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Canadians Overpay Millions on Copyright Tax
An anonymous reader writes "Michael Geist has up a post on his site about the Copyright Board of Canada's decision last week on the controversial private copying levy, which functions like a tax on blank media. The good news? The Board reduced the levy on certain media such as CD-R Audio, CD-RW Audio, and MiniDiscs. The bad news? The millions of dollars in overpayment from these media will go into the pockets of manufacturers, importers, and retailers, not back to the consumers who paid in the first place. 'In addition to the overpayment issue, the decision contains several interesting revelations ... the decision sheds some light on the CPCC's enforcement program. The collective has aggressively targeted those parties that do not pay the levy, with 21 claims over the past three years. In fact, the enforcement program has been so effective that the Board found that concerns about the emergence of a gray or black market for blank CDs has not materialized.'"
...Muttersfcking Lies!
Slashdot... From the country that e-lected Bush... TWICE!
Disclaimer: this message usually doesn't reflect the view of fat virgin nerds as I'm not one of them.
Smile, don't click...
My business faces ruin. CD sales have dropped through the floor. People aren't buying half as many CDs as they did just a year ago. Revenue is down and costs are up. My store has survived for years, but I now face the prospect of bankruptcy. Every day I ask myself why this is happening.
I bought the store about 12 years ago. It was one of those boutique record stores that sell obscure, independent releases that no-one listens to, not even the people that buy them. I decided that to grow the business I'd need to aim for a different demographic, the family market. My store specialised in family music - stuff that the whole family could listen to. I don't sell sick stuff like Marilyn Manson or cop-killer rap, and I'm proud to have one of the most extensive Christian rock sections that I know of.
The business strategy worked. People flocked to my store, knowing that they (and their children) could safely purchase records without profanity or violent lyrics. Over the years I expanded the business and took on more clean-cut and friendly employees. It took hard work and long hours but I had achieved my dream - owning a profitable business that I had built with my own hands, from the ground up. But now, this dream is turning into a nightmare.
Every day, fewer and fewer customers enter my store to buy fewer and fewer CDs. Why is no one buying CDs? Are people not interested in music? Do people prefer to watch TV, see films, read books? I don't know. But there is one, inescapable truth - Internet piracy is mostly to blame. The statistics speak for themselves - one in three discs world wide is a pirate. On The Internet, you can find and download hundreds of dollars worth of music in just minutes. It has the potential to destroy the music industry, from artists, to record companies to stores like my own. Before you point to the supposed "economic downturn", I'll note that the book store just across from my store is doing great business. Unlike CDs, it's harder to copy books over The Internet.
A week ago, an unpleasant experience with pirates gave me an idea. In my store, I overheard a teenage patron talking to his friend.
"Dude, I'm going to put this CD on the Internet right away."
"Yeah, dude, that's really lete [sic], you'll get lots of respect."
I was fuming. So they were out to destroy the record industry from right under my nose? Fat chance. When they came to the counter to make their purchase, I grabbed the little shit by his shirt. "So...you're going to copy this to your friends over The Internet, punk?" I asked him in my best Clint Eastwood/Dirty Harry voice.
"Uh y-yeh." He mumbled, shocked.
"That's it. What's your name? You're blacklisted. Now take yourself and your little bitch friend out of my store - and don't come back." I barked. Cravenly, they complied and scampered off.
So that's my idea - a national blacklist of pirates. If somebody cannot obey the basic rules of society, then they should be excluded from society. If pirates want to steal from the music industry, then the music industry should exclude them. It's that simple. One strike, and you're out - no reputable record store will allow you to buy another CD. If the pirates can't buy the CDS to begin with, then they won't be able to copy them over The Internet, will they? It's no different to doctors blacklisting drug dealers from buying prescription medicine.
I have just written a letter to the RIAA outlining my proposal. Suing pirates one by one isn't going far enough. Not to mention pirates use the fact that they're being sued to unfairly portray themselves as victims. A national register of pirates would make the problem far easier to deal with. People would be encouraged to give the names of suspected pirates to a hotline, similar to TIPS. Once we know the size of the problem, the police and other law enforcement agencies will be forced to take piracy seriously. They have fought the War on Drugs with skill, so why not the War on Piracy?
This evening, my daughters asked me. "W
Ban Marijuana yet tax bungs!!
Do you think this will encourage some government entity in the United States to look into why Americans are paying for overpriced music CDs? Or, why the media cartels can wholly control this market? Or, why the media cartels can muscle artists into unfair contracts because the wholly control this market?
okinawa japan
So I wonder if there's no tax on DVD-Rs. And if not, why not?
