I can read section 80(2)(b), and it says I'm not allowed to copy for the purpose of distributing. It doesn't say that after I've copied for some other purpose I'm not allowed to do what I like with the copy.
Since I don't believe there are any cases where someone has "gone to jail" for giving a private copy to someone else, I am not sure which are the "usual legal decisions" to search to find examples. Can you point to even a single one? I'd be astounded to see a case where someone has even been fined or a reprimanded for doing that in Canada. Show me.
For trying to get it right, you got a lot of it wrong.
The Federal Government collects the money on behalf of CIRA [equivalent to RIAA in the US] who distributes it as they see fit to artists. The RIAA equivalent is the CRIA, not the CIRA, and they're not in charge of distributing the levy. It's the CPCC that gets the money. Record companies get a small portion of it.
If you were to live in Canada and own a "legal copy", it would be easy to describe: A copy you, and only you, made personally for your own personal use. You and only you must have operated whatever equipment was used to create the copy, and you must keep the copied version in your possession or destroy it. You're talking about a private copy. You're also allowed to buy copies from a store, and those might be legal. But there's nothing in the law that says you have to keep the private copy in your possession. You just made that up.
Some of the examples you list have a grain of truth to them (private copies for commercial purposes aren't legal, videos and other works aren't covered), but most are not.
Thanks. I grabbed that link from the paragraph number on the English page; I didn't realize that it was a link to the translation. I guess they say "Use the Preview Button! Check those URLs!" for a reason.
If I borrow a friend's music CD and copy that CD on to media purchased under the levy...
There's no requirement that you copy onto levied media. You can make a personal copy onto any audio recording medium. See the Copyright Act, it's not that hard to read.
This is why the Canadian levy is a terrible, terrible idea. It's nationalistic (as it kicks a little cash to Canadian artists each year), but it's hardly equitable. It's a tax on everybody who buys media -- whether they pirate or not -- and it gives many people the false belief that the artist is being compensated, thus legitimizing piracy. For Canadian artists, I don't believe the money makes up for lost sales, and as covered above, non-Canadians don't see any money.
None of it goes to American performers, but it does go to American (and other international) songwriters and publishers. I don't know the reasons behind this distinction, but I suspect it's part of the Copyright Act section 85 reciprocity provisions. Presumably Canadian performers aren't treated equally to Americans in the USA.
I'm pretty sure copying data off of your laptop or blackberry would be more like looking in your suitcase and then confiscating everything in it. Which probably wouldn't fly with many folks.
It's not confiscation, any more than copyright violation is theft. It's copying. In the case of the border guards, it may be copyright violation (you probably don't have authority to give them permission to copy everything), and it may be industrial espionage, but it's not confiscation.
That really depends on where you live. In Canada, it's likely true about movies but not about songs because of the private copying right. Other places also have a private copying right. Sweden has some sort of private copying right, but I don't know if it applies to downloading movies or songs.
Okay, so the botnet downloads a million Celine Dion songs. I'm not Celine, so I show evidence of this cheating, and sue the CPCC because they aren't using a fair method to distribute the levy.
On the survey approach: I agree that's a better approach, I'm just saying it's difficult to measure small proportions. (Your budget estimate is high by at least a factor of two, there's only about $5 per connection, and something like 10M connections, but you have a good point that they should spend the money on statisticians rather than musicians.)
Yes. But you seemed to think the proposal was viable, despite the risk. It's not. It's vulnerable to blackmail from the botnet owners: they could derail the entire payment system if they attacked, so the threat of attack would be enough.
A survey of users might work, but it wouldn't give a stable income to small artists. They'd get nothing if one of their fans wasn't in the sample, and a huge payout if they got lucky and there was, assuming standard sampling estimates. (If you choose 1000 people at random from a population of 10 million, each one counts as representative of 10000.)
How is that different from the current system, other than raising much less revenue for the copyright holders? Right now I can download for free, or I can go to ITMS and download for 0.99.
There is essentially no chance that this proposal will pass, but if it did, the point of it would be that the price can be so low because it is applied universally. If one in ten people chose to pay it, it would have to be $50 per month for the same revenue: and can you believe one in ten would pay that?
