't live in Canada.

Re:Canaduh

[PenGun]

Uhh my last stack of 100 8x DVDs ... $33CAN. So it would cost me . a Canadian about $6.60 a week for your backup. Dood I was here for DAT drives ... you have no idea do you?

      PenGun
    Do What Now ??? ... Standards and Practices !

Had the same law in the US for a while

[LWATCDR]

I do not know that it is still in effect but there used to be music CD-Rs that had a tax on them that went to the RIAA. Some companies made CD players that would allow you to copy your CDs but only to these special music CDRs.
They cost more than CDs and no one bought them. I haven't seen them for a few years.
I have one question for the people in Canada. If you live close to the US border don't you just buy your CDRs in the states?

Re:Had the same law in the US for a while

[Jardine]

I have one question for the people in Canada. If you live close to the US border don't you just buy your CDRs in the states?

You certainly can. And as long as you're not selling the CDRs to others, you don't have to pay the levy. Unless you live on a border town/city, it's not really worth it. 50 packs of generic CD-Rs are commonly available for about $15. It would take quite a bit to make it worth the trip.

Re:Had the same law in the US for a while

[LWATCDR]

Well I was thinking of places like Windsor. I can imagine that a trip from Yellowknife or even Victoria really wouldn't be worth it. $15 for 50 doesn't seem like that bad of a price. I was thinking that the tax was like a dollar a disk. Good trick, make the tax just small enough to not make worth fighting too hard.

Re:Had the same law in the US for a while

[Jardine]

I was thinking that the tax was like a dollar a disk.

21 cents per disc. So $10.50 for 50. A store's margin on CDR sales is quite low at $15 for 50. Futureshop's (owned by Best Buy) regular price is more like $30 for 50.

The Levy was SANE!

[ratboy666]

Never understood that.

The levy on flash/hard-drive players was reasonable (IMO). The benefit? Copying to your "ipod"/flash or other player was fully legal.

I can still argue that such a player is a common way to store music, and (as that is its only purpose), the levy SHOULD have been collected. The device falls (should fall) under personal copying provisions and is fully legal to use. If I can round up a thousand people that USE their portable music player that way (the way it was intended to be used), it is proven.

But, having the levy overturned causes the headache of a potential legal challenge (which would not have been the case otherwise). The issue that would be easiest to attack would be the transitivity of the personal copy provision. The law right now does not differentiate the source of the copy, and I would like to keep it that way.

I am for increasing the scope of the levy, to cover such things as DVDs (thus allowing the "free" sharing of movies). Basically, take a slice, and leave me the fuck alone.

Ratboy

Why CDs?

[ThePyro]

Seriously, I've known dozens of people who download lots of music, and they almost *never* burn their music to a CD. They just keep it on their hard drives. Besides, who would want to burn 40 gigs of mp3's onto CDs? That would take forever! And when you wanted to listen to it you'd be spending all your time swapping CDs, unless you had a 60-disc changer.

Meanwhile, CDs are used all the time for backing up data, distributing applications, sharing family pictures, etc... I burned almost 20 CDs in the past week, backing up data.

It would make a *lot* more sense to tax something that's used entirely for music, such as speakers or portable music players.

Re:Why CDs?

[klang]

So the question really is:
"Why do I have to pay the Record Industry, to send a CD with the holiday pictures to my mother?"

It would make a *lot* more sense to tax something that's used entirely for music, such as speakers or portable music players. .. or guitars or drums or keyboards or .. ears?

no, taxation is not the way to go .. adapting to reality is.

Mod parent up

[Blain]

I was wondering about this very thing when I read this post -- this has been the fact in America going back to audio-cassettes iirc. The labels get paid for blank media to offset the projected loss of revenue due to copying using that media.

This needs to be a bigger part of the discussion.

I want a piece of that action

[MooseTick]

I am going to create a game with 1 free level and 5 levels once registered that is VERY easy to crack. The cracked version will likely get traded/shared/burned. Then I'm going to ask $10000 per registered copy. If I can show that I am having $1M of my software pirated per year and burned then I should be able to get a share of that action!

MOST Canadians live near the U.S. border

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't recall the exact % but seems to me it was soemthing like 80% of Canadians that live within 100 miles of the U.S. border.
This being the case, if I were a Kanuck, I would drive across the border, buy blanks, remove the packaging and take them back. I'm assuming there's no physical difference between U.S. and Kanuck CDs, so the friendly guys at the border would probably not bat an eyelid at them. In fact, leave them in plain view. How can they prove that you did not take them TO the U.S. in the first place?

Re:MOST Canadians live near the U.S. border

[renehollan]

How can they prove that you did not take them TO the U.S. in the first place?

Er, it's up to you to prove to the nice custom's inspector you took them out of Canada.

When one leaves Canada with personal belongings of significant value, like cameras, one fills out customs forms, with description and serial numbers, and gets a customs stamp on them, to prove they originated in Canada.

Last time I entered Canada, I almost got arrested for "inciting a riot" because of the NRA bumper stickers on my car that say "Freedom is not Free" and "Crime Control, not Gun Control".

Did you buy any?

[DeeKayWon]

Around christmas time you were able to buy spindles of 200 CDs for like 25 bucks CDN at many major retailers. That's 12.5 cents a disk before tax.

Did you actually buy any at that price?

Some places include the levy in the sticker price, some don't. London Drugs, for example, doesn't. Kinda like how many places don't include deposit and environmental handling charge in the price of a 12-pack of pop.

