Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
a refund on all purchased music in Canada to compensate :-P
"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.
Yes, and that happenned when you *bought* the song from iTunes. Why would you want some blanket fee for then moving it onto your iPod?
There has to be some way for people to compensate me for having to hear the shit reasons these people spew out for being greedy.
The artist never receives a penny of that extra fee! Damn those pot smoking hippies!
Sarcasm aside I really do doubt that any artist on a major label gets half the money that they should. This Milman guy is clearly a douche (put simply) for trying to even suggest that the fee is for the greater good.
Or when you paid for the cd. Just because you made an mp3 and listen to it on your iPod doesn't mean you should have to pay for it again. You paid to listen to their music, you can listen to it on whatever device you want.
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
The hours, sweat, blood and tears are what the music is about, not compensation. Is studio time expensive? Yes. Is accumulating money the reason you make music? Not in any dimension we can readily access with our current level of technology.
> "extreme, extreme expense that goes into making music,"
Bullshit, there are no extreme expenses in making music.
"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."
How about saving the artists all their toil by educating them on the fact that their works might be enjoyed free of charge? It's Canada we are talking about, where a health-care bill is guaranteed never to force you into bankruptcy.
I subscribe to the thought that "when you you make your bed, you must sleep in it."
Extreme expense that goes into making music? What extreme expense? I am an artist and I have yet to encounter this. I recorded an album for about $100 and then posted it for download on the internet. These people want to insert themselves into music and sap money away from artists and listeners, they contribute nothing.
living in suburban wasteland, but I can break out, I can be free.
There has to be some sort of way to safeguard the buyer from undue taxation by private companies given the hours and the sweat and the blood and the tears and the extreme, extreme expense (in terms of time) that goes into making a decent salary.
Isn't that so Mr. Milman?
- "They misunderestimated me."
nothing encourages people to respect copyright law like charging them regardless of any actual infringement... No different than the auto industry, failing to adapt and then when it finally bites them go looking for a way to prop up their doomed business practices.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
I have no illusions that the implied presumption of guilt hasn't been brought up previously, especially wrt Canadian CD-R fees. But the arrogance of it never ceases to amaze me. Same goes for the acceptance of it.
If this kind of logic were applied to a car, then there'd be a "excessive speed fee" applied to every new or used automobile, and perhaps even a "getaway car penalty" for particular models.
Astounding.
I can see the fnords!
Who ends up with the money from this CDR tax? There is no way to know what is going to be copied onto the cd, so there is no way to know who should be paid the cd tax. The article talks about how it helps the starving artist, but do they really end up with the money from this cd tax.
Here's the funny thing though... when they try to incorporate that fee into the sale price, people just bitch about the high cost of music and pirate it "on principle".
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
They want to extract money from users who aren't even their customers. Copyright parasite: "I created content, so you will give me money whether you consume it or not. I have the right to your money."
I sure am glad these leaches cannot tax my data storage devices where I live. Of course I make sure to educate people about how if you buy CDs that are marked for audio, the parasites get a bit of the proceeds.
If it came to it, I would pay more for blank media just to avoid funding the parasites.
If they want to raise the price, then so be it, and don't waste my time with arguments about why fees are "justified". I'll decide what I'm willing to buy at the new prices.
But why raise the price of the ipod and not the music?
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.
It's strange that it costs the music industry so much to make music--I just made (and recorded!) 45 minutes of music and it cost me virtually nothing. How on earth can these people expect to remain profitable while having such a stupendously idiotic business model? OH wait I get it, just have the government add a "music tax" to products from completely separate sectors and the industry will never die, they wouldn't even have to produce music to make money anymore... it's genius.
the most powerful intellect is that unbounded by indubitable preconception
There is no natural right to make a profit. You have the right to try. But if you fail, even if you've previously been successful, that's not society's problem: it's yours.
You paid to listen to their music, you can listen to it on whatever device you want.
In an ideal world, yes. You pay for something, you use it. But not these guys. They want you to pay for every format shift. In the case of televised programs, they want to you pay for every time shift. But what if you need to time or format shift it to properly use it? Tough luck, bucko, then you just bought a very nice coaster, good luck returning opened merchandise to the store. They've already pushed the idea that you're only borrowing their music, that putting down money for a disk doesn't grant you the right to use it in any legal way you please.
