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

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.