The BENEFITS of this tax

[Anonymous Coward]

While the tax is ridiculous for many reasons (ie: Not every CD-R is used for burning pirated music ) there has been a great benefit from this tax being in place:

The courts decided that P2P music downloads are perfectly legal and "fair use". Part of the determination in this decision was that we already pay for this "illegal music" via the tax. Take away the tax and we would be vulnerable to RIAA style lawsuits.

So which evil would you choose? Fuck, go ahead and tax CD-Rs if it means I can download free music!

Does the tax on blank media constitute permission?

[Anonymous Coward]

Does the fact that we are paying a media fee on all blank recordable media constitute an explicit licensing fee? We have paid for the privilege of making duplicates of any media owned by anyone that gets a part of the fee. Not just on media we already own as we already paid for the copying rights when we purchased the media. This makes the copyright infringement cases a bit tangled. I'd love to see this one used in a defense case.

poor music industry

[dingDaShan]

The poor music industry thinks that a tax will help them innovate their clearly out of date business model. How about get rid of the "music industry?" What is the "music industry" other than a cd copier? The artists are clearly not part of this "music industry," and in fact it consists of "record companies." Well I have news for you "music industry"... there are no records anymore... there are downloads and cd's. Nobody calls them "records." Here is a sad story (for real, not sarcastic): The great Paul McCartney was not allowed to play his own songs because of copyright issues... he didn't have enough money to buy his own recording rights and so Michael Jackson bought them. McCartney did something that the "music industry" should do: adapt. McCartney could not sell cds with Beatles songs, so he just TOURED. Touring, meaning: giving the consumer something that can't truly be downloaded or put onto a cd or dvd, allowed him to continue making massive amounts of money. He didn't ask for a tax on beatles songs so he could make money. Down with the music industry.

Re:Dumb Canadians...

[__aaclcg7560]

A moderate politician?

Two words - "Night Market"

[onkelonkel]

In Vancouver we are blessed with "The Night Market", a Hong Kong style outdoor market, where apparently, (and don't quote me on this) the vendors sometimes neglect to collect the CD levy. At least I assume it to be so since I bought a 50 disc spindle of CD-R for $12 Cdn last summer.

Extra bonus - The fried octopus balls are to die for.

Quit bitching, It's still a bargain

[geekee]

Given you can fit over 100 mp3's (at 128kB/s), that's a pretty cheap compensation for downloaded mp3s from a p2p network. And if you record other data, well that's the price you pay for socialism. Believe me, the recording industry would give back every dime collected on media for the ability to shut down the p2p traffic. They just take it because it's the best they can do in a socialist climate.

What really gets me

[Anonymous Coward]

What really gets me about this is that we pay the CDR tax so that we can legally copy CDs (even our friends' CDs). Then you buy a CD, and it's got copy protection. I've always thought that since we pay the tax that goes to the record labels, copy protected CDs should be illegal here.

Finally an Industry for Buffalo NY!

[N3WBI3]

Maybe some day I might be able to move back..

It's not so bad....

[Grokko]

I looked into this very carefully.

The levy essentially allows us Canadians to copy CDs at will.

Check the Canadian gov't (Industry Canada) page:

http://strategis.ic.gc.ca/sc_mrksv/cipo/cp/copy_gd _protect-e.html

under non-infringing uses:

"borrowing a musical tape from a friend to copy onto a blank tape for private use (a royalty payment to the owner of the song rights has been paid when the blank tape was purchased)."

If I want to borrow one of your music CDs and make a copy on a disc that the levy was paid on, I can do it LEGALLY, in Canada. It makes no difference that the artist is a U.S. artist, Canadian or otherwise. CRIA (Canadian Recording Industry Association) absolutely hates that law.

We have that in the Netherlands, too

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been importing DVD-Rs and CD-Rs from Germany for the last few years. It saves tens of cents per disc and it relieves my conscience from financially supporting the copyright mafia.

There is hope for Dutch media retailers, however. The Ministry of Justice has recently noticed that the foundation that divides the levy revenues that are stolen from consumers is terribly corrupt. In fact, it appears that they didn't give any of the money they received in the last few years to any artist at all.

Not new

[Anonymous Coward]

This tax has existed in Denmark for ages. They have/had it on VHS, casette tapes, CDR, DVDR, you name it.

WWGLD?

[Anonymous Coward]

Gordon Lightfoot must be spinning in his grave!

The private school tax credit was cancelled

[ashitaka]

We're both wrong. The tax credit no longer exists as it was cancelled by McGuinty as one of his election promises.

Re:The private school tax credit was cancelled

[Kombat]

We're both wrong. The tax credit no longer exists as it was cancelled by McGuinty as one of his election promises.

Yeah, I've been doing some reading and I just discovered the same thing. I wasn't aware of that. I'm surprised: I finally found something about Dalton that I actually like.

Slashdot should stop posting articles

[a_nonamiss]

Why take up valuable time and space by actually posting articles? At least once a day, Slashdot should just post:

DRM.

Go.

That's crazy talk!

[Anonymous Coward]

How am I going to get my fix of Anne Murray & Loverboy?

Good News!

[Anonymous Coward]

This is actually good news. In Canada, it is currently legal to copy and rip CD's and download music due to this levy. Uploading music is currently legal due to discrepencies in the law.

Wow, people still burn CDs?

[maillemaker]

I have all but quit burning CDs. They are slow to burn, and fragile when finished. This tax will make them just less appealing.