Last year I got 100 DVD-Rs for $25. At 25 for 4.7GB there's not much incentive to even buy CD-Rs if the tax alone is 21 for 700MB.
Free the Quark 3 from asymptotic confinement! Bring your charm! Don't get down! All colours and flavours welcome!
the economics of why gray/black markets form, or were they just being deliberately disingenuous?
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
The millions of dollars in overpayment from these media will go into the pockets of manufacturers, importers, and retailers, not back to the consumers who paid in the first place.
Right, always finding something bad even in a good news, aren't you Mike.
How on Earth would this "return in the hands of the consumers" be organized. How do you imagine the logistics of such an outcome. Maybe you bring your receipts and they give you 1 cents for each disk or something?
What they did is the best they could do. Manifacturers/retailers/importers get back the money and they can pass the savings on to their future customers.
Of course they won't, since it's not how business works, but that's a completely different matter.
I, for one, give you those 2 cents and not look back.
n/t
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
So we pay a little more for CD's, and that money goes to the copyright holders (we hope).
Umm, maybe this isn't such a bad idea? After all, there is a TV Tax in the UK for the same reason. Everyone complains about it, but not *that* much.
Maury
You know, those guys they always talk about as the losers of piracy.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
...they should pirate more stuff.
Something to make fun of Canada for, eh?
*ducks*
"Now I'm seriously serious!" - Serious Sam
Why should we expect the socialist Canadian government to even consider giving excess taxes back to taxpayers? After all they don't even recognize the fact that it's still the citizens money once they get it, not the government's money. Until we get our collective heads out of our asses when it comes to taxing 'somebody else' then this trend will only continue. Eventually every product will have both sales taxes + an additional excise tax. Remember most Canadians pay about 15+% in sales tax plus additional excise taxes. Ohhh Cannnnaadaa!!!
The collective has aggressively targeted..
Who wrote this? Am I going to be assimilated?
h
Valkyrie is about to die! Wizard needs food -- badly!
Lets make a deal.
How about a copyright moratorium for a month?
In order to compensate consumers for overpaying, we can download and copy anything we want royalty-free.
If it works out well, we can do it every year.
Here is an alternative - Ive been seeing the origional one pop up so regularily that I am surprised no one else has messed around with it yet... - I had to... appologies to the copyright holder of this much used piece, this derviative is intended as a parody...:
My business faces ruin. Software sales have dropped through the floor. People aren't buying half as many products as they did just a year ago. Revenue is down and costs are up. My store has survived for years, but I now face the prospect of bankruptcy. Every day I ask myself why this is happening.
I bought the store about 12 years ago. It was one of those little software stores that sell well known, major software releases that everyone uses, even the people that don't them. I decided that to grow the business I'd need to aim for a wider demographic, the family market. My store specialised in family software - stuff that the whole family could use. I don't sell sick stuff like violent games or gambling simulations , and I'm proud to have one of the most extensive education sections that I know of.
The business strategy worked. People flocked to my store, knowing that they (and their children) could safely purchase software that worked without coming accross profanity or violent games. Over the years I expanded the business and took on more clean-cut and friendly employees. It took hard work and long hours but I had achieved my dream - owning a profitable business that I had built with my own hands, from the ground up. But now, this dream is turning into a nightmare.
Every day, fewer and fewer customers enter my store to buy fewer and fewer titles. Why is no one buying software? Are people not interested in compters? Do people prefer to use pen and paper, outsource;? I don't know. But there is one, inescapable truth - Free and Open Source Software (F/OSS) is mostly to blame. The statistics speak for themselves - seven in ten webservers now run F/OSS. On The Internet, you can find and download replacements for thousands of dollars worth of software in just minutes. It has the potential to destroy the software industry, from lower management, to upper management to stores like my own. Before you point to the supposed "economic downturn", I'll note that the book store just across from my store is doing great business. Unlike software, it's harder to make F/OSS books and distribute them over The Internet.
A week ago, an unpleasant experience with these F/OSS'er communists gave me an idea. In my store, I overheard a teenage patron talking to his friend.
"Dude, I'm going to put Debian on my PC instead of this Vista junk, I'll download it right away."
"Yeah, dude, that's really lete [sic], you'll get lots of respect."
