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iPod Fee Proposed For Canada
innocent_white_lamb writes "The Canadian Private Copying Collective is pushing for the implementation of an iPod fee in Canada to compensate them for 'losses' when people copy music to their digital music players. They have collected a fee from every CDR sold in Canada since 1997 and now want to extend that to digital music players. From the article: 'Some have argued that once they buy a CD they shouldn't have to pay again and again to listen to those songs — which they already purchased — on a personal compilation CD or on their MP3 player. But for people like Milman and Basskin, it's about recognizing the value of those works. "There has to be some sort of way to compensate the artist for the hours and the sweat and the blood and the tears and the extreme, extreme expense that goes into making music," Milman said.'"
If you're Canadian, yes, and it's not against any laws to download music for personal use.
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ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
Unless that CD is blank, then you pay again.*
Canada needs to stop repeating it's ridiculous history regarding this corporate puppetry.
I'm sick of trying to explain to people why DVDs cost less than CDs where I work.
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_copying_levy
"There has to be some sort of way to compensate the artist for the hours and the sweat and the blood and the tears and the extreme, extreme expense that goes into making music,"
Really? I went to a college with a conservatory, where 500 students made music all the fucking time. All they needed was an instrument, and themselves. They performed, recorded, mixed, etc. etc all the time.
My sister somehow manages to make music, play shows, record with bands, and she doesn't have jack in terms of cash.
I know a math PhD who makes/made music in his spare time in a group called "Klein Four". You can buy their music on iTunes Music Store. Sure, it takes time, effort, and talent to make music, but you can get it from your brain into your customer's paying hands (ears?) on a shoestring budget these days.
This is where I get my recommended daily allowance of "Foot in Mouth."
It won't affect me any my non-iPod Ogg Vorbis player.
If you're in Canada, yes it will. "iPod tax" is just a shorthand, the tax doesn't only apply to Appple-branded players.
... and then they built the supercollider.
1) Make a site where everyone in Canada can karaoke into and sing whatever they want, or upload their garage band songs. however badly (bring on the Thrash yodling). 2) Have the EULA of the site say the uploader releases his revenue via the iPod Fee to the site. 3) Make said songs available for ipod download. 4) Go to the Canadian Private Copying Collectivem and demand the percentage of the fee your users represent.. if there are 10.000 artists and you have 10.000 users, you should get half. 5) Profit.
Won't work. They'll only give the money to who they want to. My proof? Look at the blank media levy. You burn a CD full of Swedish metal, do they send a few cents to the Swedes? Nope. They keep a cut, and send the rest to Avril Lavigne. Burn a CD full of pictures of your baby, do they refund the levy? Hell no! They keep a cut, send the rest to Celine Dion. They've said as much when artists who didn't get a piece of the levy - hell, garage artists who had to PAY THE LEVY TO GET THE BLANK DISKS TO DISTRIBUTE THEIR MUSIC - came calling for a slice of the pie. The money goes where they say, how they say, and anyone not on their list of worthy recipients can go fuck themselves - because once the Collective is done fucking them, they're not even gonna give a reach-around.
The fee or levy is not for the person who orginally bought the CD but for his friends who copy it. In Canada it is legal to borrow a friends CD and copy it for yourself. This levy pays the right. It's really a silly law as the CD owner is not allowed to copy it for a friend. I guess the government figured it was easier to tax blank media than attempt to stop copying. The RIAA is pushing to have the law changed in Canada however.
Well that's actually debatable. The law says that if I borrow a friends CD and I have the right to copy it. I says that my friend cannot copy it for me. So if a friend copies it to their Hard Drive and then lets me copy it from there is it legal? Well the law doesn't cover that as it predates internet file sharing.
but I tend to hope we wouldn't stand for such a tax down here.