Steve

Yeah well,

[necro2607]

Yeah well, how else are they supposed to make money? No one wants to buy their generic shitty releases so they've got to make money somehow, right? .... *sigh*

For those in Canada who wish to object...

[Garwulf]

Looking closely at the material, this is still in the proposal stage, and there is time to object to it (I just sent in my objection). The actual proposal and the contact information for writing in to object can be found here: http://www.cb-cda.gc.ca/tariffs/proposed/c25022006 -b.pdf

Speaking as somebody who has dealt with proposals in the public sector before, when you object, make certain that you make a reasoned argument. Point out the flaws in the assumptions behind the levy (such as the fact that not everybody is going to use the media they're taxing for copying music, etc.), and how it makes the levy unfair. Whatever you do, don't make statements about good and evil, or corruption - it's a surefire way to get ignored. Just point out the flaws in the proposal, give concrete examples if you can when you do, and give your name, city, and province/territory.

Re:For those in Canada who wish to object...

[_Shorty-dammit]

we've been paying this tariff for years now, how can it possibly be in the proposal stage if it's already been collected all this time? I remember prices going up when it was introduced, though at the time it wasn't nearly as big of a chunk as it is now because prices back then were still fairly steep.

Re:For those in Canada who wish to object...

[Garwulf]

Regardless, the official document gives us sixty days to write in with an objection about it. So, if we are paying it now, perhaps we can get it scrapped if enough of us write in to complain about its flaws.

Discrimination

[Anonymous Coward]

This is discriminating against Deaf people who will not be buying CD-Rs to copy music.

Re:So this means copying onto these 'taxed' CDs is

[wmelnick]

Similarly, here in the US, we pay taxes to keep the police departments running, but this doesn't give us the right to commit crimes.

So you are comparing a CD to a policeman? The last time I checked, the police were doing a real job - a dangerous one that I wouldn't want to do myself.

This tax on the other hand is a penalty for which no crime has been proven, just assumed.

W

Re:Dumb Canadians...

[Lumpy]

Like anyone in America gives a fuck about their rights and how they are losing them.

I would but they label you as Un-Patriotic for thinking such things.

WTH

[Anonymous Coward]

this is a completely bogus tax.

most people who buy cds dont use them to copy music.
assuming such a thing is rediculous.

Can't Wait

[SomeOtherGuy]

I can't wait for a $16.99 (MPAA) tax on renting a DVD in America or going to the mvoies. At that point I am for sure going to burn a copy -- no matter if there is a nasty "skit" during the previews that discourages me to or not.

Can't let these crazy Canadians have all the taxable fun.

What I really love about this

[cdn-programmer]

What I really love about this is that the struggling recoding artists have to pay the levy to get blank CD's on which they record their own music for sale.

Having paid the levy it will eventually go to the record lables who refuse to sign them or have otherwise onerous contractual requirements.

It is just so wonderful to have a system that taxes the struggling artists and at the same time justifies it with a lie.

How Does That Song Go.....

[kid_oliva]

'Blame Canada' from Southpark seems appropiate here; because if their ludicrous government screws it up for everybody else (When the Supreme Court says we like what thier doing there over in Europe eventhough it goes against the Constitution), it will be WAR!!!

Re:How Does That Song Go.....

[PenGun]

Mwhahahah ... ludicrous government ... this from an American ... oh please ... I'm laughing so hard I may puke. Uhh ILSOHIMP as it were.

      PenGun
    Do What Now ??? ... Standards and Practices !

These Canadians

[Anonymous Coward]

are so european. Gosh, now they have a tax on blank CD's, just like us Spaniards!

We pay it and we love it.

j/k

They shot themselves in the foot on this

[Aurelfell]

When the CCB got this passed in the first place, they though they were protecting themselves. Then, a few years later, when they tried to convince the courts that download music was illegal under Canadian law, a judge ruled that if it was legal for the music industry to collect a levy for all recordable media sold, on the grounds that said media could potentially be used to record copyrighted music, it was also legal to download copyrighted music for personal use.

I suspect that this levy being re-introduced is essentially the music industry admitting defeat. They tried to stop the Internet from changing the world, and found that they could not, so they're settling for what little revenue they can reap from it.

It's for Celine Dion. Please think of the poor...

[frank_adrian314159]

... Celine Dion. Oh yeah... and Alanis Morissette, too. And Rush? OK, maybe the Guess Who still have a couple of compilation CD's. That should be it... But think of the poor Celine Dion!

Legal and illegal copying

[Gnavpot]

Even if I set aside the flawed logic, why does the music biz get it all? What about other businesses that are hurt by "copying".

I don't know about Canada, but here in Denmark the money is a compensation for legal copying.

We cannot legally copy software without consent from the copyright holder, and you can't put a "tax" on an illegal behaviour. So there is no compensation to the software industry. (Copying for backup purposes is allowed, but we cannot use the backup and the original simultaneously, so even with the most flawed logic, this legal copying do not represent a loss for the copyright holder.)

However, with some limitations, we can legally copy music without consent from the copyright holder. The music industry gets a compensation for this when we buy blank CDs. (The limitations are: Only copying within the household is allowed, we can only copy from an original, and we are not allowed to circumvent a copy protection. So with the increasing use of copy protection, the compensation ought to decrease, but there are no signs of that.)

The result of this is that the Danish music industry earns money from illegal copying of software. Scary thought.

