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Canadian Music Group Proposes 'Copyright Tax' On Internet Use (torrentfreak.com)
After ongoing discussions and proposals about new taxes and fees to compensate creators for "missed revenue," the Screen Composers Guild of Canada is calling for a copyright tax on all broadband data use above 15 gigabytes per month. TorrentFreak reports: A proposal from the Screen Composers Guild of Canada (SCGC), put forward during last week's Government hearings, suggests to simply add a levy on Internet use above 15 gigabytes per month. The music composers argue that this is warranted because composers miss out on public performance royalties. One of the reasons for this is that online streaming services are not paying as much as terrestrial broadcasters. The composers SCGC represents are not the big music stars. They are the people who write music for TV-shows and other broadcasts. Increasingly these are also shown on streaming services where the compensation is, apparently, much lower.
SCGC's solution to this problem is to make every Canadian pay an extra fee when they use over 15 gigabytes of data per month. This money would then be used to compensate composers and fix the so-called "value gap." As a result, all Internet users who go over the cap will have to pay more. Even those who don't watch any of the programs where the music is used. However, SCGC doesn't see the problem and believes that 15 gigabytes are enough. People who want to avoid paying can still use email and share photos, they argue. Those who go over the cap are likely streaming not properly compensated videos. SCGC writes: "[W]hen you're downloading and consuming over 15 gigabytes of data a month, you're likely streaming Spotify. You're likely streaming YouTube. You're likely streaming Netflix. So we think because the FANG companies will not give us access to the numbers that they have, we have to apply a broad-based levy. They're forcing us to."
SCGC's solution to this problem is to make every Canadian pay an extra fee when they use over 15 gigabytes of data per month. This money would then be used to compensate composers and fix the so-called "value gap." As a result, all Internet users who go over the cap will have to pay more. Even those who don't watch any of the programs where the music is used. However, SCGC doesn't see the problem and believes that 15 gigabytes are enough. People who want to avoid paying can still use email and share photos, they argue. Those who go over the cap are likely streaming not properly compensated videos. SCGC writes: "[W]hen you're downloading and consuming over 15 gigabytes of data a month, you're likely streaming Spotify. You're likely streaming YouTube. You're likely streaming Netflix. So we think because the FANG companies will not give us access to the numbers that they have, we have to apply a broad-based levy. They're forcing us to."
Taxes on internet data to punish internet users or as an action to permit free copying of content on the internet? Here in Sweden we have to pay taxes on storage medium to compensate creators for "missed revenue" due to piracy, but piracy is not allowed even though you pay this fee.
Bigger games these days are easily 45GB.
These backwards, tech illiterate rights organisations can go fuck themselves.
I say people who demand money for nothing in return are likely abusing their spouses. Have you stopped abusing your spouses Mr. Posner and Mr. Novotny?
I agree. Given that Canada has signed on to the US copyright system, there is no need to look for alternative/additional compensation methods. It should be one or the other. According to the new rules, the Log Drivers Waltz will not be public domain until 2072. Crazy.
Some of us are not using their ridicule low bandwitdh for pirating stuff. 15GB goes by pretty fast when you're using a *legal* streaming service (also known as Netflix & such). Besides, some games go easily over multi-GB downloads, PC or consoles (most recent console is a PS2, I'm more of a PC gamer). What about people streaming from Tou.TV or other channel's streaming services, in a legal way? it's CD-tax all over again because they are stuck in a model that doesn't work anymore... What about people using backblaze or any other cloud service? My DVR has a 3TB drive, and I stream a good percentage of it over my phone while not home, so my legally recorded OTA contents is gonna cost me is I stream more than about an hour and a half of free ATSC? And they're wondering why people are going illegal IPTV...
I've got better things to do tonight than die.
In France, the tax on CD-R is on top of the usual VAT. And as the price of the media went down, it became more expensive than the disk itself.
The funny part is that most pirates (or should I say "private backup copy makers") bought their CDs in illegal shops or imported them in order to avoid paying the tax.
It's really easy to go way over 15GB if you don't have cable and use Netflix, Amazon Prime. I don't pirate anything, don't use pornhub. Our family used about 700-800 GB a month. We have a 1Tb cap.
IRONY: The biggest pirate of all is the Music industry itself. Please take a moment to read this old article: "The plaintiffsâ(TM) (musicians) claimed compensation for use of work listed on what are known in the Canadian recording industry as âoepending lists.â These lists, accumulated over many years, contain works for which no licence was obtained and no compensation paid........ â" the action could have been worth up to $6-billion."
In other words the music industry owed 6 billion dollars to musicians for non-payment of songs they used w/o comprensation. - LINK : https://business.financialpost...
And the followup: The record industry only paid 50 million of the 6000 million owed to artists:
https://entertainment.slashdot...
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