Canadian Copyright Group Wants iPod Tax

soulxtc writes "Unable to define memory as a 'recording medium,' Canada's Private Copyright Collective goes directly after portable music player devices, memory cards, and anything else that can be used to make private copies. The PCC submitted a proposal to the country's Copyright Board that suggests levies of $5 (Canadian) on devices with up to 1GB of memory, $25 for 1-10 GB, $50 for 10-30 GB, and $75 for over 30 GB. If approved, this propoal would increase the price of a 30-GB iPod by 26%. These collections are intended to compensate artists and labels for the losses they suffer when people 'illegally' copy or transfer music. The PCC is also seeking a new $2 to $10 tax on memory cards. The backbone of digital photography has become tangled up in the fight for making sure music companies get every nickel and dime they feel that they deserve."

The very least they could do

[Anonymous Coward]

Is have a true sliding scale. Under that pricing scheme, the 1gb ipod has a $5 tax, while the 2gb model has a $25 tax rather than $10. Sheesh.

Re:misleading headline and writeup

[Goaway]

I know it's too much to expect people to read the articles linked here, but could you at least read the entire summary?

The PCC is also seeking a new $2 to $10 tax on memory cards. The backbone of digital photography has become tangled up in the fight for making sure music companies get every nickel and dime they feel that they deserve."

Re:Hey Canadians...

[flyingfsck]

Yes. I copy CDs from the town library guilt free...

Private Copying Levy

[vic-traill]

The Private Copying Levy is what lets me download with impunity in Canada. The dollars may or may not actually get to the artists (google away on this one), but it certainly does facilitate my p2p activities.

I don't know who the 'Private Copyright Collective' is, but this position is at odds with what we've been hearing about the Canadian Recording Industry Association's position - last heard as wanting to do away with the levy:

http://michaelgeist.ca/component/option,com_conten t/task,view/id,1200/Itemid,85/nsub,/ [michaelgeist.ca]

I think this is an interesting tactic: collect levy at the front end, squeeze the availability of material via p2p networks through increased DRM on released materials.

Quite honestly, I don't really notice the levy at my pocketbook, and it does make for an entirely different legal landscape for p2p downloading. Michael Geist is the Guy in the Know about this landscape in Canada - check out his blog at the address above, there's reams of material there.

Re:Hey Canadians...

[edschurr]

You can copy music from a friend if you put it on a medium which has the levy, because then you have paid royalties. It may be the case that you can download, given the same condition. See A Guide to Copyrights: Copyright Protection [ic.gc.ca].

Re:Hey Canadians...

[KillerBob]

Basically, yeah. It is. It's the rationale for why the recording industry hasn't ever even tried to sue people for downloading music in Canada: it'd never stand up in court. We're already compensating the artists directly through the tariffs, which are getting distributed to the artists' guilds directly, not to their industrialist herders.

Re:Where's my brother's money, dammit?

[wes33]

It's a levy not a tax. You don't see it at the cash register. According to the Canadian Private Copying Collective they collected $35M in 2005 (http://cpcc.ca/english/finHighlights.htm). Up to 2005 they have distributed almost $93M. Why the OP's brother hasn't seen any of it, I can't say.

Re:Hey Canadians...

[Henry V .009]

The recording industry has never tried to sue anyone in the U.S. for downloading -- only uploading.

They did it in Europe

[guruevi]

A few years ago some countries in Europe adopted a similar taxing on media-carriers and media. The problem is that not a single musician or even a record label sees any of the money. The state forwards it to this 'non-profit' organization and recently a 'scandal' quickly buried by the media came out that actually in over 3 years, millions of euros have been collected and none have been paid out. It also came out that the employees of this 'non-profit' organization (similar to RIAA) had salary's exceeding 250k/year.

The content providers contribute very little

[dbIII]

One point that everyone is missing is that many of the content providers pay very little tax - with Hollywood accounting blockbuster movies make a loss and with record company accounting even the performers have to pay for a lot of things which any other industry would pay for out of revenue - let alone money left over for to be taxed.

I think the suppliers of blank media make a greater contribution to the economy and the tax base - and really shouldn't be victimised because some loud tax dodgers with good lobbyists want a special tax to feed themselves and drain from another portion of the economy.

Goverments are not supposed to be fee collectors for private companies - they are supposed to work in the interest of their nations.

Re:Should I move to Canda?

[Foerstner]

What it comes down to is you cannot tax illegal behaviour. Our courts would never accept it.

Count yourself lucky, I guess. In the US, it is, for example, illegal not to declare your income from criminal activity to the IRS for taxation. (Which is why so many mobsters were eventually nailed for "tax evasion" as opposed to racketeering, extortion, theft, or murder.)

Further, I'm willing to bet that paying the tax would not protect you from a civil suit from the RIAA.

Re:Should I move to Canda?

[Pig Hogger]

So, this means that I get to download anything I want while in Canada free of guilt and cost... right?

More than that, you can borrow CDs from public libraries and copy them into your digital collection, then share that digital collection on a peer-to-peer system and, of course, download music, as the supreme court has decreed that this is legal according to the current copyright law.

Better yet, at this moment, there is no bill pending consideration that would change that; bill C-60 died a year ago when elections were called.