Re:Legal and illegal copying

[fair_n_hite_451]

That's almost exactly the same situation here in Canada. It's been ruled that personal copying is "fair use". But that fair use costs the music industry money, so they get some back in the form of the blank media tax.
 
In the meantime, they do everything they can to restrict our fair use copying ... and yet never talk about removing the tax, nor willingly document how the money collected gets into the hands of the artists (who it's supposed to compensate for lost royalties, but who never see any of it, to the surprise of no one).

Re:Dumb Canadians...

[bill_mcgonigle]

Right. Like anyone in America gives a fuck about their rights and how they are losing them.

Why don't you? It's more effective to spend time lobbying your representatives than to try to convince the Slashdotter, many of whom reject the preemption model already.

(BTW, that's the answer to why we're in Iraq - strategic preemption - no matter how you feel about it at least recognize the strategy so you can lobby against it effectively)

Get the facts straight please

[CanadaRox]

Please go to the source and get the facts first. http://www.cb-cda.gc.ca/ For an interesting discussion on how this all works please go here http://neil.eton.ca/copylevy.shtml

I'll tell you what...

[cdrudge]

I'll tell you what. If you want to treat me like I'm a pirate who is just downloading/burning songs onto CDs left and right, the damnit I'm going to be a pirate downloading/burning songs onto CDs left and right. Argh.

Re:I'll tell you what...

[Anonymous Coward]

Argh.
Don't you mean Arrrrrr?

No, they sell them alright...

[Just Some Guy]

the music CDRs that nobody buys in America...

Try going into your typical non-expert electronics store; Best Buy will do nicely if you can stomach it. Now watch as Joe or Jane Sixpack walks in to buy a spindle of blanks for their kid. I'll bet they pick up the "audio" CD-Rs as often as the "data" CD-Rs - after all, they're planning to record audio to them, right? And they're more expensive, so they must be special, right?

I used to explain to people that they're more expensive because they're taxed, but gave up because people looked at me like I was insane. Maybe I'll try it next time without the goth makeup or kilt.

And in exchange...?

[Attila the Bun]

And in exchange, the Canadian customer gets .. what? The right to copy music CDs? Does that include copy-protected CDs?

The record industry is treating us like the suckers we are. The sooner bands start selling their music directly to their fans, the better for everybody. Presumably the record companies recognise that this will happen, and are therefore screwing us whilst they can.

Tax = permission to copy

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought this tax had been dropped because of the perception that it gave you implied permission to copy as much music as you want to.

Obviously, if you've already paid a tax on the blank media that anticipates that you will burn "illegal" copies of songs onto it, then the copies are now legit because you have paid the music industry for the right to do it. It is no longer possible for them to sue you.

Re:Dumb Canadians...

[renehollan]

Well, this Canadian prefers the U.S., warts, Bush, and all.

At least Bush, too, will, pass.

Can't say the same about attitudes in a place where most think it is O.K. that the government can prevent a person from paying a doctor to help them when they're sick, even when the Supreme Court says this is perfectly fine. Or a place where killing an armed intruder trying to rob your store gets you a murder charge that sticks.

bring it on

[pintomp3]

after i got an mp3 player that could hold my entire collection, i stopped burning cds. i am still on one of those huge spindles i bought back in the 50 for free after rebate days. i only really use cds to burn linux distros and stuff or to make bootable utility disks. most people who want a copy of some of my music ask for in in mp3 format anyway (thumbdrive). total cds burned in past 3 years is under 15.

Who really are the 'music industry'?

[Anonymous Coward]

At some point it makes no sense that one industry gets so much favor from governmental bodies to help fix its prices and insure its success. Is this something that happens to many industries? Because I worked in two family businesses and we never got jack squat from the government. All we did was pay them. Why can't the music industry follow the law of supply and demand? Digital technology changes the world. So adjust. I can understand that they've done a tremendous job of building value in a business that is as difficult to manage as herding cats, but sheesh, this is getting ridiculous. You have to start coming up with alternative explanations to explain all the government favor to this one industry. For example, is the government funding 'special' projects on the backs of the music industry? Who is really benefitting here? People just want the hear or play music and be happy. Musicians and people in the industry need to get paid, but the prices this industry has always been out of line in my opinion, and I've been thinking this since I was a kid in the mid 70's. How hard can any of this be?

Re:Dumb Canadians... (totally OT)

[Anonymous Coward]

We're still there because if we pulled out right now and let the Iraqi gov't collapse into shambles, it would only breed even more resentment than we already have.

Does this mean...

[PhunkySchtuff]

Does this mean that, as you're paying to burn copyrighted music, that you are now allowed to buy all the blank media you can, and burn all the copyrighted music that you can?
If you're paying for the privilege then they can't turn around and say that it's illegal - they've legitimised it by making you pay for it...

Re:Does this mean...

[sinewalker]

That is my take too. I encourage RIAA (or Canada's equiv') to legislate themselves out of business. It would suit them right.

What I wanna know is ...

[jc42]

... as much as 70 percent of the purchase price now heading directly to the music industry.

How much of it ends up in the hands of the recording artists? I'm betting it's a lot less than 70%, probably around 1%.

But I could be an optimist here ...

Re:What I wanna know is ...

[EmagGeek]

I think you are indeed an optimist here.

Re: Cheap CD's

[PCeye]

So true. It is amazing how often the Cdn border officers ask,

1. Where you've been?
2. How much are you bringing back

This always makes me think...
3. ???
4. Profit

The mods, and you, are on crack

[freeweed]

Your links consisted of 2 CD spindles, each of which end up costing $60/200 blank CDs. Which is what the parent said: a current Future Shop deal of 200 blank CD-Rs from HP, which retails for $59.99.

