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Canadian Copyright Group Wants iPod Tax
soulxtc writes "Unable to define memory as a 'recording medium,' Canada's Private Copyright Collective goes directly after portable music player devices, memory cards, and anything else that can be used to make private copies. The PCC submitted a proposal to the country's Copyright Board that suggests levies of $5 (Canadian) on devices with up to 1GB of memory, $25 for 1-10 GB, $50 for 10-30 GB, and $75 for over 30 GB. If approved, this propoal would increase the price of a 30-GB iPod by 26%. These collections are intended to compensate artists and labels for the losses they suffer when people 'illegally' copy or transfer music. The PCC is also seeking a new $2 to $10 tax on memory cards. The backbone of digital photography has become tangled up in the fight for making sure music companies get every nickel and dime they feel that they deserve."
Is have a true sliding scale. Under that pricing scheme, the 1gb ipod has a $5 tax, while the 2gb model has a $25 tax rather than $10. Sheesh.
So, this means that I get to download anything I want while in Canada free of guilt and cost... right?
It's good to know that the record industry in the US aren't the only thugs in the business. Yeah, let's just assume everyone is a crook and charge them up front! The greed of these fuckers is absolutely endless.
Is anybody else up for a Canadian Tea Party?
Do they want me to stop buying music? If I am going to be charged for buying a new iPod, I should be able to download at least as much music as it costs for the fee right? If they are going to accuse people of being thieves, then I suppose they have no choice but to stop buying music completely and just pirate it. Way to go CRIAA. Have fun with bankruptcy.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
... state-sanctioned anal penetration!
Friends, we should rejoice, for it is quite clear that we live in exciting and progressive times.
Is the fee you currently pay on blank CDs considered a license to burn whatever you want?
Literalism isn't a form of humor, it's you being irritating.
Someone tell me again how Canada is better than USA... I keep forgetting when I read things like this.
There goes my karma...
"No freeman shall ever be debarred the use of arms." -- Thomas Jefferson
Would they do the same for all HDDs? I mean... thats all an iPod is. Does this mean they could also tax SD, CF, or anything else? This is absurd.
Canadians just like their taxes I suppose.
How much of this would get to the artist in question anyways?
Eventually, if this tax is approved, the entire weight of the tax is going to shifted onto the consumers. Why must the consumers be punished by the same people they're purchasing music from? And people wonder why I never listen to/buy new music these days.
These collections are intended to compensate artists and labels for the losses they suffer when people 'illegally' copy or transfer music
No, they're not. They're intended to set up yet another cash cow for large recording companies, irrespective of whether individuals put legal or illegal copies of music on their recording devices.
And no, they're not intended to supplement the compensation of artists, regardless.
Geez, that was easy to translate. The recording companies don't even try to hide their intentions behind competent PR any more.
Kythe
Yeah! Let's add even more cost to music! I'm sure our totally loyal customers won't care! I mean, our sales haven't been decreasing at all lately, so this couldn't add to any problems we might have!!
I know musicians who can reproduce a musical score after only one hearing. Are we going to find a way to control them? What's more - they have virtually limitless memory.
Someone call someone before the fabric of society is torn!
Levies get shot down entirely, music industry goes and sits on their thumbs. Why should I pay SOCCAN [or whatever] money for DVD-Rs that I use to backup my HD with?
Or they pass this and add to the madness that is corporate greed. Cuz you know not one dime will go to indy arties.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Hah! My paper tape player will be exempt from this money grab!
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
this is BULLSHIT.
To the Canadians: please, PLEASE help out your neighbors down south and oppose this proposal before our infernal RIAA decides it would be a good idea to pay off some Congress-critter to tack it onto another "defence-related" bill.
Legalize it.
memory cards are the backbone of digital photography and they want to add $2-$10 to them.
Tarring and feathering some music execs instead?
"The PCC is also seeking a new $2 to $10 tax on memory cards. The backbone of digital photography has become tangled up in the fight for making sure music companies get every nickel and dime they feel that they deserve."
I know it's too much to expect people to read the articles linked here, but could you at least read the entire summary?
The PCC is also seeking a new $2 to $10 tax on memory cards. The backbone of digital photography has become tangled up in the fight for making sure music companies get every nickel and dime they feel that they deserve."
...considering that you could fit maybe 250 128 bps mp3's on a 1 GB iPod (that comes to about $.02 per song), I guess we know now how much people should be penalized for illegal music sharing.
Kythe
What will they do when we learn to pirate iPods? HA! What then RIAA??
Could this be a response to last week's news regarding the amount of movie bootlegs coming out of Canada or should this be considered totally unrelated?
"Just a fox, a whisper."
I guess that should have been 128 kbps.
Kythe
Times have changed
Our kids are getting worse
They won't obey their parents
They just want to fart and curse!
Should we blame the government?
Or blame society?
Or should we blame the loss on pirac(eeee)?
No...
No, really. Pay the $5, $25, $50 whatever on your ipod. Then, DOWNLOAD EVERYTHING and put it all on there. If anyone tries to sue you, tell them to STFU because you've paid for it.
Write your Mp about this and explain to him that he/she was not elected so that they could enact a 'tax' that by definition makes both Them and you a criminal.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
They've also been sounding out the idea of a levy on hard drives.
My brother is a full-time professional musician in Alberta, and has been now for about 20 years. It's not an easy job, but it's his love and his passion.
He's now been an artist on about six albums over the years, one of which was nominated for a Juno. Why, pray tell, has he not gotten a single bloody cent from this tariff?
