Slashdot Mirror
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."
Just how do we get connected to this gravy train?
Can we just churn out some simple recordings, demonstrate it's theoretical pirating rates and call up somewhere to get some dough?
A retroactive tax an ex-post-facto law. If this were the US, that part of the law would be unconstitutional on its face, article I, section 9, paragraph 3: "No bill of attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed." But of course, it's Canada, and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms only affects criminal retrospective laws (and section 33 can be used to obtain a 5 year mulligan if it is). BUT I AM NOT A LAWYER, so maybe I'm wrong (but I may be right).
Yes, you are exactly right. I'm not too happy with the spokesperson the copyright board used for this annoucement because the did a very bad job of explaining exactly what is meant by "copying" in Canada. As you say, copying music to levied media is not piracy but legal copying and the levy on on-line music would allow the copying of downloaded files more than once. Giving a copy to your mom for example. However, DRM routines may make most downloads not easily copied anyway but might make an interesting court case should someone purchase levied music on-line and discover the files are altered in a manner that prohibits or makes very difficult legal copying. Legal copying they have paid for. Could get interesting.