Their ultimate goal appears to be pay PER USE. Did your daughter put the latest bubblegum pop princess single on repeat ALL this afternoon? Fifty cents a play autocharged to your credit card. Good thing you pay $50 a month for the discount plan, or that would have been a buck fifty a play! We can also sell you the ultra-discount plan that's only $100 a month and ten cents a play! This week only, get TEN FREE PLAYS of any Flava Flav song already in your collection with a three year contract!
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. 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.
To my fellow Canadians: The more of this shit we put up with, the more that they'll shovel on us.
http://copyright.econsultation.ca/ - Let them know what you think of the copyright reforms - like this one - being discussed right now.
http://www.pirateparty.ca/sign-up - Let's see if we can get an actual political party off the ground, one that actually fights for the rights of the people!
(Do I sound like an activist? I was completely politically apathetic, voted twice in my entire life, until they started pulling this garbage. We can't put up with this anymore.)
Look for iPod sales in Buffalo and Seattle and Vermont to increase.
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
trademark and all.
It won't affect me any my non-iPod Ogg Vorbis player.
Seriously, do Apple give out free tee-shirts every time someone uses their trademarks to describe everyday items?
Wait, go to go, there's a call coming in on my iPhone. The one with "Nokia" on the front.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
If you're Canadian, yes, and it's not against any laws to download music for personal use.
---
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
"Grandpa, is it true that back in the old days music didn't have gps location built in? You didn't have to pay the record studio executives a fee when you listened to music in a different room of your house?"
"Hell, back in the day, we didn't even have the skin cell DNA identification built into the iPods!"
"OMG!!! You could listen to OTHER PEOPLES IPODS?? EWW!!! That is just wrong."
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
I wonder how much those bumpkin lawyers are being paid to spout such nonsense. One of the biggest faults in their "rationale" is their definition of "losses" - losses are not a hypothetical "money we 'could have' made' (if we had full control of the market and consumer habits)". Consumers will form their habits around the tools available to them (today, internet; in the past, radio, cassette, etc.) and the market just has to adapt to the same. If the record industry refuses to change their habits (most likely because of their 1990's record profits from CD sales - they want that 'working formula' to remain the same), TFB for them.
If I buy a CD, I am buying the rights to listen to that particular recording and paying a share of all the work that went into it. I am perfectly free to transfer that recording to any format or device as long as it's for my personal pleasure - at no extra charge. If the recording that is on my iPod is exactly the same as the one in my iTunes library, why should I pay for it again? What's more, the only additional 'work' in having multiple copies is mine - there is no improvement or service by the record industry at all - so again, what justification is there for asking for additional payment?
IMHO, the flailing 'fat man' record industry thinks government 'obligatory tax' involvement, and the possibility of the record industry benefiting directly from the millions collected from everyone, is the fastest way back to the front of the marathon.
Insert any chain of expletives here.
No, no sig. Really.
ThePromenader
"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.'"
And I think programmers and their heirs should be paid too.
And we certainly need to recognize all those DEAD artists like John Lennon so we can encourage them to make more songs.
Hell- I say go for it-- let them charge $10 a song and lock everything up digitally with DRM.
I won't listen to it anyway and the huge hordes of artists out there willing to work for less will take up the slack.
Doubt it? Look at "primer"... look at Magnatune... look at "Star Wreck".
There is a huge glut of entertainment. Already- I can't keep up with it. I have a 500 hour backlog that increases by a couple more hours every day. Every time I go to the beach, play a board game, or watch You-tube, read and post on slashdot, more entertainment builds up.
Just relistening to the popular 1970's music would take me 10 hours.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
"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."
If they already found everyone who buys a ipod of pirating, then there is no reason not to pirate every song now. Do not spend another single penny on buying another song and instead just pirate the shit. If you want to help the artist, then send them a money order with a letter telling them that they want to support the artist but will not send a dime to the music industry.
This is one of the most disgusting things I can ever imagine, a complete travesty of both capitalism and democracy at the same time. "Give us money or we'll make sure you don't get elected" is the message here, as they have done nothing to earn it in any way. They figure that since they're big and there's a tenuous link between piracy hurting them and digital music players they can bully the government into outright stealing peoples money and then giving it to them in turn.
That they have already done it with something else, and that similar things are happening elsewhere in the world is frightening. In a sane world the people responsible for this would be serving life sentences for high crimes.
Right now, it's legal in Canada to copy music under the personal copy provision. In exchange, we pay a levy (not a tax) on blank media.
Extending this to ipods (and, in general other personal media players) makes sense. Especially if those devices play media other than just music. Perhaps the levy will then have to be extended to cover tv programming and movies. After all, the ipod touch I use can certainly play stuff other than music (spoken books, movies and tv shows come to mind).