If I didn't know better, I'd almost believe that the point of it isn't actually to reward the musicians! But of course, that's just crazy talk.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
First off they tax me every time I burn a Linux ISO to a cd....not they have the balls to suggest that when I record something of my own to a media player or whatever then I should pay the "already subsidized" so called Canadian artists for the ability to record anything! As Bugs says "you realize this means war?" If they get away with this nonsense I am going to pirate copies of Terry Jacks and Edward Bear and Celine and give them away for free...just for vengeance. I have never pirated anything and yet wind up being assumed guilty. If the recording industry does not smarten up there are many who will just stop buying content period. I have a large collection of legally purchased cd's but will completely stop supporting the industry if this idiotic tax becomes law!
Actually, that's basically what it is. It's the same thing for blank CD's over here too. We pay a tax on them and in return they agree not to sue us.
The members of the RIAA and the Canadian equivalent will be the first against the wall when the revolution comes.
Ah, fuck it. Why wait for a revolution? Everybody get your guns and we'll meet down at the bar to plan our attack on these useless leeches.
-- Will program for bandwidth
The Private Copying Levy is what lets me download with impunity in Canada. The dollars may or may not actually get to the artists (google away on this one), but it certainly does facilitate my p2p activities.
n t/task,view/id,1200/Itemid,85/nsub,/
I don't know who the 'Private Copyright Collective' is, but this position is at odds with what we've been hearing about the Canadian Recording Industry Association's position - last heard as wanting to do away with the levy:
http://michaelgeist.ca/component/option,com_conte
I think this is an interesting tactic: collect levy at the front end, squeeze the availability of material via p2p networks through increased DRM on released materials.
Quite honestly, I don't really notice the levy at my pocketbook, and it does make for an entirely different legal landscape for p2p downloading. Michael Geist is the Guy in the Know about this landscape in Canada - check out his blog at the address above, there's reams of material there.
[17] Leary, T., White, C., Wood, P. R., Bhabha, W. D., and Wirth, N. Lambda calculus considered harmful. In Proceedings
If you're going to tax anything with the potential to store music, why not start an electricity tax while you're at it? Pirates need electricity to run their computers and download, why not charge every person in Canada who uses electricity an extra 30 or 40 a month and give it to the recording industry? I mean...seriously...
Thank goodness things are still semi-sane here in the US.
If they think this is a good deal, then why not make it part of a package when one buys an iPod? Spend an additional $5 for your 1GB iPod, and you get a contract that says you can download as much cartel music as you want, from any source, to that device.
For people who want to go the iTunes route, they could simply turn down the contract.
Sigh. Something tells me the fact that they're trying to legislate this means they wouldn't go for my idea. Not enough free money in it for them, I'm guessing.
Kythe
There's currently something like this on blank CD's, right? How much money has it raised and where exactly has that money been distributed? How do you even work out fairly who it would go to? Does any artist actually see a single cent from this scheme?
How do I contact the organizations making these proposals? I want to give them a piece of my mind, namely to tell them they can't have it both ways:
1) Make unauthorized copying illegal.
2) Charge me for it.
Do they want a compulsory licensing scheme, as has been proposed by The Register, or do they want people to pay for each copy of music they purchase.
They should make up their damn minds, because they can't have their cake and eat it too.
This space left intentionally blank.
I have a better question: If this becomes Canadian law, does that mean that Apple's iTMS and other MP3 stores start providing their content free to Canadian individuals, but start charging the labels/artists per song?
Eat the Path.
Cool, so we can just turn any relevant parts of an article into "..." and then complain about the story, right? OK, let me give it a shot:
"The PCC submitted a proposal to the country's Copyright Board that suggests levies of....$75 for...a...music...c...d"
OK, now let me try to work up some outrage to go along with it:
This article is a joke. The $75 levy wasn't for music CD's...it was for >30GB iPods. The story is inaccurate, and the submitter is an idiot.
There, how'd I do?
Seems like local versions of these interest groups in other countries, are lobbying for similar taxes. sometimes they get away with it, sometimes they don't. The all have the same thing in common that they lack any form of PR skills. :)
D =175201
There have been a game going on for years here in Europe, fx in Denmark the price of a blank CD or DVD were at one point 5-10 times higher than the same product in Germany. So of course people would just buy a spindle when on vacation og ordering it on the internet and save a lot of money. I believe that the price today still is like 3 times higher in DK. about 1$ for 1 DVD.
Example in Danish and Kr. http://www.edbpriser.dk/Products/Listprices.asp?I
(se) eq. online shop in Sweden. (de) eq. shop in Germany. fragt=delivery, pris=price, total=price incl. delivery.
The shop in the bottom are a local/national shop, hence the 3x price.
So all they gained from the tax was that everyone who aren't stupid, are buying their media in bulk from abroad. and then they get 0%. Even when I bought a DVD burner in a store they advised me not to buy the DVDs in their shop(they also only had small selection even tough it was a huge store), but order them online from Germany instead.
In that case I'll just buy my memory in the United States, but continue to download in Canada ;)
But on a more serious note, wouldn't this suggest to the public that downloading is actually acceptable since they are truly paying for it when they pay for such a device?
120 Days, 12000 Kilometers, 2 Wheels - Alaska to Panama for Charity - www.CyclingForACause.com
Actually, it only makes sense. DRM etc won't stop downloading so the companies may as well get something. This is all cool provided two things: the first is that the artists actually get the cash, and the second is that this set of numbers is only a start position for negotiations. Properly done, this can be quite a decent solution for all involved.
And yes, then you can continue to download guilt free.
soon enough we'll be paying a tax on hard drives because of this nonsense. I say fuck this noise. No agency has a right to charge me a tax on something I may not use for music, or if it does get used for music, it's MY music. Charging me for using my own property in my own way is just fucked up.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
We (the people who have to pay this tax) get paid back .50 for each song that we buy (be it digital download or off of a CD) due to the fact that RIAA and Canadian equivelent are stealing from us due to overpriced crappy products.