I was fuming. So they were out to destroy the software industry from right under my nose? Fat chance. When they came past the counter to leave, I grabbed the little shit by his shirt. "So...you're going to use unamerican, communist F/OSS replacements to good honest god-fearing proprietry software and tell your friends about it, punk?" I asked him in my best Clint Eastwood/Dirty Harry voice.
"Uh y-yeh." He mumbled, shocked.
"That's it. What's your name? You're blacklisted. Now take yourself and your little bitch friend out of my store - and don't come back." I barked. Cravenly, they complied and scampered off.
So that's my idea - a national blacklist of F/OSS'ers. If somebody cannot obey the basic rules of society, then they should be excluded from society. If F/OSS'ers want to give stuff away for free, with the source code and divert cash from the software industry, then the software industry should exclude them. It's that simple. One strike, and you're out - no reputable software store will allow you to buy another title. If the F/OSS'ers can't buy the software to begin with, then they won't be able to make alternatives and give them away free over The Internet, will they? It's no different to doctors blacklisting poor people from access to non-emergency medical care.
Since I'm overpaying via the levy, maybe they won't mind that I just never buy a DVD or CD ever again and just pirate them all? I mean seriously, the fact that they are taxing me on that no matter what I used the media for (backups anyone?) really chafes.
"I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
-Hoban Washburn
The Grey Market in Canada, at least here in Montreal is pretty weak for any sort of goods. People don't seem to grasp the concept of depreciation and try to sell used goods at new prices and aren't open to negotiation. Considering the inflated retail prices relative to the US (which is only a half hour away)and insanely high sales tax (15%) one would think that the grey market would thrive.
The most efficient mechanism for allocating resources is the free market, not collectives or the government!
just wait for some illegal immigrants to read what you just said.
Read radical news here
Michael Geist has up a post on his site
He set us up the post?
"All great things are simple & expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope." --Churchill
We pay that "copyright mafiaa tax" too, but that doesn't mean we actually may copy anything. We still are not allowed to remove or circumvent copying restrictions to actually execute our right to create a backup, we still have no right to actually burn copyrighted content on those media, so I wonder what this "tax" is based on.
In fact, we pay for nothing.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The entire premise of the system stinks of corruption: it is indefensible the idea of a blanket tax on media because some people use them for piracy -- I don't -- I do not go around illegally copying material -- but my government thinks I do, and decides to tax me for it. I'm sorry -- this is pure BS. How did we get such an idiot government?
They are trying to cut down on CDs being destroyed in microwave ovens. Each time this occurs, a small ammount of radiation escapes that is absorbed directly by the MAFIAA
CSS doesn't prevent you from copying DVDs.. wherever did you get that funny notion? It simply prevents you from playing them on unauthorized players (one's that haven't paid the play tax) or in unauthorized zones.
People over in the PRC press out massive quantities of DVD copies, CSS included, *all the time*.
You're reading Slashdot. Of course you like Linux and pc hardware
applies to Canada? There, I think we're back on topic.
If I'm not mistaken, "Stichting 'De Thuiskopie'" was asked to open up the books last year, they still have to do that.
Right now, it's a very murky picture.
We pay a copyright levy on CDs, cassettes, videotapes and DVDs (and we have a 0-levy on mp3-players, meaning that there is technically a levy on mp3players and portable storage devices, but it's 0. They wanted to increase this amount earlier this year, but that was thwarted (thankfully))
But we have absolutely no idea how many is being received by that organization, and who gets what percentage of that.
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I'm at a loss at to why this is even seen as useful, regarless of how you feel about it.
From TFA: Create a new crime of life imprisonment for using pirated software - Anyone using counterfeit products who "recklessly causes or attempts to cause death" can be imprisoned for life...Justice Department officials gave the example of a hospital using pirated software instead of paying for it.
Is there a point to this? If anyone "recklessly causes or attempts to cause death", aren't they going to be punished under existing laws? Is it someone's offense more dire if they didn't also didn't have Windows Genuine Advantage as well?
How on Earth would this "return in the hands of the consumers" be organized.
By suspending the levy entirely until the overpayments have been made up for.
As a Canadian, I don't mind paying the Levy on blank media, and I'd be in favour of a levy on MP3 players, IF it means that I can continue to be free from worrying about a Canadian RIAA busting down my door and lynching me for making backups of my own media or for putting a CD on my mp3 player. A very small price to pay indeed.
This levy saved the future of a friend of mine. He did use it as a defence in court that since he payed the levy on the cd's he buys and the HD's he used that since its done the time he thought it was alright to do the crime. The judge bought it because well its true, we have paid for piracy we might as well enjoy it. To be honest if we over pay a little into the system so much the better, it just give more fuel to the "But I've alriady paid for it" defence.