Probably the same way the blank media levy is collected/distributed: lump sums given out to the songwriters' and musicians' guilds, which is then distributed by the guild on basis of need. Quite a fair way to do things, really, and one that the majority of Canadian musicians support wholeheartedly.
It's not done on a basis of need. I thought it was based on radio airplay, but it's actually a mix of airplay and album sales. The assumption is that the mix of downloads matches the mix of purchases. See the CPCC website.
I'm not sure it'll continue to be fair: both radio listening and album purchases are on the decline. It's hard to measure downloads.
Say Grandma has an internet connection, and uses it only for sending email. She lives on a fixed income. Why should she pay $5 a month to subsidize other people so they can get free music by violating copyright? For someone on a fixed income, another $5/mo bill is a significant hit. Maybe that's $5 she could have spent having lunch with her bridge club at IHOP.
She's paying the tax so other people won't be violating copyright. If she doesn't like it, she could save some money by downgrading to dialup. (Assuming that the proposal passes, and that it doesn't apply to dialup. And that pigs will fly.)
The tax should be optional. Downloading without paying the tax should be illegal. Like a fishing license for music. If I don't go fishing I don't pay a tax on fishing. If I don't go hunting music I should not have to pay.
That makes it a lot more expensive to administer, because then you need a big bureaucracy to handle the licensing. You would also have a lot of illegal downloading, and we'd be more or less in the current situation.
The main difficulty with this proposal is determining a fair distribution of the proceeds. It is so easy to fake traffic if the share is based on traffic.
Currently the blank media levy is distributed based on radio airplay, and that's not really very fair. This would be a lot more money.
It will be effectively impossible for anyone to debunk the research if it is genuinely good, because that's how science works. Wow, I wanna live in the same universe as you. Science is often debunked by people who know nothing about science. Look at the steam cell and cloning 'debate' in the US. I don't think you know what "debunked" means. Stem cells and cloning haven't been "debunked", they've just been suppressed by the religious elements of the government.
I wrote: the levy is only placed on media where the main use is to hold music.
Some AC wrote: That is blatantly false. The levy is also charged for media that is used primarly for backup and distribution of data and other non-music content. Like Linux for example. Every time I burn an ISO, I have to pay the levy with no benefit to the producers of the content in the ISO.
I wasn't talking about your personal use, I was talking about the overall use by everyone, in the view of the Copyright Board. Read the Copyright Act, paragraph 79.
Thank you, Slashdot, for making me not able to eat Ice Cream today.
Well, at least there's still Jello. Oops, look at the end of the article:
"But using gelatin as a source has the advantage of being easy to supply because it is a by-product of the meat and leather industries," says Andrew Wilbey, an ice-cream expert at Reading University, UK.
1. Yes, CDRs are becoming obsolete as the medium for storing music. That's why the levy should have been applied to MP3 players.
2. Why is using DVD-R's for backups funny? That just seems rational. The levy is supposed to apply to media that are mainly used for music. That's still true about CDRs, but has never been true about DVDs.
Everybody has the private copying right, whether they choose to make use of it or not. Freedom is a benefit.
By the way, it is unlikely to be applied to generic hard drives, just as it doesn't apply to recordable DVDs: the levy is only placed on media where the main use is to hold music. Currently that's audio cassettes if they are 40 minutes or longer, CD-R, CD-RW (and the Audio versions of those), minidiscs. There was a proposal to extend it to the media in music players; that's what was overturned, basically on a technicality because of the wording of the Act.
Wouldn't taxing people for copyright violations they may commit be the best way to show them the door to illegal copying?
Canadians are not committing copyright violations when they make copies for personal use. That's what the private copying right (part VIII of the act) is about. Those are legal copies they're making.
The problem is giving appropriate compensation to the copyright holders for these free copies. The act imposes the levy to pay for it, but lots of people don't use levied media to store their songs: they save them to hard drive and iPod, not CDR or tape.
It's very likely the levy will go away soon, but I'd guess the private copying right will disappear at the same time.
I think the levy is a good solution. I don't want to have to go through some DRM'd online store to get music, I'd like to just download it. Why shouldn't I do that, if the copyright owners are being compensated properly?
