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Canada May Tax Legal Music Downloads
FuriousBalancing writes "MacNN is reporting that Canadians may soon pay a small tax on every legal music store download. This fee is the work of a measure proposed by the Copyright Board of Canada. About two cents would be added to every song downloaded, with 1.5 cents being added to album downloads. Streaming services and subscriptions would also be taxed, to the tune of about 6% of the monthly fee. Most interesting - the tax would be retroactively applied to every transaction processed since 1996. 'The surcharge would help compensate artists for piracy, according to SOCAN's reasoning. The publishing group draws similarities between this and a 21-cent fee already applied to blank CDs in the country; the right to copy a song from an online store demands the same sort of levy applied to copying a retail CD, SOCAN argues. The tax may have a significant impact for online stores such as iTunes and Canada-based Puretracks, which will have to factor the amount both into future and past sales.' The full text of the measure is available in PDF format."
In theory there is no reason to DRM music in the Canadian market as copying is legal when a levy is paid on media and downloaded music from on-line stores would also be legal to copy hence the tax. It's a case of a much larger country having Draconian copyright laws while a smaller neighbour goes at the issue in an entirely different way. Obviously, American labels aren't about to make an easy to copy version for the Canadian market.
Interestingly, the CRIA has refused to collect the money. So, there are billions in artists money sitting uncollected.
I have mod points I would love to use, but I have no chance because no one is correcting the Myth of Piracy.
In Canada it is NOT piracy to copy a song for personal use. It is not stealing, it is not copyright infrigement. It is a right granted by law, a law that was encouraged by the music industry back in the Audio Cassette days. Yes, they now regret it... too bad!