In answer to "do the artists get the money"? my reply is "I don't really care -- that, in particular, is not my problem". I just don't want to be bothered with being branded a "pirate", kthnxbye.
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061
This has been raised before, many times. The same thing happened with the Quebec referenda...they said No, the other side waited a bit, then said "How about now?". Is this what we've been reduced to in Canada, asking the same questions every couple of years?
Stasis is death. Embrace change.
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.
They want you to pay for every format shift.
And I want to rule the world. So? Nobody cares about that, why should we care about their wishes?
I don't give a flying fuck about what the content industry wants. They obviously don't care about what I want, the quality of what has been released lately is enough proof of that. Gimme a reason to waste a nanosecond pondering what they could possibly want.
The first thing that will happen if such restrictions appear is that people will break out their digital crowbars and break it. Simple as that. Why? Because they don't care what someone wants who doesn't care about what they want. Illegal? Here's a phone, iPhone, no less, call someone who cares. Crack down? Ok, go ahead. Encryption works like a charm and sorry, that isn't encrypted, that's data garbage from my last HD crash, I saved it but so far couldn't get around to figuring out what this is, but you're experts, right, have fun.
If everything else fails, dear content industry: I can live without music. Can you live without my money? I hope not. Please die.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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.
Music in the past was about live performance. This required a lot of musicians. The recording companies then discovered they could change it to an industry that depended almost entirely on recordings, thus killing off a lot of the demand for live performance. Did they compensate those out of work musicians? No. So why should they be paid now? How is their case different?
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
They want you to pay for every format shift.
And I want to rule the world. So? Nobody cares about that, why should we care about their wishes?
Because they've got the lobbyists to make it happen.
I don't give a flying fuck about what the content industry wants. They obviously don't care about what I want, the quality of what has been released lately is enough proof of that. Gimme a reason to waste a nanosecond pondering what they could possibly want.
Because of things like the blank CD levy, where you pay even if you don't do anything illegal, or even anything related to them. You buy no music whatsoever but back up your business data onto CD-R? If you're Canadian then congratulations, you've paid them money without even being a consumer of their product. So they add iPods to that. How long before flash RAM and hard drives get added to the list? They've already proven they can get a levy on a form of storage, regardless of what you do with said storage. If you want to pay an extra cent a gig, fine, but my terabyte drive array takes issue with that.
The first thing that will happen if such restrictions appear is that people will break out their digital crowbars and break it. Simple as that.
Which is just another sort of crime, and one which they're pushing for ever stiffer punishments for. Think they'll never catch you because everyone's doing it? Tell that to Joel Tenenbaum. Just because everyone does it doesn't make it legal, it just means they have more targets. And if they can think of a legal gimmick that lets them drag one hundred thousand people through the court simultaneously (or extort settlements out of same), you can bet they'll do it. Then the fact that there's a million people doing it is trivial. Suddenly you're not one of a million, you're one of TEN.
Why? Because they don't care what someone wants who doesn't care about what they want.
Disproven by the CD levy. Since it gets every CD-R, it's safe to assume they've made profit off deaf people.
Illegal? Here's a phone, iPhone, no less, call someone who cares. Crack down? Ok, go ahead. Encryption works like a charm and sorry, that isn't encrypted, that's data garbage from my last HD crash, I saved it but so far couldn't get around to figuring out what this is, but you're experts, right, have fun.
They've threatened people who don't even have computers. Do you really think hiding your data matters? They've hauled people into court on less than an IP address. Flimsy evidence? You bet, but you gotta pay your lawyer by the hour, not by the strength of the opponent's case. If they make it too expensive to fight, then they'll make money on settlements, and the evidence will never see the light of day.
If everything else fails, dear content industry: I can live without music. Can you live without my money? I hope not. Please die.
Again, you could be stone deaf and still required to give the music industry money. They don't even have to produce much music, all they need to do is convince politicians that your entire demographic group is stealing whatever they do produce and they can tax it out of you. Still doesn't affect you?
When you stop to think about it, the music RECORDING industry is actually a parasitic one living off the blood, sweat and tears of the musos. It is a separate industry living off the fading body of one of the most ancient and universal professions.