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You mean if I borrow money from A to pay a debt to B, then B owes all that money back to A and I'm off the hook? Cool!!
I especially love that he never brings up the 99.9999999% of normal people who play violent video games and DON'T kill people,
You're exaggerating. There's no way it's more than 99.9999%.
I can read section 80(2)(b), and it says I'm not allowed to copy for the purpose of distributing. It doesn't say that after I've copied for some other purpose I'm not allowed to do what I like with the copy.
Since I don't believe there are any cases where someone has "gone to jail" for giving a private copy to someone else, I am not sure which are the "usual legal decisions" to search to find examples. Can you point to even a single one? I'd be astounded to see a case where someone has even been fined or a reprimanded for doing that in Canada. Show me.
A copy you, and only you, made personally for your own personal use. You and only you must have operated whatever equipment was used to create the copy, and you must keep the copied version in your possession or destroy it. You're talking about a private copy. You're also allowed to buy copies from a store, and those might be legal. But there's nothing in the law that says you have to keep the private copy in your possession. You just made that up.
Some of the examples you list have a grain of truth to them (private copies for commercial purposes aren't legal, videos and other works aren't covered), but most are not.
Thanks. I grabbed that link from the paragraph number on the English page; I didn't realize that it was a link to the translation. I guess they say "Use the Preview Button! Check those URLs!" for a reason.
If I borrow a friend's music CD and copy that CD on to media purchased under the levy...
There's no requirement that you copy onto levied media. You can make a personal copy onto any audio recording medium. See the Copyright Act, it's not that hard to read.
No, you misread it. It's really very simple:
McCain voted to not disallow the inclusion of the clause that would not allow the telecoms to be charged.
Obama voted to disallow that clause.
Clinton did not vote to disallow that clause, but neither did she vote to not disallow it; she just did not vote at all.
Clear now?
This is why the Canadian levy is a terrible, terrible idea. It's nationalistic (as it kicks a little cash to Canadian artists each year), but it's hardly equitable. It's a tax on everybody who buys media -- whether they pirate or not -- and it gives many people the false belief that the artist is being compensated, thus legitimizing piracy. For Canadian artists, I don't believe the money makes up for lost sales, and as covered above, non-Canadians don't see any money.
None of it goes to American performers, but it does go to American (and other international) songwriters and publishers. I don't know the reasons behind this distinction, but I suspect it's part of the Copyright Act section 85 reciprocity provisions. Presumably Canadian performers aren't treated equally to Americans in the USA.
I'm pretty sure copying data off of your laptop or blackberry would be more like looking in your suitcase and then confiscating everything in it. Which probably wouldn't fly with many folks.
It's not confiscation, any more than copyright violation is theft. It's copying. In the case of the border guards, it may be copyright violation (you probably don't have authority to give them permission to copy everything), and it may be industrial espionage, but it's not confiscation.
Is downloading movies and songs illegal? yes.
That really depends on where you live. In Canada, it's likely true about movies but not about songs because of the private copying right. Other places also have a private copying right. Sweden has some sort of private copying right, but I don't know if it applies to downloading movies or songs.
Okay, so the botnet downloads a million Celine Dion songs. I'm not Celine, so I show evidence of this cheating, and sue the CPCC because they aren't using a fair method to distribute the levy.
On the survey approach: I agree that's a better approach, I'm just saying it's difficult to measure small proportions. (Your budget estimate is high by at least a factor of two, there's only about $5 per connection, and something like 10M connections, but you have a good point that they should spend the money on statisticians rather than musicians.)
Yes. But you seemed to think the proposal was viable, despite the risk. It's not. It's vulnerable to blackmail from the botnet owners: they could derail the entire payment system if they attacked, so the threat of attack would be enough.
A survey of users might work, but it wouldn't give a stable income to small artists. They'd get nothing if one of their fans wasn't in the sample, and a huge payout if they got lucky and there was, assuming standard sampling estimates. (If you choose 1000 people at random from a population of 10 million, each one counts as representative of 10000.)
How is that different from the current system, other than raising much less revenue for the copyright holders? Right now I can download for free, or I can go to ITMS and download for 0.99.
