Canadians May Face 25% Download Tariff 615
C-Yo writes "While Canadians have battled against an iPod tariff for more than a
year, now comes news that Canada's copyright collectives are seeking a
tariff on iTunes as well. Professor
Michael Geist (who last
week dismantled music industry claims about peer-to-peer) reports
that one collective is demanding an incredible 25% of the gross revenue
of music download services as well as 15% of webcasters' gross revenue
and 10% of gamers gross revenue (free
version of report or Toronto
Star reg. version). When combined with other tariff
proposals, it would appear that Canada's collectives want to the kill
the download industry, demanding at least 40% of everything iTunes,
Napster, and other new services earn."
That doesn't make any sense... (Score:5, Insightful)
But, at least in the case of iTunes, you're already PAYING for the product. So there's no need to tariff it because the product is being legitimately purchased.
(Of course, that won't stop your friendly government from figuring out how to tax you...)
As if. (Score:5, Insightful)
SOCAN's proposal does not stop with music download services. The new Tariff 22 also calls for a tariff of 15 percent of gross revenues from both audio webcast sites that feature content similar to conventional radio stations as well as from established radio stations that webcast their signal. Moreover, gaming sites that communicate musical works as part of their games face a potential tariff of ten percent of gross revenues. In fact, to ensure that no one escapes Tariff 22, SOCAN envisions a tariff of ten percent of gross revenues for all other sites that communicate music.
Ultimately, this is all a bunch of legal poppycock. It's a proposal, and I'd argue that it's a damn stupid, untenable proposal. We need to let the Canadian government know that its a stupid proposal, but I have a feeling that they'll see it for what it is. After all, they've ruled positively in downloading cases before - what with our tariff on blank media.
Kill it in Canada, maybe (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't see it killing these globally, just in Canada.
Re:It isn't just downloads.... (Score:1, Insightful)
I am in the wrong line of work.
Re:It isn't just downloads.... (Score:1, Insightful)
If we continue to run up $700 billion dollar annual surpluses, our trading partners are pretty soon going to pack up shop and refuse to trade with us. Can you imagine the barriers we must have set up to make this happen? Evil. Pure evil.
I don't blame Canada for this trade war at all. Obviously, the US needs to revamp its trading policies.
Re:It isn't just downloads.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Oh my gosh. There are still people who believe this is wrong?
Sure, let's go and give incentives for farmers to farm the heck out of their land. Then what do you do when the land is useless for a couple of decades? Appropriately rotating crops and leaving the land to rest at times will give more production than killing the land in a few short years. So no, it isn't "not growing crops."
And price fixing in small amounts is also justified, if the natural market price would force many farmers out of business. Sure, once the food supply runs low the demand will increase, but for something like the food of a nation, letting the free market play out isn't quite the best strategy. If you let the farmers grow all they can, the danger is that supply will outrun immediate demand, prices will fall, suppliers will fail, and demand will far outrun the long-term supply.
So does this make downloading files legal? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:As a Canadian (Score:2, Insightful)
You idiots, set a reasonable fee, like 5 cents, and watch 200 million people download your song. Charge $1 and get nothing.
I use Allofmp3 because they do pay royalties, I do not condone illegal copyright violations.
Dave from Downunder
Woah, exactly when (Score:2, Insightful)
absurd (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:That doesn't make any sense... (Score:3, Insightful)
Canadian Gov. (Score:3, Insightful)
That out of the way I have faith in Canadian regulators to find public methods of stimulating Canadians arts into which to dump the money so it won't benefit corperations (like it would in the states)...
The main reason, well if the RIC (or whatever is pushing it) then it's simply because they don't want to negotiate with apple which is silly because we have the same large music corperations (Sony etc.) but who knows maybe they're bitter.
The main thing that Canadians have and many other countries also have is regulations requiring media distributers to distribute a certain level of Canadian content (it's not bad maybe 15% or 25% but it's well regulated and has to be in prime time etc.) This leads to strange effects where artists become huge in Canada without any international acclaim.
Anyway this tarriff could be used to replace this clause, since we're getting RIC lawsuits anyway (Despite the fact that our laws will rule against them) it seems the only possible reason.
It's nice to be able to trust our government to have the interest of the citizens and artists at heart rather than industry, they do get a trifle misguided sometimes though I'll admit.
Re:It isn't just downloads.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Who cares about the WTO? (Score:2, Insightful)
Free to retaliate, anyone is free to retaliate. I wonder how the US would like to see a 25 per cent surtax on energy exports to the US. Before you laugh, see how much of the US engery requirements are imported from Canada in terms of electricty, natural gas and oil.
Re:It isn't just downloads.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Anyone who farms the heck out of their land and makes their land useless for decades probabbly deserves barren land. Crop rotation is a great thing, but why force it on land owners?
Price fixing is never justified (IMO). If it kills off farmers who can't compete that's survival of the fittest.