I can only assume this is part of the joke, but for those who don't know..... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_copying_levy#United_States
We actually have such a fee in Spain already. However, the law also happens to state that so-called "private copies" of audiovisual works and the like (i.e. music, movies, books but not software) are legal as long as no profit is made off of them. This applies to file sharing. So we pay the equivalent of the MAFIAA (the SGAE here) a fee for CD/DVD-Rs, hard drives, writable media, flash cards, DVRs, printers, and even cellphones and all sorts off stuff (which is still extremely inane), but at least we can download whatever we want and they can do squat about it (well, they still make those "piracy is a crime" lying TV adverts, but it's not like anyone listens to them). I for one have made it a point not to buy absolutely anything from anyone remotely affiliated with the SGAE ever since they introduced this fee.
NO, absolutely NOT. Copying for personal use has always been a right. The tax allows us to let a friend copy one of our cd's for THEIR use.
No, in Canada copying music for private use is legal. See the Copyright Act, or the summary on this CPCC page. They distribute the levy according to their estimate of the amount of copying, which they assume is proportional to airplay.
Is copying really proportional to airplay? There's probably some correlation, but I'd guess it's not a very accurate measure. Is there a more accurate measure? I don't know of one.
It is important to realize that this is *not* damages!!!! The levy is part of the copyright act. Under this deal, copying musical performances *is not an act of copyright infringement*!!!!
Let me repeat that: Copying musical performances in Canada for personal use is not copyright infringement.
That is what the levy gives. It's a stupid deal for the artists, but a great one for most of the public. The money collected for the levy is dispersed according to Canadian music sales: i.e., the artist with the most sales gets the most; everyone else gets less until some threshold where they get nothing. It is NOT compensation for infringement. It is a deal that specifically allows copying for personal use.
Every Canadian who listens to music should understand this point.
If your country were Canada, it would already be your right to copy the music of anybody who'll let you. Right now you'd be paying extra for CDRs to compensate the copyright holders, but you'd be able to copy the music onto your iPod for free. The copyright collective wants you to pay for the iPod copying as well.
The populace doesn't care.
As long as they have their bowl of Tesco Own Spaghetti Bolognese, X Factor, and a healthy stream of racists or fundamentalists to vent their frustrations at / blame for the decline of society, they're happy.
Sometimes, I wish I was one of them. Life would be so much more simple if I could just get along with the banality without questioning everything put in front of me, or if I could switch off the little voice in my head which tells me, quite correctly, that society is blind to all inconvenient truth until it is smashed into their face, strapped to the chest of a brainwashed religious fanatic, then smeared across the evening news.
Prozac Nation indeed.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
The "only" problem with this "system", is the artists don't receive a dime of these earnings. It goes directly to the SGAE executives, mediocre ex-musicians that live only stealing money from people and working artists. That's a mafia for you.
Banning or restricting time shifting and format shifting is of no use to the busker on the street, but allows a company to profit by re-selling the same product to the same customer in different wrappers should technology or even a person's work schedule change.
If anything buskers are likely to be the targets of such things. Since they may well not "own" the music they perform.
Many of the 'little people' (or people who claim to represent the 'little people' or the 'starving artists') who insist that Canada needs copyright reform so they can better feed their families strangely don't explain why their neighbor, whose family won't see paychecks in the fifty years after he dies, should have to enjoy the things he has bought and paid for only on their terms, even if it means he never gets to enjoy them at all.
Also "reform" always appears to mean more rather than less copyright. At least to these advocates...
This was already implemented in Canada five years ago. Apple collected the money but when the Federal government overturned the ruling the money was given back to the consumer (or the Red Cross if the consumer didn't know about the refund program). The government decided it didn't make sense to collect money since you could fill the iPod with legally obtained music. http://www.apple.com/ca/ipodlevyrefund/
Indeed. One hopes that artists will start to catch on and stop affiliating themselves with the mafia that is the SGAE.
I'm not saying that the system is by any means good, but it beats paying the tax and still breaking the law when you copy works.
What could easily change is eliminate the middle man and the musicians can deal with the public directly or maybe through a more reasonable consortium that actually represents them using the reality of technology available.
Check out Magnatune for a good example of this.