Record companies aren't at the table here, or are you implying the copyright board is in the pocket of the record companies and just a 'vendor'?

The copyright board of Canada serves more functions than mere disbursement back to record companies. A significant portion of the percentage paid by new licensees (broadcasters) is for Canadian Content Development.

http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/cancon/r_support.htm

Companies such as Pandora and Sirius have ways around Canadian content regulations, therefore their expected cut of Canadian Content Development is significantly higher.

An artist that is semi-successful in Canada makes less than a McDonalds employee due to the small number of Canadians to whom to sell their music. A similar level of moderate success for an artist in the USA means you get to see them on 'Cribs'.

Canada's copyright board is not a 'vendor'. Canada's copyright board exists to keep Canadians making music, to put money back to the rights holders ('vendor') and to protect the existing players through essentially a punitive tariff. I would agree that parts 2 and 3 are not so great, which supports your earlier post. Ultimately the copyright fees are a cost of doing business and have shown to be negotiable.

I certainly would not call that a 'non-starter'.

Go back to the shareholders and tell them 'Sorry, we walked away from a deal that would add several million annually to revenue because we'd only get to keep half' The cost to Pandora to sell here is minimal, so does it really matter? They are throwing away revenue as every Canadian that I know that understands how Pandora works would probably sign up.

Pandora needs to get off the horse and get down to business.

A Similar problem existed for Sirius satellite radio. Sirius negotiated lower rates and people buy the product even though Sirius to this day pays large amounts of licensing fees and Canadian Content development fees. It is my understanding that Sirius pays more for Canadian Content development than all of terrestrial radio. This does not stop them from having success and seeing decent growth in their subscriber base. I would assume that the rate is high as the copyright board astutely assumes that Pandora's success will mean Sirius' loss, and they are out to protect that flow of revenue into the development of Canadian Artists.

Pandora is being either lazy, chicken, or greedier than the politician.. 'Oh no, big fat bureaucrat wants lots more money than our 2-bit business plan expected, run away'. They should go back to the table with some market research that shows their expected revenues and makes a fair case for how much they should actually pay. Comparisons to terrestrial radio will get you nowhere. Finding a pricing model that works within that franework is what is needed. They won't require a significant hardware investment to reach Canadians. So what if their profit margin won't be as large as hoped; It will still be a good profit margin if they negotiate to a lower rate.

Yes, one could go into arguments about the validity of Candian Content Development, blah blah blah. Bottom line is that the copyright board exists to extract higher fees from new entrants into the markets. Get over it and get on with business.

The Blues Brothers had the forward version of that, only more precise. One of the neatest car stunts I've ever seen.

Not only that, but some guys on Youtube decided to recreate the scene. Insanely funny.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Gw3mo6Pqwg

We migrated to in-house Zimbra from a simple sendmail server (500 accounts), which has worked exceptionally well. We had quite a bit of pushback from die-hard Outlook people. We adopted a policy that all new hires would get Zimbra and a business case would have to be presented to get Outlook for that user. We also dont support any of the sharing features via Outlook, and all new training material is for Zimbra and not Outlook. We also chose a few high profile individuals and helped them become more efficient with Zimbra to help spead the word. We still have about 50% of the user base on Outlook, POPing off of Zimbra. We expect this number to dwindle as our users decide to start leveraging sharing.

A mixed mode can be supported, and its probably the only way to move away from a deeply entrenched tech like Outlook. Baby steps are required.