Oh, as to assuming that we're all stealing, I would now presume that we have a reason for a class action libel lawsuit due to the fact that they are essentially calling everyone on the North American continent thieves. I assume that not all of us are, and should stand up to these people who think they can get away with spreading lies.
Who is general failure, and why is he reading my hard drive?
that the recording industries believe that all they have to to do make money is to make more laws?
Why don't they try something novel like oh.... selling a product to us?
I say we pass a law that everyone that buys a crowbar has to pay me a nickel, to make up for the losses I incur every time someone breaks into my house. ya.
Idiots. No, I take that back. By saying that I'm just insulting the idots and that's not fair for even them.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
I always did find "innocent before proven guilty" to be rather ineffective. Why not just calculate the average of criminal activity among the whole population, and incarcerate each person for the amount of time found in the result? Think of the money that could be saved when the courts are closed down.
All hail the FLIP FLOP TAX
Give a welfare bum a handout and all they want is more. Actually, they bang their fists on the table and demand it.
Dear RIAA,
My buisness "********" is suffering from lack of profits due to your tax.
I believe my sales would be higher if my prices were lower without your taxation.
Therefore, I demand that you pay me $225,000.00 for the loss of 3,000 iPod sales that I would made otherwise.
Thank you.
I feel I will be horribly wronged by your citizens. Please have each of them pay me $5. Or $10 if their name contains the letter J.
They asked for this last time too and it was denied with good reasons.
Every song on my iPod is paid for. Why should I be additionally taxed?
Not that anyone cares, but here's the poll in question.
Here's the one for the canadian court decision.
And here's the iPod tax.
For each 700mb cd-rw, the levy is 30 cents.
A 30gb ipod has 30000mb-
30000mb/700mb = 42.9 cdrs
42.9 cdrs x 30 cents = 1286 cents = 12.86 dollars
The association better have a very good reason why they want to charge for than 3x for the ipod compared to cd-rws.
Also, why stop with ipod? I can record information on harddrives too! Let's see, a typically hard drive in a computer has 250 gb. Obviously, if a 30gb ipod costs $40, a 250gb computer should cost (250/40) x $40 = $240! We all know computers are the main source of illegally downloaded mp3!
I agree that these taxes are ridiculous - $75 being quite a hefty price increase - however, if this is a replacement for record companies suing random 12 year olds for $5000, I can't say it's totally bad.
You chould slide your purchases from companies on this list down to zero:
http://cpcc.ca/english/sourcing.htm
Shouldn't every content provider / IP holder who's content could potentially be recorded onto these types of media get a cut of the money? It would be a great crutch for talentless hacks to still make money without worry. In fact, I think manufacturers of bags/backpacks/luggage etc. should be taxed because their products could possibly be used in robberies.
Deltron 3030 - Virus (music video)
Paper could be used to reproduce copyrighted works. A 7x11 sheet can surely be taxed as capable of holding up to 1GB of data.
"Making files available on the web is brodcasting"
Americans don't seem to grok that one. "Sharing" to them extends to handing out a copy to every resident of the planet.
Comes WITHOUT storage.
You then go buy your flash / hard drive and install yourself - or better yet - the Apple store sells the drive / flash separately, and installs it for you.
Who is general failure, and why is he reading my hard drive?
A few years ago some countries in Europe adopted a similar taxing on media-carriers and media. The problem is that not a single musician or even a record label sees any of the money. The state forwards it to this 'non-profit' organization and recently a 'scandal' quickly buried by the media came out that actually in over 3 years, millions of euros have been collected and none have been paid out. It also came out that the employees of this 'non-profit' organization (similar to RIAA) had salary's exceeding 250k/year.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
I think the suppliers of blank media make a greater contribution to the economy and the tax base - and really shouldn't be victimised because some loud tax dodgers with good lobbyists want a special tax to feed themselves and drain from another portion of the economy.
Goverments are not supposed to be fee collectors for private companies - they are supposed to work in the interest of their nations.
Over here people are buying blancs from Germany as well and of course there have been complaints about it. As far as I know they tried to go after the bigger buyers but that didn't work.
t ing (in dutch though)
One thing's for sure, the organisation that took possession of blancs sold them to other parties when they should have auctioned them off by law. (seems a court case will follow)
http://tweakers.net/nieuws/45491/?highlight=belas
And then one organisation singlehandedly put a 0 euro levvy on mp3 players. Which didn't last long as the minister of Justice recalled it after other organisations complained that there had been no agreement made on a levvy.
home
What happens in 5 years? Is the scale the same so that a 1GB memory card is $5.10? The government isn't going to keep updating the law yearly. Eventually everything will have the maximum tax as memory capacity fully goes into the highest taxed end of the scale.
I believe for a while, there was an 'iPod tax' around. It actually taxed storage media used to primarily hold music, but well... it essentially was an iPod tax.
Oh yeah, Canada Quashes Copyright Tax on MP3 Players, which lead to Apple refunding the tax on iPods.
Can't seem to find the original article though...
I buy blank CDRs buy the 1000 at the moment. I have a duplicator for CDs.. but I'm not a pirate. We distribute original recorded material on CDs we burn and print on to ourselves. Yet they want to hit us with piracy taxes because apparently the only use for that many CDRs is for piracy.
I also use them in my photography business quite extensively as well as blank DVDs for giving out to clients, are they going to start hitting me with a fee for that too?
Not all bulk use of blank media is for pirating. And not all ipods are used for pirated music either. I unfortunately own a 30Gb ipod, it's alright to use to listen to music, but the main thing I use it for is to download photos from my digital SLR.. I'd rather carry an ipod with me out in the field than I would a laptop.
And I thought Australian taxes and copyright laws were backwards..