The levy is here, it's real, and it's by far the biggest cost of blank CDs in Canada.

It's also a load.

Re:The mods, and you, are on crack

[brunes69]

I am not arguing the levys existance. I am arguing it's impact. The parent says *100* discs is that much, not 200. Big difference. And also around boxing day I could get 200 for 25 bucks. So I question it actually costing 21 cents a disc, No retailer could make a profit at that amount. Andif you actually look at the act instead of just blindly believing the poster, you will see it doesn't specify the levy amount anywhere.

Scale, dude, scale.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sir, have you ever driven more than a mile? If so, you've used more than your share of tax-funded services by your definition of fair. Major roadways cost in the millions per mile to build. The average middle-class citizen only makes about a couple million or so dollars in their life. Yes, your taxes go to pay for programs you don't use but the taxes you and the other private citizens pay only cover a small fraction of the total cost of governance. 5% pay for 90% or so. So, if all private citizens combined only pay for 10% of the total taxes, either kindly stop driving on my company's roads or play nicely with the other kids. We pay fewer taxes than any other major industrialized nation's citizens. Just remember that there's a scale on which you and your yearly taxes fall and it ain't on the high end.

Re:Scale, dude, scale.

[khallow]

Sir, have you ever driven more than a mile?

This is not in the least a usable argument. Unless the original poster drives a lot (in particular, if they are a taxi or truck driver), then their contribution to road use isn't significant and they probably are paying their fair share. And through gasoline taxes, probably everyone is paying fairly for road use.

Second, just because "we" (I assume you mean US citizens) pay less taxes than other countries, doesn't mean that we can't cut more. For example, there's little justification for farm subsidies. And a big share of the US budget is the transfer of money via Social Security and other entitlement programs.

Incidentally, since I veered onto my current favorite flame-bait subject here, I loathe programs that force people to become involved. Ie, just because I have to pay Social Security doesn't mean that I want to use the services of Social Security.

The good ole days

[Cervantes]

I remember when this tax first came out, I went into London Drugs to buy some CDRs, walked up to them with the counter, and the guy said "Are you using these for music or data?"... I said "What's the diff?"... and he said "Well, if you're using them for music, we have to charge this new levy, otherwise we don't. Apart from that it's the same. So, I know you're not using them for music, but I have to ask all the same, I have to give you the opportunity to say 'no'... which you, of course, will, because you look neither obscenely wealthy nor notably stupid."

I don't think they quite understood the letter of the law, but their interpretation of the spirit of it, and their interestingly linguistic way around it, was quite entertaining.

We Need A Tax On Cars...

[Light Shade]

I think we need to have a tax on cars, too. Someone may use them to rob a home, business, or bank...but we'll only give the collected taxes to the banks cause that is what passes for logic these days.

Re:We Need A Tax On Cars...

[EmagGeek]

Cars are also used to listen to MPAA content without paying for it!!! There MUST be an immediate tax on cars to compensate artists (hah, we all know it's the publisher who gets all of the money) for this stolen music!!

I don't see how this even matters anymore.

[vapid transit]

Given the proliferation of MP3 players and portable media like flash drives, the notion of carrying music files around on a little plastic disc is getting more and more silly with each passing year. I think the law sucks...it's blatently designed to squeeze more money out of consumers but it's not going to do a damn thing to slow illegal music sharing.

Re:I don't see how this even matters anymore.

[Light Shade]

The more they get away with putting taxes like this into effect, the more likely they'll be able to get away with adding similar taxes on all kinds of products like our MP3 Players, Flash Cards, Etc...

Dumb Americans

[RelliK]

Your CDs are being taxed just like in Canada. Except that you don't even get the right to copy with that -- so the tax is pure profit for the record labels. Now you'd better start protesting.

What's that? All talk and no action? How typical...

So does this leagalize piracy?

[Stinky Fartface]

If you are being legally charged for piracy, then wouldn't logic follow that the Canadian government has endorsed piracy as legal behavior? I would think this is fantastic news actually. If I took 70% of the price of a blank CD-R that wouldn't actually buy me much music. But I could fit hundreds of pirated MP3's on a single CD-R. What a bargin! Is one required to purchase CD-R's to take advantage of legal piracy? I can't wait till this one comes to the US!

Canadian recording levy legalizes internet piracy

[Anonymous Coward]

A couple of points that I didnt see brought up about the canadian blank media levy, there are two different amounts that is chargable depending on if you are buying "music" CD's or "data" CD's, of course the music CD levy is much more than the data CD levy. Having this levy basically does away with most copyright infringement cases when it comes to music, it is legal for me as a canadian to download music from the internet and burn it to a blank CD, I have not violated any copyright law by doing so.

If you are a software company and buy alot of blank media, you can apply for an exemption number, I think it is about $50/year to maintain the exemption, then you can buy blank media from distributors and not be charged the levy.

As an individual you can import CD's from the US and are not subject to paying the levy, unless you try to sell those CD's then as an importer of blank media you must charge the levy to your customers.

The really funny part about this the renewing of the Blank CD media levy , if you have tried to buy blank CD's lately you will know how hard it is to find a good selection of blank CD media, everything is now DVD. I dont think we will see blank CD's sold in bulk packaging for much longer.