I am not an economist, so I honestly am probabbly not the most qualified to do this. I just think that social engineering usually is not good.
When will the music industry accept ..... (Score:2, Insightful)
I mean yes there is piracy, but there always was. Before P2P, there was FM radio and tapes. When I was in college CD's were still kinda new, and people swapped CD's all the time. Little known fact is that a hifi-vcr will record audio at CD quality in an analog medium.
All this MP3 stuff is compressed and less than CD quality. Frankly things have gotten better for the music industry. They are just looking for reason for why people don't want to buy the crappy music they keep trying to shove down our throats today.
Re:The Conservatives will put a stop to that (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Oh Canada! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Drinkin' the koolaid (Score:3, Insightful)
This whole socialism thing you're going on about? I think it's a better way to live, and so do most of the other ppl here. If I'm going to pay my taxes towards funding the operation of a society and live within it, I'd like one that is structured to support the people who live here. I'd rather see the ignorant educated, the homeless given food and shelter, the criminals given social treatment and so on. I think investing in improving the lot of everyone is good for the every individual involved in addition to being good for the society.
I like living in a place where people care about each other to put their money where there mouth is rather than spouting rhetoric, cutting government programs, shifting responsibility for education and health care to the individuals who can afford it least when they need it most and looking for another country to bomb into submission and exploit.
I want to see this trend progress further along Socialist lines, a la the Nordic countries, rather than becoming more like the US. I consider your country to be a prime example of how badly things go when people don't give a shit about anyone but themselves. Fortunately for me, most of my countrymen seem to agree.
Rest assured though... if I become bitter and selfish and decide I want to live in a place where the social structure is set up to make it easy for me to exploit my fellow man, I'll be sure to pay your country a visit.
Re:It isn't just downloads.... (Score:3, Insightful)
That said, I firmly believe you are DEAD wrong. Economic theory, as I learned it, states that those owners of the land would not overfarm it but would take care of their land to produce for decades. Such is the argument for privatization of public fishing grounds, etc. If someone owns the lake (or in this case, the land), then they wont let the fish (crops, land, etc) disappear from overfishing (overfarming). Think about it.
I also disagree with your point about "the community can't afford to allow the natural process to occur". The US Government purchases excess crops only to dump them on foreign economies. These "gifts" serve as a way for US farmers to have a built in sale point for many crops. They also serve as a great way to squash local farmers where the grain is supplied, creating a farming dependence upon grain-rich countries like the US. I wont comment as to my opinions on this, as it would certainly be offtopic to our discussion.
However, there is certainly much room for improvement, and a shakeout in the farming system can occur without much negative impact. Again, we MUST weigh any grain price fluctuations against the real gains we would see from not dumping billions to farmers who do nothing.
Real shortages are pretty much non-existant in the US when it comes to grain commodities. Even in the case where farmers with less than adequate education about crop rotation and their ability to compete without subsidies, I believe that these prices would not get to a horrible point.
The traditional argument for your point of view is that subsidies kept grain prices low so that bread was easy to get ahold of and cheap for inner city residents. I have never really understood that argument, and have never seen any good documentation or articles that describe the economic basis for such an argument.
Surely any system put in place to eliminate subsidies would not just cut them off all at once. I think a more acceptable solution, both for the farmers and for the economy, would be to phase them out over 5 or 10 years. This would allow the effects to occur gradually and wouldnt force any immediate price shocks. This also allows time for farmers to make choices knowing the future instead of forced into bankruptcy immediately, etc.
Re:It isn't just downloads.... (Score:5, Insightful)
If it was just the farmers' fine. Problem is, it may make economic sense for farmers to "mine" their land -- to maximise production for several years, take their profit, and leave a desert. Same as the timber industry -- given the choice between moderate profits indefinitely and high profits for 10 years and cashing out, economics pushes you to go for the shorter term, clearfelling, rather than selective harvesting. Or fisheries -- take all you can this year and don't care about wiping out the next generation. And if any competitors go for the long term, they go broke as they can't compete on price with someone who doesn't care about is destroying their land.
The quarter-by-quarter business model is fine for some industries, but not agriculture.
Re:It isn't just downloads.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Yea right.. We aren't talking about generation to generation farmers here. Start looking at the greater economic picture, where every industry turns into a small number of large coporations who leech off the resources. It will always be more profitable to leech off the land for 5 years and dump it, only to buy new land and do the same, over and over again. I'm not talking about Farmer Brown who sits around driving his tractor and taking care of his crops. He has a vested interest in his land and his family farm. But the same absolutely CANNOT be said about a coporation, no matter how you slice it.
Even if coporations outsoruced all their farming to the locals, they would just cut big bonus checks to them to crank out the max in the short term and then drop them. The local wouldn't have a problem because he would probably be set for life after that point. What does he care if his soil is useless... He is rich now and has a retirement account.