-Ours is the wisdom of Solomon, the magic of Merlyn, the fall of Icaris.
I have mixed thoughts on this. This levy was charged to the manufacturers/importers/retailers, right? The consumer made a free market exchange here. They thought the price was fair for the product, and they paid for it. Why should consumers get reimbursed?
If the government retroactively reduced corporate income taxes for last year, should consumers expect checks in the mail for all of the purchases they made? These are all business costs that factor into the price.
Now don't get me wrong: I completely disagree with the purpose of the levy to begin with. But I'm not sure how consumers must necessarily be the ones to benefit from this. Kudos to the corporations that do pass their relief onto their customers, but I don't understand how people are jumping to the conclusion that there's a legal obligation to do that.
It might have made more sense for them to make the adjustment, and simply deduct it from future sales. Consumers get "reimbursed" by virtue of (hopefully) lower prices in the near future, until the surplus is exhausted.
There are lots of subsidies of Canadian art. Why not use the money to increase this funding or reduce the taxpayer's portion of it. You know, spend the money to help artists like they claimed when they took the money.
May I say welcome to the nanny state! I am all for out healthcare system, but the government in this country goes way too far to try and prop up our "culture" and things like "multiculturalism". It goes from annoying to downright infuriating knowing my tax dollars prop up crap like this. It's just another bureaucracy that is useless and yet is held up as some kind of icon for social responsibility like the gun registry.
And download enough to cover the overpayment. Consider it like a credit.
So how about the fact that most people don't even use this kind of Blank Media for music? Is this tax imposed upon iPods/mp3 players? Otherwise this has turned out to be a waste of money for Canadians, and hasn't achieved the goal set out at all.
- Kal`Goblez
Disregarding the fact that a recordable media levy is not a representative means of collecting royalties, it is a key thing that Canadians can point to in justification of their fair use rights over digital media - essentially, legitimizing copying of copyright protected material since we pay, through the levy, for that right. (i.e. the levy is a de facto assumption that all purchased media will be used for the purpose of copyright infringement, ergo we can use such media for that purpose with impunity as long as we continue to pay). The reduction of the levy is quite possibly the first step towards its complete elimination, which when it occurs would remove the inherent right to use recordable media in this fashion, and open ourselves up to the possible implementation (under US pressure) of draconian DMCA type legislation. As much as I agree with the assertion that the collected levies are not appropriately distributed, I would much rather continue to pay them and enjoy my fair use rights, than to allow our lawmakers to abolish the levy and then have nothing to counter the American copyright lobby with.
Yes, and at least for the people that I know, that's what they do -- therein lies the grey/black market
Buy a CD? HA!
The higher the levy the more people will simply transfer files over the internet instead of copying them to CD, which is bad for the environment. Levy away!
You mean all the shady Asian tech dealers in Richmond BC are here legally? wow.
Folks, let's just step back for a second. I have never paid the levy on media here in Canada. Why? Because the retailers I buy it from refuse to pay it. Go shop at your local little computer store, or even at London Drugs, where they do not pay the levy and refuse to do so, simply because of this reason! The levy exists, but to my knowledge only fools are charging their customers the levy, and only fools are paying it.
Oh sure I buy all my hardware from Atic. The Taiwan connection dood.
Good god, not Atic. GST evasion, they sell refurbs without telling you, and they install cracked windows on to new systems and charge people $50 for it.
By paying a "copyright tax" you are being effectively charged and punished for copying copyrighted data. By paying such a tax, you now have paid money for the works; after all, you're paying because it covers your potential actions. Now, logically, you've just paid for all the music you're about to download, and all the movies you're going to bittorrent.
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Just hardware man. I know the people who run it. I've never seen a refurbished as new but yes they are very cheap. All my returns ... 2 in 10 years have been promptly handled and one was a Tyan mobo.
The judge obviously is just as corrupted and incompetant as the levy system. Actually, the Canadian law does not allow you to infringe copyright, whether there is a levy or not. It is just a propaganda lie to justify this million dollar scam, because CRIA can't legally go after downloaders.
If the government thinks that there is no grey or black market for un-levied blank media, they aren't looking. I live in a major west-coast Canadian city, and I have never paid the levy either. The only places that have I seen charge it are Future Shop and the like. Some stores will not charge you if you pay in cash, and some won't even bother trying to hide it at all.