All taxes are out of hand

[$criptah]

All taxes are out of hand... In the United States you get penalized if you make more money or chose to invest, in Norway you get a shaft if you like to spend a lot and in Canada, you have to pay extra for CD-Rs.

In order to fix this sytem, one approach is not going to be enough. We need to limit the power of the government and the power of the corporate world if we want to survive. Otherwise, we will soon give up our first-born boys... You know, boys cause trouble and all of that :)

school tax

[Anonymous Coward]

But those of us who choose not to have kids at all, we can't get our (school) taxes back. It's incredibly frustrating.

I assume that you went to school?

That's what you're paying for.

no-audio media?

[FlippyTheSkillsaw]

I have no idea what the format of the CDR media or filesystem is, but I can imagine that there's a bit somewhere at the beginning telling the CD what it is. I know there are about 4 data types and at least 1 audio type.

Call me a bastard, but I would pay the same amount for a data-only CD that donated part of the money to something like the EFF instead of taking it as a tax.

Someone could really bank on this, though, if it were possible. Even if it were possible to just not allow one of the bits to be set that would disallow audio recordings to the CD. As long as the data CD works to store data, preferably in a mode that allows multisession data.

In that case, it can only count as a data CD, and no music industry can argue that. Unless, of course, they start taxing per GB on hard disks, too.

Someone could really bank off this if they could get it to work. Call them Music Industry Free CDs.

Again with the silly idea

[AnotherBlackHat]

First a mirror; http://www.mirrordot.org/stories/6313facd6836dbf60 e15be4aeeb17c69/index.html

I suppose the answer is to buy CDRW instead of CD-R.
But I think the blank media producers should go further than that.
They should pick a song and record it on their CD-RW.
This would have several benifical effects:
It avoids the levy.
The song would almost certainly be a #1 seller, potentially, the title could be for sale to the highest bidder.
It makes them a music publisher, which means they get a cut of the sales of their competitors.

Private copying exemption...

[Hamster Lover]

We pay the levy in Canada because there is a private copying exemption for audio works (not video) in our copyright law. The Canadian Private Copying Collective was created to regulate the levy as it applies to recordable media and see that royalties are paid to rights holders for private copying.

As I understand it, the CPCC meets every year to decide the coming year's levies, but they are free to set the levy for the next two years if they wish.

That's it.

Re:Private copying exemption...

[Raenex]

Government interference at its worst. Screw you, Canada.

Re:Private copying exemption...

[triso]

Government interference at its worst. Screw you, Canada.

Actually, it's not that bad. AFAIK file sharing is still legal in Canada, mostly due to this levy on blank CDs.

Re:Does the tax on blank media constitute permissi

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes.

In Canada, it is perfectly legal to get all of your friends 2000 CDs take them home and rip them onto your computer or iPod. It is not legal to then make a copy of the copy and give that to a third person. The record industry hates this, but that is the deal they signed onto. The blank tax is supposed to pay for copying.

--knobsturner

Re:Dumb Canadians...

[John Whitley]

Right. Like anyone in America gives a fuck about their rights and how they are losing them.

That's why an informed electorate is the lifeblood of democracy. More Americans might care, if they even had a clue what was going on or what was at stake. On just one area: How many people, left to their own devices, have the time, energy, and wherewithal to figure out the differences between trademarks vs. patents vs. copyright vs. trade secrets vs. the fiction of "intellectual property"? How many would then make the leap to form opinions and understand the changes that our government has made the last decade on issues such as the public domain, fair use, reverse engineering, patent proliferation, and so on? And after that successfully influence public policy on any matter?

If left to do their own footwork, precious few would make it past even the earliest hurdles. In and old and romantic theory, journalists serve as the advocates for the people, identifying and reporting on issues that impact the people and the public domain. There are some that still do this work, but the conflicts of interest in news media are staggering. More than distortion in news that's written, there's the story of what news stories are told and (more importantly) what aren't.

Now expand the problem from the limited scope of information rights issues to the vast panoply of domestic and international public policy issues... it's downright overwhelming. Especially considering that the few who truly get informed and become activists must combat the power of monied special interest lobbies.

It's certainly possible and worthwhile to become an informed citizen, but it takes work, and the skill to discriminate between poor and reliable news sources. Worse, going through this process challenges the comfortable platitudes dished out by the media and the major political parties. There's that choice of red pill vs. blue pill again -- stay within the comfortable zone of information control, or wake up and smell reality.

Re:Dumb Canadians...

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody batted an eye, eh? I suppose you heard about these things by doing extensive research into them, interviewing high-level government officials personally? Or, did you hear about them from the outraged exclamations of (just under) half of the americans, who are indeed quite pissed off?

Re:Dumb Canadians...

[Anonymous Coward]

You are.

United States Public Law 102-563
Audio Home Recording Act of 1992

http://www.brouhaha.com/~eric/bad_laws/ahra.html

Canadians Ought to be Used to high Taxes

[Anonymous Coward]

In a socialist state such as the PRC (People's Republic of Canada), the wealth is redistributed from those who have it (young adults in Calgary buying CDR media) to those who don't (music industry executives in Los Angles). So what's wrong with this?

Re:Canadians Ought to be Used to high Taxes

[renehollan]

...PRC (People's Republic of Canada)...

You got the name of the place wrong, it's "Soviet Canuckistan".