- paul
http://www.paulpichugin.com.au/
Pmp @ DeviantArt
But wait a second... maybe they're right. If I'm paying the... *AA cartels whenever I buy media, then... fair enough. The just have to stop collecting money from sales of CDs and downloads. They can probably estimate how much to recompense the artists by tallying up data from torrents et al, right?
Since the tax will be in Canadian money, it will only be around a $.05 USD tax... that isn't so bad.
And force them to put the tax revenue into an escrow account for Open Commons.
I've seen it before, but I've never quite understood how any government can be convinced to collect taxes for a non-government enterprise. Unless the government is now going to start producing, regulating or in some other way getting involved in the music industry, and intends to use the taxes to pursue that enterprise, why exactly would they collect taxes for it? -- I know it's slashdot but this is a serious question if anyone knows [seriously though - I know it's slashdot, but please refrain from the corruption/collusion arguments for at least 3 posts... ] [[no, seriously... ]]
Sorr I didn't dig deep enough.
Here's the Poll
Or if it goes to the "artists", how does one self-appointed "artists" get the benefit?
Is this a welfare system for all, or just poor mansion owning musicians?
The Ipod is actually a small computer, and can run linux. See the IpodLinux website. So if they can tax one computer, they can tax all. How much is your new PC with a 320 gig harddrive liable for?
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
Remind me again, what percentage of the population of Canada live with how many miles of the US border?
So it is time to contact your members of parliament and inquire about their intentions towards that aspect (if there are any), or simply brief them with the issues.
I'm glad they want an iPod tax everyone wants something... I want a winning lottery ticket but you don't see anyone opting to give me one do you?
Shadus
I've been wanting to test out the legal aspects of these levies for a while now. Technically speaking, if I make a copy of an audio CD's to a CD on which I've paid a levy, I'm not doing anything illegal since I've paid for the right to do that. So why not set up store in downtown Toronto, selling copied CD's and DVD's for $3-$4 a pop? I'm sure I'd get arrested sooner or later....but it would make for an interesting case. I'm REALLY tempted to give it a shot.
From the CPCC site:
10) Do the private copying provisions in the Copyright Act make peer-to-peer file trading on the Internet legal?
No. The Copyright Act states that it is not an infringement of copyright in a musical work, a performer's performance or a sound recording, for individuals to make a copy onto an "audio recording medium" for their own private use. However, it does not permit the sharing of those copies with millions of people through the Internet - private copies must, by definition, remain private. The payment of the private copying levy is also not a passport to steal the source material. "Copying" should not be confused with "gaining access" to the material to be copied. The fact that one is allowed to copy recorded performances of musical works does not mean that the original sound recordings themselves are suddenly free. As a result, the levy does not replace the need to obtain legally (for example, by buying it) the material to be copied.
Never quite understood how these levies/tariffs are distributed back to the artists.
... and then burn it all on a CD for my car driving pleasure ... how does the RIAA know how to distribute the funds to the starving artists in this case ?
... money from my pocket ends up in hers anyway ?
.. for a fee of course.
So say if I download a few songs from groups such as Blood-Axe, mix it up with a bit of psy-trance from Finland, and then round it out with some Pendulum
What, they dont ?
So you mean despite the efforts of the original muso's involved, plus my time to mix and burn the CD - they just end up writing out yet another cheque to Celine Dion for all of our collective efforts ?
Fuck No !
Ive never wanted to even to listen to Celine Dion. Not ever !
But when I step into an elevator, or pass through a shoe shop - there she is, singing in the background and generally ruining my day.
I dont want to listen to her, but yet she still gets royalties out of me when I make my own CD, or backup my harddisk ?
That is so totally around the wrong fucking way. Man - I should be PAID by Celine Dion instead as compensation for HAVING to listen to any of her music, which is clearly against my wishes. She infringes upon my personal aural liberty, and yet
That is just WRONG on so many levels.
Seriously - does ANYONE go the effort of actually downloading Celine Dion music and burning it on CD's Why ? So they can hold hands with their so-called 'friends' and dance around and be silly between glasses of cheap wine ?
What they should do is just stick to selling normal CD's and iPods and things without the tarriffs, but give people the right, if they so choose, to pay $100 and get a licence key that will put their CD Burner or iPod into some sort of crappy 'Celine Dion Mode'. In the same way that you can take a perfectly good PC, and pay $400 or whatever it is to stick Vista on there - enabling 'Celine Dion' mode on the iPod will virtually trash the machine, in exchange for getting the 'Wow' of having it play Celine Dion songs
The iPod should just operate normally, unless you 'opt-in', and pay the fee, after which the iPod degrades itself to the point where it will play Celine Dion music. 'Look Herbert, my iPod it now plays Celine Dion !!'. 'Yayy !'. 'Hey Clarence, your iPod - its turning a pale shade of Green !!'. 'Its all about the Yayy !!'.
Its just WRONG
Dear Mr. Aristotle,
We do not care. If we bill you twice, we'll earn twice as much.
I hope I have cleared your doubts.
Sincerely,
Bigb Ucks.
Director of whyshouldwecare department.
PCC
My 0.02 cents
Next thing you know they are taxing paper (since I can hand-copy, or even xerox, copyrighted material), pens (Devil's instrument), headphones and speakers (cheap bastardic broadcasting equipment) and parrots, and they'll find a way for the Government to pass a law stating that airwaves qualify as comercial goods and so the more you get, the more copyrighted content you are stealing, you nasty little thief.
Oh, and you better start forgetting how to hum. We'll tax that too.
My 0.02 cents
That $100 HD will now cost $150. Nice.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
"I've seen it before, but I've never quite understood how any government can be convinced to collect taxes for a non-government enterprise."
[Musicians are citizens too.]----[Trade Group Proxy]----[consumer]
memory cards are the backbone of digital photography and they want to add $2-$10 to them.
