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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.'"
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
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.
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.