Before I get modded down, think of it this way. Say I own 15 CD's. The artists received maybe $3 out of that - if that. Those CD's keep me pretty much entertained for a year or two. If we didn't have such ubiquitous mass released music recordings, where would I get my music from? Well, probably to a large degree from live musicians. On street corners, in concert halls, coffee shops. For any decent party I'd hire musicians. Same for big events in life. Weddings, funerals etc where a lot of people now just play CD's. The wealthy would be patrons of music again, sponsoring musicians to play in their homes. Just like in the developing world, there would be a lot more musicians making their living out of performing and writing music.
The big recording labels and organisations such as this one TFA refers to are not helping musicians, but stifling music as a profession.
sudo mount --milk --sugar
>"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.
Ya know, I know a lot of coders, me included, that got paid salary or hourly for the code they wrote, but didn't see any more money from the individual software sales. How's about we charge a fee for every computer sold and then give it to all the coders out there- "There has to be some sort of way to compensate the coders for the hours and the sweat and the blood and the tears and the extreme, extreme expense that goes into making software," says I.
As I would be paying for stolen music via a tax, surely I can't be stealing material when I copy it?
Isn't this silly idea just a blanket permission to copy music?
Nope. If they can get it signed into law, the government is free to declare that everyone has to pay $100 a year to be split up and given to the families of murder victims but that doesn't make murder legal. The government can, if they can get the support for it, also declare that use of any peer-to-peer protocol for any reason is punishable by a minimum of 20 years in a supermax prison, unless you stood on your head and sang "Yankee Doodle" while you used it. In places without protections against double jeopardy, they can then retroactively change the law so that anyone who was off-key while singing has to go to jail anyway and round up the bad singers.
Laws are arbitrary, more so when written with a profit motive in mind.
Can I please have money from everyone purchasing a crowbar, as they may some day use it to break into my house?
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
They don't give you the key - they give you a phone number, you call it and they send someone with the key who unlocks it for you and after a set time locks it again and takes the key with him. Of course if he's too busy to answer the phone or there's a problem with the line ... that's tough luck.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
if the assumption is that you're guilty and need to be proven innocent, like in france, then canada should go ahead and charge a tax on all automobiles because they could be used as getaway cars. And may as well tax chainsaws because they could be used as murder weapons.
in the 1980's, president bush instituted a tax on blank cassettes in america because it was assumed that all blank tapes were used to duplicate copyrighted material. what a moronic idea. the cassettes i bought were for my 4 track so i could record MYSELF writing MY OWN FUCKING MUSIC. and for mixdowns to give to my bandmates to lose. i have read we also have a similar tax on blank cd's, although most of them I use to back up MY OWN FUCKING DATA not some stupid commercial recording. Whatever, I'm sick of paying taxes on the assumption I'm a thief, and having that money go to idiots like madonna, michael jackson, and the RIAA fuckers.
however, ipods are now used not just for playing music, but for playing back podcasts and as the hard disk for recording live audio. if i'm using my ipod to record my buddies playing D&D, why the fuck should a penny of my money go to the RIAA and MPAA? because _they're_ the evil fucking asspirates.
http://catalog.belkin.com/IWCatProductPage.process?Product_Id=277661
http://catalog.belkin.com/IWCatProductPage.process?Product_Id=460128
http://www.belkin.com/tunestudio/
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
> Indeed, fair is fair.
Not to those who buy such media but never copy any music.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
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...
Because they've got the lobbyists to make it happen.
Ironically an industry which was truely in trouble probably could not afford to lobby.
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/
Keeping in mind that I'm not Canadian, I could almost go for something like this, except that the *AA consider downloading as 'theft' and 'piracy'. Piracy is when you crank out a bunch of CDs and/or DVDs of copyrighted media when you don't own the copyright and offer it for sale. If I were to download something and keep it for myself, where's the 'piracy'? Where's the 'profit'?
And it goes without saying I'd want an accounting of where the money goes. Do the artists really get the 'media piracy fees' or does some asshole in a suit that can't make it in the real world get it? But then, I'm not Canadian. I'm American, and I know exactly where *AA puts the money it 'wins' in court and extorts from citizenry: right back into new lawsuits and buying more politicians to make their strongarm tactics legal.
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
No surprise, but these Canadian artists seem to believe in the Labor Theory of Value - a product is worth only what labor was put into it. Supply and demand be damned. An artist put so much blood sweat and tears into an album, they deserve at least $15.99 for an album, no less The other view is the Subjective Theory of Value - a product is worth exactly what price a willing buyer and a willing seller will agree too. One of these views has been the foundation of Western economies for two-and-a-half centuries. The other was the view of Marx. I'll let you figure out which is which.