Your points only make sence if every farmer in the country ran like a small family business and passed it down through the generations selling to local grocery stores and farmer's markets. This lala land you dream of doesn't exist. There are greater economic factors at work here. Walmart sells produce now if you haven't noticed. Small businesses don't sell to walmart. Small businesses don't sell to Walmart's competitors. The economics are so significantly more complicated than you can imagine, and you boil it all down to "People protect their stuff." Give me a break.
Re:It isn't just downloads.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Weyerhauser owns a lot of land in Oregon. Because they own the land they're obsessed with making sure it yields maximum production. They work with the Forestry department and with large universities to determine how best to protect their land, since that's their livelihood at stake. Because of this they're moving away from monoculture crops and recommending selective harvesting, rather than clear-cutting. This is a timber company, mind you. In opposition to extremist greenie thinking they're at the forefront of sustainable land management; not because it's the 'right' thing to do (whatever that means) but because it'll keep the land productive for centuries to come.
Other timber companies rent public land and clear-cut the hell out of out, then often renege on their minimal replanting duties until they can tuck away their profits and dissolve the company (Southern Georgia, anyone?). Why should they give a shit about the land? The public will bail out their mess, after all.
For people with half a brain owning the land means taking care of it. Anything else spells disaster in the long run. This must be why Weyerhauser plans *100 years* into the future in terms of land management.
Max
Re:It isn't just downloads.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Basically, the US has imposed the tariffs because we say Canada is giving illegal subsides to its timber industry. Outside observers, including the WTO, side with Canada in saying the tariffs are unjust. The American timber industry has a strong lobbying organization, which may have an influence on our trade stance.
This is all very similar to the steel tariffs that were eventually rescinded. I suspect the main reason the steel fees went away and the lumber ones didn't is that the steel consumers (e.g. autos) were able to mount an effective political protest, whereas lumber consumers (e.g. home builders) are unable to do the same.
I have no idea how much aluminum is replacing wood in buildings, but if the wood prices were where they should be it wouldn't be as much. So perhaps the aluminum industry has joined the lumber industry in lobbying for the tariffs.
Re:For the clueless (Score:5, Insightful)
Your arguments are big on grand sweeping statements but short on details and evidence. I'm afraid you're playing your hand as someone who has not looked deeply into competing explanations for what is going on. Seriously, can you point to any large-scale flight to safety from US treasuries to other currencies or assets? It just isn't realistically happening. Do you really think that some scheme cooked up by Chirac and Hussein to sell Iraqs meager oil output in Euros would have been likely? Do you honestly think that this fairly insignificant move would cause the trillions of dollars in treasuries held as a reserve currency to be liquidated in favor of Euros? Do you have any idea how momentous that move would be, and how massive events that have triggered a change in global reserve currency have been in the past? Are you actually suggesting that Saddam Hussein had a great beneficient financial program for the world?
Occam's Razor my friend, look into it.
Some sort of Baran-Wallerstein type theory of global immiserization is not "an accepted fact" as you claim, but actually widely discredited. Because post-war Germany and Japan, South Korea, Canada, all the greatest trading partners of the US are not 'exploited'. I'm sorry, you lose, move away from the table.
Look, I can tell that you're not going to be convinced by anything anyone says about this that doesn't fit your world-view, but I'm going to give a simple analogy for anyone who might stumble across this discussion. If you buy stuff from me, I prosper more than if you don't. If I am Germany, and I have stuff for sale then I am better off if people buy my stuff. If no one offers to buy it, then I have less money to spend on things I need. It would hurt me, as Germany a great deal if suddenly the US started trading with me less. OK, that's not too hard to understand.
Yes it would be good if Japan was also buying more Japanese goods and services and Germany more German goods and services. It would also be nice if Japan's banks weren't supporting billions upon billions of bad debt, and if German firms weren't regulated out of hiring new employees in defference to those who already have jobs. Having high exports, built on the back of American sovereign and consumer debt hasn't made these problems worse, but it may have forestalled their domestic resolution. It certainly isn't good for the long-term in America to have such high debt and low savings, but that's the price you've got to pay when you're basically supporting the world's economy. The alternative of allwoing Japan and Germany to sink into depression is too harsh for everyone.
BTW, I don't live in the US, not that I see what difference that makes, I thought we were discussing ideas here.
taxing downloads? (Score:1, Insightful)
Quite possibly the dumest idea since someone decided to glue the bits of sliced bread back together again to make an unsliced loaf.
Re:Tarriff's compensate for non-purchase (Score:4, Insightful)
The music industry already gets paid for the download. The compnay (like Apple) have an agreement with the record lables, and a cut of the download goes to them.
Further, how is buying a blank CD like a download? Itsn't the download more like buying a pre-recorded CD? The download is a purchase, so why would they need compensation for a "non-purchase".
This is like wanting 40% gross on non-blank CDs, when they already get money from them.
Re:As if. (Score:2, Insightful)