I sell digital photos. Since the tax on camera cards is to cover piracy, I'll submit my name to recieve my cut of the royalty payments. Music isn't the only thing pirated online that is copyrighted.
The truth shall set you free!
/nt
CRIAA? The Canadian Recording Industry Association of America?
Advertising Software
It's true.
he said that most of the music played on the iPod wasn't purchased legitimately on iTunes.
seeing as how most of the people in canada live near the u.s. border (or, at least that's what history teachers say), they can just go to the u.s., buy an ipod, and come back. i live in SC, where for the longest time, tattoos were illegal. there were a thousand tattoo parlors just across the border. (also, we're one of the few states that allows fireworks.. same thing)
That says that only music companies that produce a critical-mass of quality music can get a share of the tax money. This will be ascertained, of course, by a government committee that music companies will have to go before to get approval of content before they publish it. Any content not pre-approved by the government committee will be presumed to not be quality, and will count against their odds of participating in the tax revenue.
Any industry that regularly invites the government into their business just hasn't had a large enough dose of government involvement yet.
We had such a levy on iPods and other "recordable media" a few years back, it was struck down and collected levies had to be refunded. Now this organization wants to put the levies back (and expand them).
At the same time, the Canadian Recording Industry Association (think Canadian RIAA) is lobbying to eliminate fair use rights in order to "harmonize" with the US's draconian copyright system (the same harmonization that fucked over the Australians when they signed their free trade agreement with the US).
The attempt at double-dipping is truly mind boggling; it's depressing that no one in power cares.
What they should be doing is taxing bandwidth. If your cable company offers "up to 3gbit/s of bandwidth", you should be able to download up to that much of pirated music per second. So it would make more sense to tax the bandwidth! The math comes out as...
3gbit = 375 megabytes of data per second
I saw a quote of $0.30 per CD, which comes out to $0.16 cents per second, or roughly $414,720 per month in piracy taxes.
Dekker Dreyer
How about a levy on wood? You can build a closet out of wood, and you can store a whole lot of pirated music in a closet!
My bicyles
I have a better question: If this becomes Canadian law, does that mean that Apple's iTMS and other MP3 stores start providing their content free to Canadian individuals, but start charging the labels/artists per song?
No. It already is the law, but not for ipods. The levy is to compensate artists for music copying by individuals for personal, non-commercial use.
If you are going to sell your copies, then that is commercial use, and the copyright owner can sue you for it (and win).
Better start taxing paper and pens too. Some pirate might write the lyrics to a song down.
I'm not sure why everyone appears to be oblivious to this, but Canada had a tax on all MP3 players with storage (including iPods) and that tax was repealed a little over 2 years ago: http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/12/17/13 23245
The tax should be run by the government as industry can never be trusted to regulate itself.
Money raised by this levy should be distributed fairly among Canadian artists. This way Canadian music piracy would effectively subsidize the Arts.
I think this protectionist measure would preserve canadian arts and culture. It could probably be written into existing CRTC (Canadian Radio-Television Commission) regulations.
If you ask me, we should vote the Neo-Conservatives out of office and get the Social-Democrats more seats if we want to protect Canadian music interests.
http://www.cb-cda.gc.ca/tariffs/proposed/c10022007 -b.pdf
Download it, read it, then reply to the address on page 1 why you object to it
"any person who wishes to object to the statement may file written objections with the Board, at the address indicated below, within 60 days of the publication of this notice, that is no later than April 11, 2007"
The memory card levy part of this is utter bullshit. Fuck this pisses me right the fuck off. I DONT buy new music or download it. I DO download music from cd's I already own which by the fucking way I buy at a pawn shop for $2/3 dollars. NOW I do take tons of photos with my Olympus E1. I fucking will not be forced to pay some shitty ass music artiss wages for the pleasure of storing MY OWN COPYRIGHTED photos from my camera onto a memory card.
And who the fuck stores music on memory cards? I dont have any links to data that will show this but I'm prety sure and everyone know this that sales of memory cards for digital cameras beats the sales of memory cards for music players by a long shot.by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
After all, Albert Gonzalez isn't exactly lauded for his belief in constitutional protections! Let's say you put down on your 1040 that you collected income from Bin Laden in exchange for getting some fake passports to get Al Qaeda operatives into the US. Do you really think the 5th amendment will stop them from rendering you immediately to Gitmo? Or if you put down that you made $500,000 in income as owner of childporn-r-us.com, at best they'll immediately launch an investigation of you if they didn't already have one (and I'm not sure the 5th amendment protects you from having your return used as probable cause to initiate an investigation, have your phones tapped, etc.) At worst they'll just plant evidence that'll allow your conviction, on the logic that since you already admitted it, planting the evidence isn't even wrong.
I wonder what would happen if you just put down your income and listed its source as "illegal activities"? Will the IRS send you a letter asking for you to be more specific about your occupation? I always put down "consultant" as my occupation, which is just as non-specific, and they've never cared to know more about what I do, it would be interesting if the government wanted more specificity when you admitted criminal activities but didn't admit enough for them to know what you were up to. Obviously if you are a drug kingpin or mob boss they are already aware of you, but there are surely many criminals who make a lot of money and law enforcement has no clue.
...I should legally be able to walk right up to any artist and kick them in the nads.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I think we first need to ask who will actually get the money. Sure, they say its for the artists...
The stupid thing is that these taxes are going directly to support Canadian artists from copyright infringement. University students aren't trading DVDs full of Tragically Hip and Rita McNeil music, they're trading decent music. I mean, if Cancon acts were so good, it wouldn't require laws to make Canadian radio stations play them. Except the CBC; they get to play anything they want because they know that the three people who listen are either quadriplegics who can't reach the tuning knob, or have sufficiently advanced Alzheimer's as to have forgotten what the tuning knob does.