Re:Canadians Ought to be Used to high Taxes

[udowish]

looks like another jealous yankee doodle

Out of Hand

[VonKruel]

It's really another example of the Canadian gov't showing the world what it's best at: taxing the shit out of its people :-)

It's obvious to any thinking person that the tax is both unfair and stupid. Unfortunately the law makers who are imposing it have suffered brain death, and everyone has just been too nice to tell them... We'll pay the tax of course just like the bitches we are. I admit that outside of griping, voting, signing the occasional online petition, I don't do much to actually "reach out" to those in power to make myself heard. So I'm a very typical Canadian in this regard :-) My general attitude is that I will vote for the guy who has the least amount of plans for my money.

Re:Out of Hand

[justthinkit]

It's really another example of the Canadian gov't showing the world what it's best at: taxing the shit out of its people :-) Ain't that the truth, brother.

Montreal CD party?

[Pinback]

You either need to stage a Boston Tea Party, or wrangle a Cheney hunting trip invite for the responsible Canadian.

Tax CDs huh? Hey wassat? Blam!

Yes you can

[nuggz]

Actually you can download mp3's (court ruling I don't have the link)

And you can copy someones CD for personal use (Copyright law)
http://www.cb-cda.gc.ca/info/act-e.html#rid-33770

Bastards...

[rm69990]

So, I pay the RIAA when I buy blank media, then I pay em again when I pay for my music online to burn it to disc. Double dipping bastards...

Happens in Sweden too...

[Jugalator]

And that's why I now just purchase in bulk mostly from Germany.
(because there's a decent online store shipping here there)

It doesn't suck too much for me, but it sure sucks for Swedish companies.

It's their problem and issue to take with our government though. Hopefully they have more money than me to handle these things. I just can't understand how they can introduce such an obviously bad and anti-competitive idea for our business in this area. Do they believe we can only purchase disks from our own country??

I support a tax on blank CDs...

[jonwil]

BUT only if industries other than the music industry get their cut too (What about all the people with pirated movies, games, ebooks, software and so on on their blank CDs?)
AND if everyone whos copyright is being violated gets their cut for said violations

Re:Dumb Canadians...

[Silkejr]

Sad but true. Us Americans take for granted that which our forefathers gave their lives to protect.

Re:Dumb Canadians...

[Anonymous Coward]

Alright then stupid, start doing more than just batting eyes.

If just under half of Americans are indeed quite pissed off, it's time to get noticed, because what you're doing so far isn't working!

You're still in Iraq, e-voting fraud could still happen, you're still following the Global Village Idiot around and anoyone who questions the administration is unpatroitic, and you're still losing your rights.

Your "just under fifty percent" ain't doing shit, and I don't need to interview anyone to see that.

Re:Dumb Canadians...

[yndrd1984]

most think it is O.K. that the government can prevent a person from paying a doctor to help them when they're sick

It's not just enought to give food to those that can't afford it.
It's not just enought to give food to everyone that wants it.
It's not just enought to give food to everyone, no matter what.
We have to give food to everyone, and keep them from any alternative.
Because if they could buy food, some would have better food than others.

Is that about right?

And old people win!

[brickballs]

This is great - now when old people up there to buy perscription drugs, they can make up for the trouble by selling cheep blank cd's! its perfect!

Who decides who gets the revenue?

[Baldrson]

There is a fundamental problem with charging for content this way:

Who decides who gets the revenue from the tax, and how do they decide it?

Re:Who decides who gets the revenue?

[ratboy666]

And why should *I* care. If I want a slice, I would register with the appropriate people and ask for my slice. There was lobbying for this levy, and the gov ("the people") said "Sure, is this ok?". Lobby says "yeah, we like it". Its now law. Anyway, its not a tax, its a levy.

As far as I am concerned, it is a good thing. Others can argue out the backend, and I get the benefit of personal copying.

Ratboy

Re:Dumb Canadians...

[RajivSLK]

Or a place where killing an armed intruder trying to rob your store gets you a murder charge that sticks.

No -- here you can protect your property with force. That is if you simply see someone trying to steal your stuff you and your buddies can chase him down and stop him. If you see an armed robber attempting to take your property you can legally shoot him. Read the criminal code and know your rights, specifically the following section: (http://laws.justice.gc.ca/en/C-46/text.html)

27. Every one is justified in using as much force as is reasonably necessary

(a) to prevent the commission of an offence

(i) for which, if it were committed, the person who committed it might be arrested without warrant, and

(ii) that would be likely to cause immediate and serious injury to the person or property of anyone; or

(b) to prevent anything being done that, on reasonable grounds, he believes would, if it were done, be an offence mentioned in paragraph (a).

Huh?

[Hamster Lover]

So, you think a regulatory framework where I can copy as much as I want but I am charged a small fee for the cost of the materials to do so that is then distrubuted to artists to offset any loss is government interference? You'd rather have doors kicked in, servers confiscated, torrent sites sued and Grandma and Grandpa worried about their internet use than the peace of mind of 59 cents a blank CD? Well, you can have it. Thanks.

Re:Huh?

[Raenex]

So, you think a regulatory framework where I can copy as much as I want but I am charged a small fee for the cost of the materials to do so that is then distrubuted to artists to offset any loss is government interference?

Yes, I do. Instead of charging people directly for stuff, you come up with a horrible, indirect tax, and then the government doles out the money as it sees fit. You don't need blank CDs to download music, and you can use blank media for stuff besides copying songs. With all the online stores to buy songs from, there's no excuse for people using P2P for copyrighted songs. I used to use Napster before Itunes came out. I was happy to pay $1 per song.

