Canada Taxing Blank CDs?

Anonymous Coward writes "Canada has restarted talks on a tax of 74 cents per 15 minutes on digital recording media that is scheduled to begin on January 1st." It's interesting that when DAT was taxed, the format never caught on. Then again, CD-ROM is already a popular format. For more on the DAT issue, which this very closely parallels, RMS has an interesting article that appeared in Wired about 7 years ago, titled "The Right Way to Tax DAT".

Comments

I'm screwed

[SirSlud]

Oh, incidentally, I'm an independant musician. Now I get to spend another 2-4 dollars per blank CD that ends up in the pockets of succesful Canadian musicians. I'm really happy about that too. As an intelligent, cultured musician, I'm proud to say my tax dollars will end up in the pockets of such amazing Canadian musicians as:

Brian Adams
Celine Dion
Sarah McLaughlan

And yes, I'm being just a tiny bit sarcastic. Thank god for mp3.com

Hard drives?

[HP LoveJet]

What about hard drives, which are digital media frequently used to store music in both dedicated and general-purpose systems?

If you assume that music is stored as uncompressed 16-bit 44.1kHz 2-channel samples, an 8GB drive contains roughly 54 15-minute units, for a total tax of 0.74*54 = C$39.96, which is not bad.

On the other hand, if music is stored as 112kbit stereo MP3s (using the rule of thumb that 1MB=1min), that same 8-gig drive can store 559,240 units of 15 minutes, for a total tax of C$413,837.60.

I personally would find that excessive.

Hello, Reality's Over Here.

[Eric Seppanen]

A. It's impossible to determine whether a blank piece of media is destined to be used to duplicate copyrighted material.

B. At over $2 per CD-R, I'd buy my media from Afghanistan if I had to.

C. Copyrighted material can be stored on lots of other media- attempting to tax one media is a slippery slope... what, are you going to add a $200 tax on hard drives because you could store music on them?

A+B+C = somebody's smoking crack.

Here's the worst part

[DonkPunch]

Actually, it will end up in the pockets of the record companies who signed Brian Adams, Celine Dion, and Sarah McLaughlin. :P

You're dead-on right, though. Taxes or penalties on new media formats (be they CD-ROM, DAT, or MP3) HURT independent musicians. I've never ripped a CD to my DAT deck, but I've recorded a heck of a lot of original stuff with it.

e-commerce to the rescue

[rde]

If you're going to have to pay more when you buy blank media locally, get 'em on the internet. 'Computer media' are likely to get over the border with little problem.

Copyrights?

[_J_]

If blank CD's are taxed and these taxes go to artists for the inevitable copies that are going to be made of their music, does that make it OK for me to copy music to one of these blank CD's?

If I pay a surcharge on a CD to cover someone's copyrights, I think I should have the RIGHT to store music on that medium.

Just another thought

J:)

Smuggling?

[Mignon]

Maybe this will promote smuggling of blank CD-R's across the border, like during Prohibiton. I can see a modern-day Elliot Ness smashing boxes of CD-R's with a bulldozer.

Or, more likely, various Indian/Native American reservations along the border will add CD-R's to their shelves, along with the duty-free cigarettes and liquor. If the taxes are high enough and demand is high enough, it'll be worth it.

Doesn't the US do this?

[wesmills]

At my local computer store, I pay $39.99 for a spindle of 50 blank "computer" CDs, which comes to $0.7998 per CD (roughly $0.80). Now, to buy just ONE "audio" CD, which can be used in these $3,000 audio burners, I will pay $5-$6 (I believe that's right, but either way its much more than data). Supposedly this difference goes to the US Copyright office who doles it out to the labels. So, is this unlike what the US does already? If this is the case, then why doesn't Canada do the same thing? (YES, I know taxing is bad, but if they're going to do it, why not do it in a way that makes sense? Oh, and I do know that PCs can burn audio to a "data" CD, which can be played with no problem, at least in my feeble, consumer-level audio devices)

Initiative idea: "Coaster" rebates

[Tau Zero]

One way to make this tax go away is to force the recording companies to be fair about it; if the tax is to be applied to recordable media when purchased, it should be refundable when the media are returned.

Seriously. If a recording is botched and the media are not recoverable, you should be able to get a refund of the tax you paid. In practice the recording industry would be forced to refund the tax on every disk returned. That would sure teach them.

Further consequences of this would be that Parliament would be forced to criminalize the importation of recordable media for refund (fraud, y'know) just as Michigan has criminalized the import of out-of-state soft-drink containers for the ten-cent deposit. Now wouldn't that be fun!

Finally, if you're lucky, you might even get everyone to agree that the whole thing was a rotten idea and that it ought to be scrapped. But you have to force the system into the exercise of the reductio ad absurdum first, so get moving!