Oh well. Since I'm forced to pay this stupid tax to back up my mail server or the pictures I've taken with my digital camera, I'll damned well make sure I download enough to get my money's worth. Currently, there's a fat woman singing "She's called Nova Scotia".
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
These guys probably only deal in copyrighted Canadian music, so if you take into consideration Celine Dion etc then that price sounds about right :-)
(p.s. I'm Canadian, and we laugh at Celine D and Bryan A jokes just as much as anywhere)
When I bought my 3g iPod I payed this tax. I bought it in July, that December it was ruled to be illegal and I was refunded it. Now why would they make me go through that same painful step again when I buy my next "taxable media"?
No kidding. Can you imagine Canadians legislating sobriety? Hell, their first PM drank to the point of vomiting at the podium once--and then turned it around into a political attack ad.
We here in Denmark have the same kinds of levies on anything that could even remotely be considered a vessel for piracy. Cassettes, video tapes, CDs, DVDs, memory cards, USB pen drive, ink cartridges, hell, even printer paper IIRC.
The money goes to artists, with a bit of it being used to fund "new artists", usually meaning that a painter or a writer whose work gets exposure to no more than four or five people gets subsidised with my money. The majority of it, however, goes to all "major" Danish music artists, distributed according to who gets played most on the radio.
That means that when I buy a memory card for my camera, I'm involuntarily paying some failed liberal arts drop-out, and whoever's getting their horrible music played most by braindead radio hosts. All because my images apparently somehow, in some way may end up infringing on their intellectual property.
Despite of this, there's a very active and immoral anti-piracy campaign going on here.
I should start an organisation and impose levies on cars because there's a slight possibility that one might hit me one day. And when they do, I'll sue them anyway.
...we need Whuffie.
Well, if the money goes to benefit artists who have theri music downloaded illegally, then why not start up your own private business as a performer/producer and get compensation that way. Then, when you buy memory sticks/cards, claim that you are exempt from the tax since they are being used to store information other than copyrighted music.
Taxing memory sticks to compensate music 'artists' is like taxing paper to compensate people who are vicitms of plagarism. Why not tax blank DVDs to compensate the MPAA?
Practically every kind of consumer item has been counterfeited: Jet engine parts, aircraft parts, car parts, computer parts, electronics, microchips, microprocessors, machine parts, bolts, software, pharmaceuticals, dietary supplements/herbals, DVDs, CDs, appliances, heavy equipment, heavy machinery, watches, jewelry, T-shirts, clothing, firearm parts, and tires. This could easily turn into a way to tax everything that can be counterfeited or illegally copied.
Remember, at the bottom of the slippery slope, there is a very high cliff.
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
once they realize we can store 256GB on an A4 sheet http://www.techworld.com/storage/news/index.cfm?ne wsID=7424 the cost of a sheet of paper will be as high as the RIAA execs.
---
You can lead an idiot to reason, but you can't make 'em think.
but really.. weren't they twins separated at birth?
If I read this correctly, the people wanting these taxes also want to tax memory cards of a sort that work in MP3 players but are more often used in digital cameras. What should the digital photographers do, if this law is passed, when their current stock of memory cards runs out?
And if hard drives get taxed, what will you do when your current HD dies?
There is a fine line between recklessness and courage... -- Paul McCartney
This is just plain inefficient. It makes far more sense to just put a levy on children. Whenever a baby is born the parents must make a one off payment (or pay by instalments) of say, $10,000 to compensate artists for all the music that child will pirate during their lifetime...
The CPP lobbies for the levying of taxes on autistic children with photographical memory.
A spokesman said: "It's very obvious that when these children listen to a song, they store it in their memory forever. We cannot allow this underhanded method of storing illegal copies of music, and will thus try to rectify this situation."
Coz eternity my friend, is a long *ing time.
I think, this may not be so bad, as you guys see it. Here in Hungary
this "levy" is already introduced, and we are paying it for a few years now on every blank media,
even on memory cards! But in exchange, it is _not_ illegal to download music (donno about movies).
It is perfectly legal for me to download as much music as I like, more so, it is even legal for me
to share my music. I think it is a good compromise, the way "culture" should be handled.
As for distribution. There is of course an organization much like RIAA, who would like to keep
the levy, but take away the freedom to download/share at the same time. They are also the ones
handling the money from this levy. They basically calculate a number for _registered_ artists
based on CD sales, number of gigs, exposure in media, etc, and distribute the money according to
this number. Of course, the ones who get the money this way, are the ones marketed to death by this
organization themselves... Local independent musicians wouldn't get anything this way,
even if they registered (which itself costs some money).
Apparently, the CPCC distributes these royalties in proportion to how much TV and radio play each member belonging to the org. is getting.
Obviously, someone needs to set up a Canadian "First Nations" radio station.
There is a fine line between recklessness and courage... -- Paul McCartney
This is stupid.
Why can't these people just put some effort into *enforcing* copyright. It wouldn't be hard to run a p2p client, find a few hundred people sharing copyrighted music, log the IPs, contact their ISPS and prosecute.*
When they do that, I'm all in favour (as long as they make reasonable efforts to ensure they have the right people), after all, people *do* illegally share copyrighted songs over the net. However, replacing enforcement of the law with a tax is just insane. Why don't we stop arresting burglars, and instead charge everyone a 'burglary' tax?
What's needed is enforcement of existing law, not new law, and not new taxes.
*yes it can be a bit more involved, but that's why companies have lawyers.
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
CCRA *already* gets a cut from sales of blank CDs on the theory that you're going to use them to pirate music.
"The backbone of digital photography has become tangled up in the fight for making sure music companies get every nickel and dime they feel that they can get their grubby mitts on and get away with it."