*cough* Dumb Americans *cough*

[__aaclcg7560]

I guess no one around here has a sense of humor. Instead of burning CDs on laptops in front of Congress, maybe people should just burn them the old way... gas and fire. :P

Who needs blanks anyway?

[WRoach]

Seriously, getting the levy back to compensate the music industry is utterly stupid now that everyone has portable music players. What are disks (CDs are dead...or will soon be) used for nowaday if not for legit file backup purposes? It's been ages since I've had a mp3 on a CD...

A levy a day keeps CRIAA away..

[Philodoxx]

I haven't found a single comment pointing out one of the best things that comes from our CD levy: the CRIAA has tried numerous times (and failed) to bring US style RIAA lawsuits against the people of the country. What is the justification for not allowing the lawsuits? The CRIAA is already reimbursed for any alleged piracy through this levy and as such they aren't entitled to any more money.

I find it hipocritical (in a general sense) that the slashdot commetns revolving around the RIAA suing grandmothers and small children ranges from disgust to condemnation; yet most of the comments on the Canadian system to avoid such lawsuits are calling it unnecessary.

The biggest change I would like to see is the inclusion of software vendors into the group of people that benefit from this.

its like 30 cents a CD for gods sake

[Maglos]

an extra few cents is hardly worth bitchen about.. i mean honestly how many CD's do you purchase. im sure i got my moneys worth just copying a couple things for my sister. not to mention all the great canadian music on cbc's pod cast.

Here you go.

[Inoshiro]

Go find your MP:
http://canada.gc.ca/directories/direct_e.html

Bitch them out.

I'm confused! CDs crashing into the Pentagon?

[aqk]

What happened?
You mean they NEVER found any traces of taxable CDs after they crashed into the Pentagon?
And is it true the remnants of that 1947 crash into the Empire State building survived only because they were vilyl and were travelling at 33 rpm?
/. is getting a tad too arcane for my tastes...!

Not to mention all the'se pe'sky apo'strophic punctuation mark's that alway's litter the s'creen!
Just call me: Fish 'n' chip's.

If they accept payment from you,

[Anonymous Coward]

then they're giveing you the right to copy.

You just paid your licence.

Of course, I'm not a lawyer, I work for a living.

Re:Dumb Canadians...

[Anonymous Coward]

Like anyone in America gives a fuck about their rights

I do, and that's exactly why I plan to get out. I only hope I can do it before they make it illegal to leave the US. (Mark my words, they will, just as any welfare-warfare state eventually does.) Costa Rica looks like a nice option.

Uh, we DO have this in the US...

[msauve]

Copy all the CDs you want, legally!

17 USC, Chapter 10, Subchapter A, Section 1008 specifically states:
No action may be brought under this title alleging infringement of copyright based on the manufacture, importation, or distribution of a digital audio recording device, a digital audio recording medium, an analog recording device, or an analog recording medium, or based on the noncommercial use by a consumer of such a device or medium for making digital musical recordings or analog musical recordings.

Section 1001 defines a "digital audio recording medium" to be:
any material object in a form commonly distributed for use by individuals, that is primarily marketed or most commonly used by consumers for the purpose of making digital audio copied recordings by use of a digital audio recording device.

In more common language, this refers to audio/music CD-R discs, which are made to work in digital audio recorders. These discs are different from the more common data CD-Rs, in that they contain special digital markings (standard data CD-Rs won't work in digital audio recorders). In addition, by law a royalty has been paid on this blank media. These royalty payments are in turn distributed to copyright holders (see Section 1006 of the law cited above). They usually cost slightly more than data CD-R discs, but they can be found for less than $0.50 each.

So go ahead, make copies onto music/audio CD-R discs, even give copies to your friends. You can do so legally and without any moral problems - you've paid for the right to do so. (And the RIAA fought for this law. Thanks, RIAA!)
Note, too the "based on the...use" clause, which IMHO also legitimizes sharing/downloading MP3 or other audio files, provided you make use of an audio CD-R by burning those files onto it or sharing those files off of it.

Re:Dumb Canadians...

[Anonymous Coward]

ZOMG! A country where killing someone gets you a murder charge! WTF!!!11!1oneone!1

You should be able to sign up and get a cut....

[Joce640k]

As a music creator you should be able to sign up for a cut of the profits.

Re:You should be able to sign up and get a cut....

[tokabola]

You only get a cut if you join the CRIAA. Also, at least in the US, if someone put his band's disc in a jukebox, the various "musician's guilds" like ASCAP and BMI will collect a "tax" and he won't get any of that unless he joins (and pays hundreds of dollars in dues) each organization. Even then, since payments are distributed according to popularity (as measured by record sales and radio play) he probably still won't get anything. I imagine (but don't know) that the criaa distributes it's ill-gotten booty by a similar scheme.

What kind of laws?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe they'll start making ludicrous laws punishing canadians who can't spell instead of punishing everyone who buys blank CDs. TheStonepedo

Re:Dumb Canadians...

[renehollan]

Tell that to the Toronto shopkeeper who got jailed after shooting at three armed thieves, one of whom died by bleeding to death in an ally.

Re:Dumb Canadians...

[renehollan]

So, you'd be fine if I broke into your shop, and started killing people, and trained my gun on you?

You wouldn't think to shoot back?

Of course not! After all, I'd get slapped with a murder charge! The fact that you'd be dead wouldn't matter.

All I can say, is "stoopid dumbfuck canuck".