Canadian Music Industry Seeks Copy Tax On Memory Cards

An anonymous reader writes "The Canadian music industry's copyright collective is demanding the creation of a new copying tax on all memory cards sold in Canada. The Canadian Private Copying Collective has filed for a tax of up to $3 per memory card to compensate for music copying on SD cards. If approved, the tax could cost consumers millions of dollars." Makes no less sense than the current levy exacted on blank CDs and audiotapes in Canada — and no more sense, either.

Comments

great idea

[Anonymous Coward]

so once you have paid the copy tax you are free to copy as much music as you like?

Re:great idea

[Anonymous Coward]

This is untrue. The Copyright Board of Canada has advised that the levy DOES protect copying and P2P downloading.

Re:great idea

[green1]

The current official government position on the existing levy is YES. There are some oddball rules, but yes.

The law as it stands right now is that you are allowed to copy for personal use providing you have the original legal copy in your possession at the time you make the recording. They don't however deal with how you came to have the original in your position. Seems reasonable enough on the surface, however it gets odd in the implementation, I'll give some examples:
- I buy a CD, I lend it to you, you copy the CD and give back the original. Perfectly legal.
- I buy a CD, I copy it and give you the copy. although the end result is identical to the first case, this way is illegal.
- I buy a CD, I copy it, I keep the copy and give you the original. Perfectly legal.
- I buy a CD, I lend it to you, you copy the CD and give back the copy. although the end result is identical to the last example, this is illegal.

Additionally, the Canadian courts have ruled that downloading music IS legal per this situation (uploading however is not)

Now I still don't like the levy, because it is paid on all blank media, regardless of what you do with said media. which means when I make server backups, the recording industry gets a cut. What may however be an even bigger miscarriage of justice though is that small independent artists, with no affiliation to the large media conglomerates, have to pay this levy on all of their blank media as well, with no hope of recovering any of it. (Large record labels don't pay the levy as they press CDs instead of buying recordable CDs and burning them)

Of course while all this is going on, the record industry is ALSO working very hard to ban copying for personal use, however I have a feeling they have no intention of having the media levy repealed when they succeed (and I say when, not if, because it has been before parliament at least twice so far, only failing due to a fall of the minority government, since the recent election the Conservatives now have a majority, and this is one of the bills they have promised to pass quickly, so unfortunately I'm pretty sure we will lose all fair use rights very soon)... and I really have a problem paying a levy on the assumption that I will do something that is illegal.

Re:great idea

[Moryath]

Well, that's how the MafiAA works.

They want a "tax" levied by the government, paid to them.

On top of it, they want it to be illegal to exercise the right that the tax is supposedly being paid for.

Not so different from the USA, where the DMCA and constant copyright "extensions" paid for by Disney bribing Congress have pretty much destroyed the idea of the public domain.

Great!!!

[dskoll]

This will stimulate international trade! US citizens will buy their drugs from Canada and we'll buy our storage media from the US.

Greedy ****'s

[DigitalSorceress]

Just gotta get this out of my system... what a greedy bunch of ****suckers!

Ok, maybe some folks use SD cards to copy music, but the assumption that everyone's going to use them for that purpose is beyond stupid.

I own several SD cards and several CF cards and I've never ever put a single song or other piece of copyrighted work on any of them... well, ok, actually I have... I use them in my cameras to take pictures, so I put MY OWN copyrighted work on them.

I know obvious post is obvious, but these Canadian MPAA-Wannabees already get a tax on every blank CD and DVD sold in that country... I can't believe they were allowed to do that, and now they want more... Why don't they just tax brain cells since I might REMEMBER what one of their songs sounded like.

GARRHRRHHHH!!!!

Well, well...

[alexandre]

I'd rather pay 3$ per memory card than have a DMCA++ / ACTA laws enacted that just screws everything up!
You can't sue people who have paid a copying tax can you?

Unlike Europe - where this is outright ILLEGAL

[FriendlyLurker]

Where: 'EU court rules Spain's "digital copyright tax" illegal'

The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) today declared illegal any digital canon which is being imposed indiscriminately on all equipment and materials used for reproduction and not only that which presumably can only be used for private copying , as applied in Spain. Spain imposes a "canón digital", a small tax on all digital media (CD's, tapes, DVD's and associated equipment) which is given to the General Society of Authors for copyright payment in case the media is used to copy work.

Makes even less sense

[Junta]

The CD tax is senseless, but if grading on a curve, the memory cards makes even less sense.

At *least* burning music to CD represents a larger share of what is done with blank media, so that people can pop portions of their collection into their car cd player (and nowadays to a less extent in other cd players). Of course they penalize everyone 'just in case' and even in the case of burning music to CD there are plenty of fair-use sorts of applications ('mix tapes', burning legally purchased music, etc), which makes it absurd.

In the memory card situation, mostly I see them purchased for cameras, game consoles, and general sneakernet of data. There isn't a huge ecosystem of music players that take memory cards as the primary medium. Must music lives on an iPod or cellphone and arrives on other stereo systems by way of bluetooth, aux jacks, or iPod dock connection. Sure, there are things that take usb hard drives as sources and primarily play music, but I think that's such a vanishingly small use of even those specific units as to render any sense of entitlement beyond absurd.

Digital Cameras

[r_jensen11]

Aren't memory cards more commonly used in digital cameras than for music? I know that many phones now use memory cards for storage, but I'd have to imagine that more people have digital cameras, and multiple cards for said cameras, than people who have phones with memory cards installed....

if you can no longer compete

[nurb432]

Get legislation enacted to guarantee your revenue stream.

Re:The price we pay for sanity

[Tridus]

No, in Canada this is the price we pay for "culture" industries being protected and coddled from reality.

There is no connection between this and music copying, at all. It's a cash grab. SD cards have as much to do with pirating music as video cards do.

RIAA is stealing from independent artists...

[xanadu113]

The RIAA is STEALING from independent artists, with this fair use tax. If a non-signed band uses CD-R's to record their music onto, they are paying a fair use tax.

The same people who claim we are stealing from bands by downloading music, are getting paid by bands who didn't sign any agreement with the RIAA or any record labels. Now WHO is stealing from bands...?

What's next, bailouts for record labels...?

Two advantages of this:

[benwiggy]

First:
So, presumably, by paying the tax, I can pirate as much music as I like! Excellent.

Second:
I've written and recorded a song. Where do I sign to get my share of the cash?

Re:The price we pay for sanity

[green1]

It is at the moment, but the Conservative government has promised to outlaw fair use as soon as possible. The copyright reform legislation died with the previous minority government, but now that they have a majority they have vowed to pass it as quickly as possible.

Somehow I doubt they'll repeal the levy once they repeal our fair use either...

Re:Faulty logic

[green1]

You obviously don't understand Canadian Copyright law.
Those 4 examples are all taken from the Canadian Heritage Ministry's official government website regarding the CD Levy. (I'd love to link to it, but I can't seem to find it any more)

In Canada copying for personal use is always legal providing you are copying for yourself, and from the original.