I fixed it
FGD 135
Although I can't find the paper offhand, this system of taxing media and players sounds like a more elaborate copyright system that's been seriously discussed academically. The proposal goes like this:
.0001% of all readership and books made up 10% of all media use, your share of the money is based on those numbers."
"Eliminate copyright protection; make copying files etc. legal. Tax everyone a flat fee. Anyone who creates books, music etc. can register their works with the government. Whenever anyone reads an e-book, plays a song, etc., their use of the media is anonymously reported to a government body, which then distributes the Copyright Tax money proportionately based on how popular each registered work is. If your book had
My IP Law professor had us read and discuss this system, and the entire class gave it thumbs-down because of its numerous practical and philosophical flaws and potential for abuse. Anyway, taxing music players and recording media to compensate the recording industries seems like a back-door way of implementing this scheme, except that small-time creators are left out from compensation!
Revive the Constitution.
I fail to see how this would solve the problem at all. Conversely, new problems arise. Should people who do not 'illegally' copy or transfer music be punished for those that do? Another question, does the artist really suffer? I remember Dave Matthews, an artist in his own right, encouraging piracy of his music. He basically cited this as the reason he grew from a small West Virginia garage band into a multi-national sensation. This honestly sounds like an offshoot of the Canadian RIAA representing the interests of the labels only. I agree with the meta-tags, this is greed but it punishes everyone. I guess this is the consumer equivalent of collateral damage. Oh, and another thing, how much of this tax will actually make it back into the hands of the artist? By the time you account for the enormous costs of enforcement and the giant bureaucracy behind the collections, the piece of the pie will be rapidly whittled down.
I'm mad. Every piece of music I got on my iPod are legal. I bought everything.
Why would _I_ continue buy my music, if theres a tax om my iPod?
oh well....... Now the record companies have got countries getting them money.
then demand that DRM be removed! If you're paying for it, then it's not stealing.
...while the iPod levy is meant to take into account that the music is compressed and thus more songs will fit into so many bytes.
Yay! Let's make everyone pay a tax because a few people break copyright laws! Everyone should suffer! Excellent idea! Blast fax kudos all around. /end sarchasm
geek n performer who performs morbid or disgusting acts, as biting off the head of a live chicken
I buy blank CDRs buy the 1000 at the moment. I have a duplicator for CDs.. but I'm not a pirate. We distribute original recorded material on CDs we burn and print on to ourselves. Yet they want to hit us with piracy taxes because apparently the only use for that many CDRs is for piracy.
Well, duh. The real objective of the MAFIAA is not to suppress bootlegging. The real objective of the MAFIAA is to suppress competition by impeding the development and use of technologies that lower the barriers to production of professional-quality sound engineering and recording.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
You vote with your checkbook everyday. Do not support the taxation if you think its unfair. Music/Artist levies are nothing new in Canada.
The money is lost when the music is not bought, not when it is transferred to a device.
Help Me! I'm trapped in the tubes! Oh noes! Here comes a internet!
...and I might be willing to pay the fine.
Seriously, there is no evidence at all that the labels (almost all American, btw) will actually give a dime to the artists on top of their existing contracts.
The "standard recording contract" pays the artist an upfront advance that is recouped from the royalties (usually a meager 12-14%, some of which may go to the engineer or the producer). IF and ONLY IF that advance is recouped in full (and record labels have tons of accounting tricks to assert that even a million-seller didn't "recoup") will the artist actually start seeing real royalty payments come in. (BTW, through all of this and beyond, the label owns the music, not the artist.)
There is nothing in the artist contract that actually has allowances for when extra "fees" collected on behalf of the artists of the label actually is applied to the payment of the advance. There is nothing in the accounting systems of a record label that will actually distribute such collected fees back to the artists of the label, either as cash or as applied to the advance.
The label keeps the money, most of which is either pure profit (it didn't cost them anything except paying the lobbyist) or at least is applied to the "general fund" which is used to pay the advance for the next standard artist's standard contract, and the legalized slavery continues unabated.
Unless the law goes against the labels as well, requiring that they show proof that they have changed their contracting and accounting systems to actually give an acceptable cut of this income to the artists, then all that has happened is that the legislation has totally bought into the lies and deceits of the music industry, and is sanctioning theft of both the artists AND the consumers.
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
If you are a manufacturer or importer, you can avoid the levy entirely on your products as long as you record some sound on the media before you sell it. The sound recorded on the media can even be erased. Clearly this is not an option for CD-Rs, but for devices that include a hard drive, simply recording a sound on the drive and then erasing it exempts the drive from the levy. This is because (as the legislation now stands) "blank audio recording medium means a recording medium, regardless of its material form, onto which a sound recording may be reproduced, that is of a kind ordinarily used by individual consumers for that purpose and on which no sounds have ever been fixed..." MP3 player manufactures could just preload some music onto it, and no levy for them! It's especially good for Apple then, that the Apple v. Apple thing has been settled.
Duct tape is like the Force. It has a light side, a dark side, and it holds the universe together.
There were some prohibition laws in Canada. However, with the exception of PEI (48 years), they were all very short lived and completely unenforced. Instead, the provinces have a liquor control board and provinicially regulated alcohol sales, although the trend is towards privitization of these boards (thus government sanctioned monopolies... booze is *too* expensive here)
...you could get attacked by a rottweiler while My Heart Will Go On is playing in the background.
I only wish I was making up that scenario.
From TFA: "The poll, it said, suggests 80 per cent of Canadians who make private copies of recorded music would consider a levy of 30 cents on each CD-R and CD-RW they buy to be 'fair'. The poll is also said to indicate 79 per cent of Canadians who make private copies said a levy of $40 on a 30 GB iPod, or similar device, would be 'fair and reasonable'." I would love to see the wording of this poll... it must have been something like: "Do you think that people who are illegally downloading music should pay a percentage of the cost of the digital medium upon which it is stored which would go towards the artists from whom they stole?" I can't see how any Canadian would vote yes for any such levy unless the poll was very misleading.
