Slashdot Mirror
Canadian Songwriters' Collective Licensing Bid Goes Voluntary
Last year, the Songwriters Association of Canada (SAC) proposed a plan to legalize the file sharing of copyrighted songs, which involved a small monthly fee to people using an internet connection. Critics of the plan complained that it amounted to another tax, and the Canadian recording industry said it violated copyright law. Now, as an anonymous reader writes,
"The SAC has renewed its bid to legalize peer-to-peer file sharing in return for a levy on Internet service. The SAC is now calling for the plan to be voluntary, with both consumers and creators having the right to opt-out. ACTRA, the leading performer group in Canada, now says it is also supportive of a legalized approach with the prospect of extending the plan to video sharing."
No, no, no. Opt-in is the way it should work. It's only opt-out because of the hassle it takes to actually opt-out, and it depends on the general ignorance of the people that they won't be properly informed that they're even paying this extra tax and that it's possible to opt-out. With these two issues, they would get a huge "sign-up' to this scheme.
Letting individual copyright holders opt-out makes the proposal useless. The entire point was that, for a small monthly tax, people wouldn't have to worry about copyrights so far as non-commercial, personal use was concerned. If it doesn't apply to all copyrighted content, though, the resulting situation wouldn't be much different than what we have now; people would still run the risk of a lawsuit every time they shared something. (You don't expect anyone to actually check the lists, right? Even assuming they're even published in an accessible fashion, if people are paying a monthly "file sharing" tax they're going to expect access to everything.)
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
Yes... and how will you, the individual copyright holder whose rights this plan respects, get paid assuming you don't opt-out?
I'll bet you won't. I'll bet this doesn't respect your ownership of copyright at all.
You make one mistake, in my estimation:
"...only heavy utilizers are going to opt-in (or rather, not opt-out)."
This is where they'll make their money: If they implement the fee, 90% of users won't notice it or bother to opt-out. It's going to be a voluntary overpayment, with the money going to the middlemen as usual. (Will the artists get a cent of this? No, of course not! Why would THEY be the ones to profit from their music?)
Yeah, it's stupid. Stupid, immoral, and corrupt--like the music industry everywhere.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Wouldn't this scheme be illegal as Negative option billing?
No, no, no. Opt-in is the way it should work. It's only opt-out because of the hassle it takes to actually opt-out, and it depends on the general ignorance of the people that they won't be properly informed that they're even paying this extra tax and that it's possible to opt-out. With these two issues, they would get a huge "sign-up' to this scheme.
Translation:
If you do not wish to get notified about our latest v14gr4 and c1al1s offerings, please send an empty email to unsubscribe@spammer.cx
The result is also the same: you get targeted.
No artist gets paid.
I wish somebody could get a video of Avril Lavigne's answer to: "Did you get your cheque for your portion of the Blank CD levy?"
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
Agreed.
Opt-out is a fallacy. The concept of "opt-out" needs to be abandoned by our society as a whole, its shady. It's like you have to opt-out of being charged for services you don't want or never asked for, due to greed/predatory processes.
We've had a media "levy" (don't call it a tax!) for the last twelve years. The irony is that my brother (a full-time professional musician) has to pay this levy on blank media he uses for his own music, and the money goes back to the record companies or music publishers. If any artists get his money, it's the Celine Dions of the country. (Although I seem to recall that she came out firmly against the levy, pointing out that even she's made less from it than she's paid into it by buying CD blanks for her computer).
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Seriously, Canada's stupid protectionist media laws have given us the fantastic sounds of Nickelback, Avril Levigne, and Alanis Morrisette.
Yeah, welcome to the music industry. Or have you not noticed that the US has its fair share of complete, utter garbage, too?
No, I'm sorry, the cancon rules may have their problems and you may disagree with them, but they're hardly responsible for the glut of crap that clogs the airwaves. For that you can blame good ol' fashion pop culture.
I do not unlawfully download copyrighted content so why must I pay the tax. I already have to pay a tax on my CD's that I use for backups of my own personal stuff.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
What about artists that are not members of the SAC? What about movies, games, software and other works?
Obviously, they cannot be covered by this agreement. Thus, most file-sharing will remain illegal in Canada.
Here are the problems with a tax on internet to support copyright (which is what this amounts to):
(1) Most of the money comes from people who are not filesharing. So the many are punished for the deeds of the few. This is a bankrupt philosophy.
(2) You know very well that little if any of the money will go to the artists. So what's the point?
(3) It does absolutely nothing to solve the "problem".
The money comes from the wrong place, it will go to the wrong place, and it solves nothing. So what is this for?
I was under the impression that Canadians already pay a tax for their file sharing when they buy blank cd's? If they are already paying the tax on blank media why should they pay another tax at all?
Who the blaze uses CDs anymore? People download from the internet onto their computers, and then transfer to their mp3 player.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Now, right before the last election was called, a bill was brought to the table (Bill C-61) which would make downloading copyright material illegal, even for personal use, however, when an election gets called, all bills on a table get swept aside and have to be reintroduced after the election is done. We havn't seen it rear its ugly head yet, but it is most likely still floating around, waiting for its chance to get introduced again.
As a professional your brother should be claiming CD-R's as a business expense anyway. I'm a sound tech who goes through 2-3 100 CD-R spindles monthly, entirely on content I record legitimately myself, much of it live demo recordings. I write it all off, so they can levy it all they want as far as I'm concerned. I also write off half my "entertainment" expenditures from every outing where I discus music with anyone, so roughly 45% of my restaurant/bar bills. It's quite an easy subject to bring up!
I also question whether the tax is actually collected on all imported media, since I pay 23 cents per CD-R at a local shop, and the tax is supposed to be 21 cents each, soon to be raised to 29 cents if it hasn't already. I have trouble believing the manufacturing, distributing, and retailing revenues total a mere 2 cents a disc.
As an artist who knows I'll never see dime of any such levy, it's pretty irritating. How the music industry is supposed to benefit by making internet traffic more expensive is beyond me. This is typical of the music industry's back-end approach to combating music piracy rather than the value-added approach which is generally the most successful.
Worse yet is the "SOCAN tax" for live performances. 3% of the pay for an artist or band is collected by SOCAN (Tariff 3A) to be redistributed to SOCAN members. If an artist or band plays all original music, they have to submit a setlist and wait to get that money back. If they play no original or SOCAN member compositions (i.e. all American-written songs) the collected money is basically swallowed by SOCAN. So the organization whose mission is to compensate Canadian songwriters for 3rd party performance and broadcast actually taxes Canadian performers unfairly and profits from the performance of non-Canadian compositions.
Fortunately, virtually no small live music venues across the country cooperate until they are compelled by SOCAN, and of the 200+ small venues I've played I've only encountered two such venues, one has since closed. So just avoid the Boar's Head Pub in Stratford Ontario and you're ok...
War as we knew it was obsolete
Nothing could beat complete denial
- Emily Haines