And finally, given that there will likely be elections this year, there is no chance that such a bill may pass in the near future.

Re:How do I send them my comments?

[physicsnick]

I want to give them a piece of my mind, namely to tell them they can't have it both ways:

They don't. "Unauthorized copying" is legal for personal use in Canada.

Double dipping bastards

[quacking duck]

We had such a levy on iPods and other "recordable media" a few years back, it was struck down [slashdot.org] and collected levies had to be refunded. Now this organization wants to put the levies back (and expand them).

At the same time, the Canadian Recording Industry Association (think Canadian RIAA) is lobbying [slashdot.org] to eliminate fair use rights [slashdot.org] in order to "harmonize" with the US's draconian copyright system (the same harmonization that fucked over the Australians when they signed their free trade agreement with the US).

The attempt at double-dipping is truly mind boggling; it's depressing that no one in power cares.

Tax Bandwidth

[dekkerdreyer]

What they should be doing is taxing bandwidth. If your cable company offers "up to 3gbit/s of bandwidth", you should be able to download up to that much of pirated music per second. So it would make more sense to tax the bandwidth! The math comes out as...

3gbit = 375 megabytes of data per second

I saw a quote of $0.30 per CD, which comes out to $0.16 cents per second, or roughly $414,720 per month in piracy taxes.

Re:Where's my brother's money, dammit?

[mh101]

As I purchase large quantities of CD-Rs for use at my workplace, I've done some research into this.

From the seller's point of view, it's not so much that they have to charge the levy to customers, but that they themselves have to pay the levy to the CPCC for any CDs they sell (the exception being sales to customers that have a levy exemption such as my workplace). Of course, that expense is passed on to the customers in the form of higher prices. In the interest of full disclosure, I've seen some places with signs out by the CDs/DVDs outlining how much of the price goes to the levy.

In this case with the seller you point out, there are a couple possibilities. The first is that they are indeed paying the levy to the CPCC, but are not raising their prices because they subsidize their CD sales from their other sales. The second is that they are not playing by the rules. If they're not paying the levy, they're engaging in illegal activity, to the best of my knowledge.

One other thing to point out here is that since it's technically that the Canadian sellers pay the levy on CDs they sell as opposed to Canadian customers paying it on stuff they buy, it's perfectly legal for Canadians to purchase their CDs from the US and avoid the extra costs associated with the levy.

Already Had A MP3 Player Tax And It Was Repealed

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure why everyone appears to be oblivious to this, but Canada had a tax on all MP3 players with storage (including iPods) and that tax was repealed a little over 2 years ago: http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/12/17/13 23245 [slashdot.org]

Why not protest the Tariff application right now?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.cb-cda.gc.ca/tariffs/proposed/c10022007 -b.pdf [cb-cda.gc.ca]
Download it, read it, then reply to the address on page 1 why you object to it
"any person who wishes to object to the statement may file written objections with the Board, at the address indicated below, within 60 days of the publication of this notice, that is no later than April 11, 2007"

Re:Should I move to Canda?

[shark72]

"How will they distribute the money? Proportional to the CD sales? To online sales? Will they just cut a check to every artists in canada? How will recompence non-canadian artists? Or is this just a scam fee going to the RIAA? (Just like the millions that the RIAA is making from their lawsuit business - that sure as hell ain't going to Justin Timberlake or Joni Mitchell)?"

The CPCC has a web site here [cpcc.ca]. Hit the link on the left labelled "Royalty distribution." It's a bit dry, but you should be able to get an answer to all of your questions.

Keep in mind that the CPCC != the CRIA (Canada's equivalent of the RIAA). The CPCC represents primarily artists.

Re:The very least they could do

[Sierpinski]

That my friend is what the fiends at the CCRA wants you to do.

Wrong, they want you to spend money and pay taxes.

Think of the companies that will lose enormous amounts of money because of that attitude

Maybe the companies would then realize that their stuff is too damned expensive, and become
more competitive.

Think of them recouping their loss in sales by bumping up the prices further

If you don't buy one, they can raise it to a bajillion dollars and it won't matter, you still wouldn't buy one. I fail to see the logic in this argument.

Think of the loss of interest in digital distribution, no MP3/WMA/M4a players, will you buy CD's? Well thats all that is left

If you think there will ever be a loss of interest in digital distribution, I weep for your future. A tax imposed by one country could not possibly overthrow the entire digital revolution. Don't give the governments that much credit.

Just write some data to it, first

[mh101]

One of the details regarding the levy is that it is only on blank media that has never stored data. From http://neil.eton.ca/copylevy.shtml [neil.eton.ca]:

If you are a manufacturer or importer, you can avoid the levy entirely on your products as long as you record some sound on the media before you sell it. The sound recorded on the media can even be erased. Clearly this is not an option for CD-Rs, but for devices that include a hard drive, simply recording a sound on the drive and then erasing it exempts the drive from the levy. This is because (as the legislation now stands) "blank audio recording medium means a recording medium, regardless of its material form, onto which a sound recording may be reproduced, that is of a kind ordinarily used by individual consumers for that purpose and on which no sounds have ever been fixed..."

MP3 player manufactures could just preload some music onto it, and no levy for them! It's especially good for Apple then, that the Apple v. Apple thing has been settled.