There is essentially no chance that this proposal will pass, but if it did, the point of it would be that the price can be so low because it is applied universally. If one in ten people chose to pay it, it would have to be $50 per month for the same revenue: and can you believe one in ten would pay that?
Botnets provide thousands of unique IP addresses. If someone used a botnet to download instead of spam, they could get a much better rate of return.
Probably the same way the blank media levy is collected/distributed: lump sums given out to the songwriters' and musicians' guilds, which is then distributed by the guild on basis of need. Quite a fair way to do things, really, and one that the majority of Canadian musicians support wholeheartedly.
It's not done on a basis of need. I thought it was based on radio airplay, but it's actually a mix of airplay and album sales. The assumption is that the mix of downloads matches the mix of purchases. See the CPCC website.
I'm not sure it'll continue to be fair: both radio listening and album purchases are on the decline. It's hard to measure downloads.
Say Grandma has an internet connection, and uses it only for sending email. She lives on a fixed income. Why should she pay $5 a month to subsidize other people so they can get free music by violating copyright? For someone on a fixed income, another $5/mo bill is a significant hit. Maybe that's $5 she could have spent having lunch with her bridge club at IHOP.
She's paying the tax so other people won't be violating copyright. If she doesn't like it, she could save some money by downgrading to dialup. (Assuming that the proposal passes, and that it doesn't apply to dialup. And that pigs will fly.)
The tax should be optional. Downloading without paying the tax should be illegal. Like a fishing license for music. If I don't go fishing I don't pay a tax on fishing. If I don't go hunting music I should not have to pay.
That makes it a lot more expensive to administer, because then you need a big bureaucracy to handle the licensing. You would also have a lot of illegal downloading, and we'd be more or less in the current situation.
The main difficulty with this proposal is determining a fair distribution of the proceeds. It is so easy to fake traffic if the share is based on traffic.
Currently the blank media levy is distributed based on radio airplay, and that's not really very fair. This would be a lot more money.
I wrote: the levy is only placed on media where the main use is to hold music.
Some AC wrote: That is blatantly false. The levy is also charged for media that is used primarly for backup and distribution of data and other non-music content. Like Linux for example. Every time I burn an ISO, I have to pay the levy with no benefit to the producers of the content in the ISO.
I wasn't talking about your personal use, I was talking about the overall use by everyone, in the view of the Copyright Board. Read the Copyright Act, paragraph 79.
If by "just download" you mean without purchasing, that is not covered by the levy.
You should read the Copyright Act. That's not what it says.
Thank you, Slashdot, for making me not able to eat Ice Cream today.
Well, at least there's still Jello. Oops, look at the end of the article:
"But using gelatin as a source has the advantage of being easy to supply because it is a by-product of the meat and leather industries," says Andrew Wilbey, an ice-cream expert at Reading University, UK.
Two points:
1. Yes, CDRs are becoming obsolete as the medium for storing music. That's why the levy should have been applied to MP3 players.
2. Why is using DVD-R's for backups funny? That just seems rational. The levy is supposed to apply to media that are mainly used for music. That's still true about CDRs, but has never been true about DVDs.
Everybody has the private copying right, whether they choose to make use of it or not. Freedom is a benefit.
By the way, it is unlikely to be applied to generic hard drives, just as it doesn't apply to recordable DVDs: the levy is only placed on media where the main use is to hold music. Currently that's audio cassettes if they are 40 minutes or longer, CD-R, CD-RW (and the Audio versions of those), minidiscs. There was a proposal to extend it to the media in music players; that's what was overturned, basically on a technicality because of the wording of the Act.
Wouldn't taxing people for copyright violations they may commit be the best way to show them the door to illegal copying?
Canadians are not committing copyright violations when they make copies for personal use. That's what the private copying right (part VIII of the act) is about. Those are legal copies they're making.
The problem is giving appropriate compensation to the copyright holders for these free copies. The act imposes the levy to pay for it, but lots of people don't use levied media to store their songs: they save them to hard drive and iPod, not CDR or tape.
It's very likely the levy will go away soon, but I'd guess the private copying right will disappear at the same time.
I think the levy is a good solution. I don't want to have to go through some DRM'd online store to get music, I'd like to just download it. Why shouldn't I do that, if the copyright owners are being compensated properly?