I'll be sure to get my money's worth.
..don't panic
it forces people to pay for something that they are not doing. IE: someone buys a 2gig memory card for photos and now they have to pay a music artist tax. I say lets boycott the music industry and tell them all to f*** off!
Only 'flamers' flame!
Does slashdot hate my posts?
If I were some unknown artist, would I not be entitled to some of the levy? Or is it just for the major record labels, not the indie artists?
'For we walk by faith, not by sight.' II Corinthians 5:7
While we're at it, let's fine all adult males $100 to fund compensation for rape victims -- after all, if they have the equipment, they're probably contributing to the crime, right?
http://www.cb-cda.gc.ca/tariffs/proposed/c1002200
Board hereby gives notice that any person who wishes to object to
the statement may file written objections with the Board, at the
address indicated below, within 60 days of the publication of this
notice, that is, no later than April 11, 2007.
CLAUDE MAJEAU
Secretary General
56 Sparks Street, Suite 800
Ottawa, Ontario
K1A 0C9
613-952-8621 (telephone)
613-952-8630 (fax)
majeau.claude@cb-cda.gc.ca (email) So, if you're Canadian, get off your arse and write a letter...
If approved, this proposal will increase the number of Canadians crossing the border to buy an MP3 player by 1000%. Hey, maybe we can work out some kind of Canadian prescription drugs for US iPod trade deal!
The problem with these of "taxes" is that it encourages people to copy, even if they were buying previously. The other problem is that the artists are even less likely to get anything. The only people who stand to gain are the record companies, since they were making losses. The artists lose because their albums stop getting bought, and the record companies point to the sales figures and says in a Nelson type voice 'haha', while continuing to screw the public from behind.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
I say let them!
Then when the Canadian equivalent of the RIAA comes knocking (to sue some 12 year old for millions of dollars) his parents can show them a receipt for the IPod and tell them "We have paid for permission, now scuttle back under your rock!"
Yeah - this makes fantastic sense! Every memory/storage/MP3 player retailer in Canada goes bust, while every Canadian consumer buys their products from eBay directly, to avoid the tax. In response, the Canadian government spends 900 Million dollars a year boosting the Customs and excise dept. in order to collect $101 million in taxes.
Yeah - this'll work out just great.
How many escape pods are there? "NONE,SIR!" You counted them? "TWICE, SIR!"
http://www.zeropaid.com/news/8387/Canadian+copyrig ht+group+wants+new+taxes+to+pay+for+piracy
This at first seems like a money-grab, but imagine for a minute if the RIAA went away entirely and got out of users' lives. Imagine if you could freely copy any music from any artist for free.
To me it seems like it's a far better option tan paying Itunes or some other site $1 a song. Instead, just tax the media and get rid of DRM entirely. The artists get some money and the RIAA gets out of our hair.(which is what it's about - getting some money for the songs, which is fair).
$75 for an Ipod licensing fee is dirt cheap compared to what several thousand MP3s would cost.
The secret, is to keep your day job, i.e. your legal income. Use that to pay for your house / bills / car, etc..everything large that leaves a paper trail.
Then just live off of your (cash) drug money. Groceries, gasoline, entertainment, hookers, etc...can't really trace it if it's in cash. Buy most of your small to medium sized goods in cash, and if anyone asks, they were "gifts".
Extra points for buying everything second hand in private transactions with cash from CL.
Ohh well then i might wait a extension to that memory tax of example it might be taxable to remember and sing a song... havening in mind that technically our brain is also a memory device. My point is up too when this copyright monbo jumbo will go. If is not to see a movie that so regulated is to view it once. It might end up saying a quote of some famous author. In the practice it is only a set of words used for a particular reason. Come on world stop crying of the stupid money people are dieing each second to just see a few so called "business men" drain the life of the world and we the rest of the 6 billion of poor souls handle the reality of this world. Free thinking open source, GPL FTA, freeware and many other things that means free have to be taken for granted. Not lay down the guard because some media monkey scared people with a peace of toilet paper saying we need to pay them royalty's. Up too when..... i see on a near future, people seeing a exhibit of the free will on a museum, just when people became mindless drones.
Okay.
The CPCC has the right to collect money on items for which it controls distribution.
If this law that would mandate a levy on SD memory cards gets passed, the CPCC will gain control of the distribution of memory cards. This will happen because the CPCC will be collecting that levy on the cards.
The control of distribution of memory cards that the levy would give the CPCC would give the CPCC the right to collect the levy.
Catch-22.
There is a fine line between recklessness and courage... -- Paul McCartney
Music publishers!=composers&lyricists
If they were, Michael Jackson would not own Northernsongs. Lennon&McCartney were songwriters: they were composers & lyricists. Sony/ATV/Northernsongs is a music publisher: it is not a composer or lyricist.
There is a fine line between recklessness and courage... -- Paul McCartney
I'm shocked that these organizations realize that this kind of thing pisses off consumers. Does this mean that after paying taxes, it's a free-for-all on all the P2P services? This is an utterly stupid idea. jflash
Lets see, First they got a tax on each cd and dvd blank. Instead of being 10-20 cents per virgin cd or dvd blank, we have a 10cent tax on each copy. Now they want to tax the ipod. But then that legislation will be applied to any device that can play music. So my computer with a terabyte of hard disk memory and 4 gigs of memory will cost about $20,000 (if they can get away with it). The government should tell them to get into another line of business. If you cannot succeed with the one you are in, change. I as an employee have done that several times in my life.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada