Canadian Music Industry Seeks Copy Tax On Memory Cards 265
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.
great idea (Score:5, Insightful)
so once you have paid the copy tax you are free to copy as much music as you like?
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
so once you have paid the copy tax you are free to copy as much music as you like?
No - there position is that this is to compensate for undetected copying - if they catch you, I'm sure they'll be willing to deduct the $3 from the $BAZZILLON_BUX_FOR_COCAINE_AND_HOOKERS that they'll try to get from you - and you can be sure that the artist will still end up getting the sharp end of the stick when it comes to apportioning that money.
Re:great idea (Score:4, Informative)
This is untrue. The Copyright Board of Canada has advised that the levy DOES protect copying and P2P downloading.
Re:great idea (Score:4, Informative)
I live in Germany.
They have this "tax" on various devices / media such as: writeable CDs, CD/DVD burners, printers (!), I can't remember what else.
That does not stop them going for people they think are file-sharing, copying content or whatever.
Absolute parasites. The government are just as bad for forgetting who they are supposed to be representing and going along with this theft.
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I live in Germany.
They have this "tax" on various devices / media such as: writeable CDs, CD/DVD burners, printers (!), I can't remember what else.
That does not stop them going for people they think are file-sharing, copying content or whatever.
Absolute parasites. The government are just as bad for forgetting who they are supposed to be representing and going along with this theft.
They probably don't charge $3 (or whatever the Euro equivalent is) per blank CD, though.
Re: (Score:2)
The prices for blank CDs and DVDs are here [www.gema.de] (in German, go to Page 3). They vary from 6.2 cents for CDs, to €3.473 for a Blu-Ray DVD.
A PC with a burner comes in at €13.65, not sure if they differentiate between CDs and DVDs.
With respect to printers, that is still being fought out in the courts.
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Not that it makes the concept any less parasitic its not QUITE that bad here.
Canada's current private copying levies are as follows: $0.24 per unit for Audio Cassette tape (40min or longer), and $0.29 per unit for CD-R, CD-RW, CD-R Audio, CD-RW Audio and MiniDisc. [1] [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
This is untrue. The Copyright Board of Canada has advised that the levy DOES protect copying and P2P downloading.
I believe you are incorrect. The section of the revised Copyright Act [justice.gc.ca] only grants a limited right to making a private copy.
While subsection 1 of section 80 does indeed grant a limited right to make a private copy, it has restrictions, as noted in subsection 2:
(2) Subsection (1) does not apply if the act described in that subsection is done for the purpose of doing any of the following in relation to any of the things referred to in paragraphs (1)(a) to (c):
(a) selling or renting out, or by way of trade exposing or offering for sale or rental;
(b) distributing, whether or not for the purpose of trade;
(c) communicating to the public by telecommunication; or
(d) performing, or causing to be performed, in public.
You can certainly make a copy of your own CD. You can't use a P2P program to share (and because even leachers need to at least take part in sharing the data as to what parts they need of the .torrent, it can be argued that they are also taking par
Re:great idea (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
compression (Score:2)
so once you have paid the copy tax you are free to copy as much music as you like?
Yes! but data compression requires extra payment. So you can only use AIFF or FLAC not MP3
Re:great idea (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Faulty logic (Score:2)
- 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.
Your logic is faulty. In the first case, you are legal, your friend has committed an illegal act. In the second case, you have committed the illegal act. In case 3, you are only legal, under personal use copy, until you transfer title of the original CD to your friend at which time your copy is now illegal as you no longer own the original. In case 4, you are legal, your friend is illegal for distributing the copy.
In all four cases, somebody is illegal and therefore the results are technically identical
Re:Faulty logic (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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To clarify, they specifically state that you do NOT need to keep the original CD in your posession for your copy to be valid. This is why we pay the levy, to legitimize such use.
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Sorry to reply to myself again, I still can't find the official government page I was looking for earlier (I suspect that's partially because one of their servers pch.gc.ca is down right now) however I did find this excellent FAQ including analysis of rulings by the Copyright Board of Canada on the subject:
http://neil.eton.ca/copylevy.shtml#copy_for_friends [neil.eton.ca]
I note the date is a few years ago, however the law has not (yet) changed on the subject
Re: (Score:2)
As per the Canadian Copyright Act, it is legal as long as you are the one doing the copying and it is for your ears only. It can be copied from an original or a 2nd generation copy (but your friend that gave you that 2nd gen copy has no committed a crime). Both are legal as long as you are the one personally doing the copying. If you personally make a copy and that copy is for your self only, it is all legal. If you give that 2nd gen copy to anyone, you have now committed a crime.
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so once you have paid the copy tax you are free to copy as much music as you like?
According to the copyright collective; Yes, Provided you record audio from your stereo speakers onto a SD card using a portable stereo recorder.
You may also make a personal mix tape from your own record collection.
Re: (Score:2)
In Canada, it's been used to justify downloading/copying, but distribution is still verboten.
If the Conservative government tries to introduce a Canadian DMCA like they have in the past, I expect the levy to be used as grounds to challenge it in court.
Great!!! (Score:5, Funny)
This will stimulate international trade! US citizens will buy their drugs from Canada and we'll buy our storage media from the US.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, but then you will have to start buying canned air like in Space Balls.
Using that same logic that storage media facilitates crime, I will argue to the Canadian government that breathing itself greatly facilitates crime and must be taxed and monitored.
Re: (Score:3)
Why don't they just tax RAM, the music is loaded into there all the time. Let's see each time the music is played.
What the hell is wrong with you?!?!?!? They're perfectly capable of coming up with idiotic, oddball ideas on their own! Don't go giving them any new ones!!!
Only if we get an equal tax on the music industry (Score:2)
There can be some justification to tax the specific device (ipod), but not a multi-purpose medium.
Re: (Score:2)
There can be some justification to tax the specific device (ipod), but not a multi-purpose medium.
I believe the tax is proportional to the fraction of media that are used for the taxable purpose. For example, if 20% of memory cards are used for music, the tax rate is set at 20% of what it would be if all memory cards were used for music. Besides, iPod might not be the best example: an iPod nowadays [apple.com] is a nearly-general-purpose handheld computer, not just a music player.
Re: (Score:2)
So since probably at most 0.01% of flash cards are used for anything other than photography, this tax will be measured in thousandths of a cent, right?
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since probably at most 0.01% of flash cards are used for anything other than photography
I imagine that 0.01% is far too low, especially for Android smartphones with a GB or less of internal storage and a microSD slot. These need a microSD card for any appreciable music and music video storage unless, as on the Archos 43 Internet Tablet, the internal memory has a fairly large partition mounted at /sdcard.
Greedy ****'s (Score:5, Insightful)
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!!!!
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
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.
Perhaps you should lobby for your own tax on memory cards to, or to collect a piece of this "copyright tax". Obviously you have proof the someone has used these cards for storing your material on. ;-)
Re: (Score:2)
I agree, this is basically calling everyone who purchases writeable media a thief. "Oh you bought media that you can copy too? You must be stealing it from somewhere!" In my opinion, this now gives me the right to copy stuff; since I'm paying to do so. They can't have it both ways!
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Don't play into their game and go on the defense. Go on the offense. Just tell them to fuck off and push to repeal the tax on CDs/DVDs. Or they'll be pushing for HDDs/SSDs next.
Re: (Score:2)
Ah HA! You admit to storing copyrighted works! Just wait until the owner's lawyers get wind of this, you damn thievin' pirate!
Re: (Score:2)
They have been collecting the tax on writable CD media for a long time - I was told that out of all the money that was collected so far from that levy, none of it has been dispatched to SOCAN [socan.ca], which would be the appropriate place in order for the artists to be compensated.
Does anyone know if this is true or still true? Or has this money been dispatched to the places that they said they would?
--jeffk++
Re: (Score:2)
"Artists" are in a catch-22 when it comes to the music industry: the labels are evil (see the music label "who owns who" chart and read "Some of your friends are already this fucked"/"The Problem With Music") but they have a near-monopoly on radio stations (they still engage in payola/pay-for-play or simply own the stations outright through holding companies), on ticket outlets, and so the advertising
Cellular radio (Score:2)
but [the major record labels] have a near-monopoly on radio stations
By "radio" do you mean all wireless transmission of music, or just the FM band? Anyone with a 3G data plan can listen to Internet radio in the car. Anyone without can listen to a webcast at home or work and record a webcast to listen to in the car.
Re: (Score:2)
I think you know I am referring to FM + AM bands, not streaming IP audio over 3G/LTE.Suggesting otherwise is merely engaging in a pedantic argument. Yes, yes, 3G and LTE are technically radio, but is obviously not what I was referring to.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
In the US, they usually do it by getting tax breaks. It's essentially the same thing, the taxpayers have to then pay more in taxes or get less in the way of services, but ultimately in any case it's a tax that the taxpayers get to pay. And don't forget about the times when they go for protections and monopolies, then it's not technically a tax, it's just a price increase on all sorts of services or a case of getting less for the same price.
Well, well... (Score:5, Interesting)
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?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I'd rather not pay, thank you. (Score:2)
Let those who are using the product; songs in this case; pay. I'd rather have those suing to prove the guilt of those they sue. I see no reason to just hand them money on the basis that some people are guilty, especially my money.
Whats next, raising road fees because we know some people exceed the speed limit?
Re: (Score:3)
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?
Yes, yes they can. Read the proposed law. They still plan on. This is solely to make up losses for their pathetic, outdated, ineffective business model.
Re: (Score:3)
You'll get both. don't be so naive. Harper has his majority now, Canada is completely fucked.
Unlike Europe - where this is outright ILLEGAL (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
No it is NOT illegal in the EU. Germany is one of the worst in this regard. We pay levies on blank CDs/DVDs/etc., other storage mediums (not just memory cards, e.g. HDDs, USB sticks), printers, PCs, mobile phones, recording equipment (e.g. CD burners), portable audio players, photocopiers and so on and so forth.
At least all these levies eliminated ANY moral qualms I would have had pirating music, movies and books. They took my money by force of law. It's only fair I take their products in return. Sure it ma
IT IS ILLEGAL IN Europe: imposed indiscriminately (Score:3)
TO ALL in this thread replying that it is not illegal: You missing the crucial word of the ruling: indiscriminately
"declared illegal any digital canon which is being imposed indiscriminately on all equipment and materials used for reproduction"
Bottom line: extending and applying the canon to all memory cards indiscriminately - is illegal in Europe
Re: (Score:2)
In consumers and political minds, SD = Cameras (Score:2, Insightful)
The difference between approving a tax on CDs and a tax on memory cards will be the perception in the minds of those voting on it and in the minds of those who vote for the politicians.
CDs are perceived as music storage mediums, but SDs are perceived more as picture storage mediums.
Already it was a bad idea for a tax on CDs, but if the tax is applied to SD cards then it's an easy road to hard drives, cell phones with flash memory, thumbdrives and probably even Web hosting in general.
Google and Amazon won't
Re: (Score:2)
We already had that fight - the courts here ruled that 'non-removable' storage (hard drives, embedded flash) or devices containing such things (iPods, PCs) are exempt from the tax. So this just seems like the CRIA trying to pick up any scraps it can.
Makes *less* sense (Score:3)
Go ahead and tax iPods, which actually *are* used for copying music - but don't try and kill off the photography industry by adding useless taxes.
Re: (Score:3)
iPod for those too young for a job (Score:2)
Dedicated portable music players are actually getting less common now, as even the cheaper mobile phones include the same functionality.
In my experience, dedicated portable music players (e.g. iPod shuffle/nano) and dedicated handheld computers (e.g. iPod touch) remain popular with the under-18 crowd in the United States. Minors tend not to be able to afford Virgin Mobile USA's $300 per year voice and data plan for "even the cheaper mobile phones" such as LG Optimus V and Samsung Intercept.
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Re: (Score:3)
How many people copy music on SD cards? 99.9% of them are used in things like digital cameras. Other than a few VW owners (some models have a SD card slot in the dash connected to the music system) I don't know anyone who would.
I am surprised they did not mention USB sticks or Memory Stick or XD cards. You are right most people would use some sort of music player to copy music to rather than use a card. If I want to play recorded (ie ripped) music in my car all I do is copy the appropriate files to my Android phone and play via my AUX connection to my car radio. The same is true for the iPhone.
Go ahead and tax iPods, which actually *are* used for copying music - but don't try and kill off the photography industry by adding useless taxes.
Actually any smart phone (and some not so smart) as long as it has some storage can act as a music player. To me this tax is crazy since mo
Makes even less sense (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
There isn't a huge ecosystem of music players that take memory cards as the primary medium
My last 5 cell phones all had a microSD slot, which was used for storing pics from the camera, and for storing media for the phone's built-in mp3 player.
Re: (Score:3)
Don't worry, they'll go after HDDs/SSDs and Internet connections themselves next. This is how it works, the more successful they are in asking for money, the more lawyers/lobbyists they'll be able to afford, and the more things they'll have their hand out for.
The only correct response is not to get defensive, but go on the offensive and get the initial tax (CDs/DVDs) repealed.
only fair IF (Score:3)
everytime I make a .zip or .tar file, the music 'industry' pays me BACK.
the gall of the 'industry' to take what is essentially 99.9% data-only (NOT music) format and try to gouge 'usage fee' for it where its absurd beyond belief.
stop following their rules (like we even have to state this anymore). when the laws become bought and paid for by the rich, its time to start ignoring the laws.
you want us to respect the laws? make them respectable. we'll wait. until then, we'll do pretty much any damned thing we want (torrents, usenet, whatever).
grow up, and we'll treat you like adults. (isn't that a switch!)
Re: (Score:2)
It's not time to start ignoring the laws, it's time to start changing the laws.
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how's that working out for all of us?
its a non-starter. the laws - even less so, today - are not there for us. they are there for the powerful and actual owners.
you and I are seen as 'renters'. truly.
our votes do not carry any weight. its the lobbying that needs fixing. until then, voting is a scam; only for show to keep the masses sated in their ignorance.
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It's not time to start ignoring the laws, it's time to start changing the laws.
Unfortunately it is very difficult to change laws no matter how stupid or unfair once they have been passed by politicians.
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Framing by the MPAA-owned news organizations (Score:2)
it's time to start changing the laws.
How? I don't know about Canada, but the major news organizations in my country are co-owned with movie studios. ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, and Fox News have been seen to use their channels as soapboxes to frame the issues and candidates [pineight.com] in a manner favorable to Walt Disney Pictures, Universal Studios, Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros. Pictures, and Twentieth Century Fox Films respectively. The news organizations hope that by election day, voters will 1. forget about copyright as an issue and 2. forget about any can
The price we pay for sanity (Score:2)
In Canada this is the price we pay to prevent the criminalisation of our private music use.
Copying music for personal use is legal here and institutionalised.
Re:The price we pay for sanity (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re: (Score:3)
I have no idea what anyone would use a 32Gbyte or 64Gbyte SD-card for, it is an insane amount of storage for most digital cameras, but pretty neat for storing entire seasons of TV-series, or all the music you have ever had the chance to leech.
Video. The new thing in DSLRs is videos and even dedicated video cameras are using SD. 64 GB is a nice big number for video.
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The real large bulk of usage is other data on mobile phones, as well as use in cameras. Is the entire software industry being recompensated, too? And how is that large fraction of the price of especially the smaller
Re:The price we pay for sanity (Score:5, Informative)
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...
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Because our laws at the moment give us the right to copy for personal use... don't worry, the government has promised to remove those rights as quickly as they can (I believe this is in their "100 day plan" from the election we had a couple weeks ago)
Re:The price we pay for sanity (Score:4, Interesting)
Because up here the last time they tried, they lost and lost BAD.
BMG Canada vs John Doe resulted in the judge declaring file sharing was entirely legal! It was a sledgehammer to the balls for the music industry. It took a year for the Federal Court of Appeals to nix the previous judges ruling (while not making any judgement themselves), leaving the question of file sharing legality an open and unanswered question. That was six years ago. The Canadian music industry is waiting for copyright reform (probably coming in the next year) before they risk slamming their collective dicks in a door again. In the meantime they'll just soak up some media levy - it's cheaper than constantly hiring lawyers anyway.
Digital Cameras (Score:5, Informative)
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....
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I'm guessing with the surge of being able to add additional storage to many phones via SD, this is what they fear.
But yeah, I have never used an SD card for anything except my cameras.
if you can no longer compete (Score:5, Insightful)
Get legislation enacted to guarantee your revenue stream.
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Get legislation enacted to guarantee your revenue stream.
That's how the BBC get their revenue stream, and many Slashdotters say they'd like to have that system in their country.
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And you would protect him by making everyone else pay for what got stolen? By treating everybody like the thieves that broke into his house?
Also, I think your definition of competition is a little off. Running in a race is competition. Tripping another runner is anti-competitive. Breaking into a house is not competitive. Not to mention copyright "theft" does not carry the same implications as real theft, thereby making your analogy worthless.
RIAA is stealing from independent artists... (Score:5, Insightful)
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...?
An unsigned band is its own label (Score:2)
If a non-signed band uses CD-R's to record their music onto, they are paying a fair use tax.
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but as I understand it, a "label" is the owner of copyright in a sound recording, and a "signed" band is one under a contract with a label that establishes a work-for-hire or copyright assignment relationship. So if a band isn't signed, then it is its own label. Then why can't the band apply for its own share of the private copying royalties?
Re: (Score:2)
because you have to have a pool of more than 5 lawyers to even get in the door to ask for the paper work to ask for a slice of that pie.
Two advantages of this: (Score:4, Insightful)
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?
There is no cash for artists. (Score:3)
The fund gets paid out to record labels, not artists. The best you can do is sell your copyright to a record label so they can get your share of the cash.
Please define "record labels" (Score:2)
The fund gets paid out to record labels
See my other comment [slashdot.org].
Hah (Score:4, Interesting)
We got that in Spain. The thing ended up propagating to every multimedia device like photo cameras, HDDs and anything that can use removable memory. (and it's a large price difference!)
If you Canadians can stop it, this would be a good moment, before it spreads.
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A tax on HDDs and other "non-removable" media or devices (read: iPods) was already smashed. This is just the CRIA trying to pick up table scraps.
A Video Resume for the music industry.. (Score:2)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPgHbt0ODr4
Fine ... (Score:3)
Just so the Canadian music industry understands ...
I use my memory cards for my camera and my cell phones, and I use my USB sticks for work, and I use blank DVDs to make backups ... add another copyright tax (don't call it a levy) on my ability to have electronic data, and I will hand around copies of MP3s like they're candy.
I will get my money's worth out of this *&$#( levy -- if you continue the default position that I am pirating your music (which I'm not doing now), then my default position will be that since I've already paid for your music, I am bloody well entitled to it. I won't even draw the line at Canadian music -- I'll just assume you're tithing to the RIAA.
If your business strategy is to charge all of us for the music that we're neither listening to nor pirating ... well, I will pirate it just because I've already paid you for it.
In short, if you keep ripping me off, I'll start ripping you off -- and I won't feel even a little bad about it. Is that what they really want?
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Horseshit ... this isn't some "feed the starving artists" fund. This is a tax to make up for the (claimed) lost revenues of the recording industry -- by making absolutely everyone pay
License to download as much as I like (Score:2)
Taxation without representation (Score:2)
Next thing ... (Score:2)
You kids stay off my lawn!
Great News (Score:2)
I just have to set up a photography business , set up a galley and then get tin on this racket as people might be using their camera to take photos of my photos and print them and then I'm out of money? Does what I wrote make sense, well no but that's my point.
There will be no end to this (Score:2)
The "industry" has made false claims of doom with every new technology from the player piano to tomorrow's next thing. They were successful in killing DAT and limiting other tech, having laws written and more and still they are not satisfied. They have taxes on media that may or may not be used to transport content that may or may not be theirs and still they want more.
Legislators need to wake up to the endless greed. They are rich and powerful, these media industrialists, because they are making enormou
Free music in Canada!! (Score:2)
Stop the madness! (Score:2)
These levies aren't to cover piracy... (Score:4, Interesting)
They are to cover ANTI-piracy. Forget about what it is, and forget about what it means. It's not a good idea, it's a better idea.
Look at the US. Not at their piracy, but at their letigious anti-piracy. Think about all of the times that someone, especially the RIAA but not only them, takes legal action, of any kind, at all related to pirating music, in any way.
Now think of the costs spent, by the tax-payers, to pay the courts, the judges, the legal defense, cleaning the court rooms, publishing the court date, scheduling the legal battle amongst actual important things.
Think of the tax-payer money lost because people free to sue each other actually do.
$3 per memory card is WAY LESS than the cost of supporting people suing one another.
That's why we do it. It's cheaper to pay a tax than to deal with such an issue. So we'll wait for the US to solve piracy altogether -- you know, with dmca and such -- and until then, we'll take the lesser of two evils.
so Canda is saying you don't .. (Score:2)
iPods can use SD cards? (Score:2)
I want a MPAA tax on wire, magnets and esp. sand. (Score:2)
I have build a electromechanical non-volatile RAM device in my garage (two of its walls to be precice). The RAM module can store 2048 bits (2Kb, 256 8bit bytes). The contacter relays have been modified to mechanically operate toggle switches that then preserve the relays' state when powered down. Thus, Individual bits can be edited by hand. A computer can access the bit array via parallel port (8 bit module at a time -- the computer selects which byte is returned by first writing a selection byte). It'
Re: (Score:2)
Why not tax brain cells and get right to where all the illegality happens?
People listen to music and make copies of it! They remember, and never pay royalties on their memories! The music industry is losing quadrillions every day of unpaid memory royalties!
Think of the poor starving artists who need to be compensated for their work or else you won't have any good music!
Re: (Score:2)
I stopped consuming music years ago.
I am happy with the hundreds of hours of music I already own and generally find little new music I like. I get my new music fix from the radio, pandora, and the like. The only music I actually acquire are the free weekly downloads from itunes.
I stopped primarily due to DRM and crazy ass licensing. Less DRM now, but my new habits around this are established.
Our copyright/IP system is entirely broken and getting more so every day. Something has to break, I am sitting o