Canada's CD Tax Out of Hand? 599
CRIA Watcher writes "The Canadian Copyright Board has just announced that it is bringing back the tax on blank CDs, called the private copying levy, in 2007. Michael Geist demonstrates how the tax has created a huge distortion in the retail price of blank media on his blog with as much as 70 percent of the purchase price now heading directly to the music industry."
Unfair (Score:5, Interesting)
If I'm paying anyway... (Score:5, Interesting)
I got mad enough before to start dreaming up "piracy booths", where you could burn cds from a "collection" - for free, of course, with your own hands. My understanding is this would be completely legal..
Re:Commerce, its not national anymore (Score:3, Interesting)
The State of Minnesota asks that its employees purchase their prescription drugs from Canada for savings. That's great and all if Customs would stop seizing them [startribune.com].
I love being told by my Governor to break Federal Law. Awesome.
Re:Unfair (Score:4, Interesting)
Does anyone know who to contact in order to get our views voiced PROPERLY?
Re:Who uses blank CDs? (Score:4, Interesting)
I play in a small punkrock bands. We produce everything "D.I.Y." which means we burn all our CDs on blank CDs and sell them for 3$.
We don't care about the CRIA. We don't care about their crap and we don't want to be on their labels. It seems they'll still have a cut off of every CDs we produce... awesome.
Re:tax on blank cds = fee for legal music copying? (Score:1, Interesting)
It's not entirely unreasonable. What gets my goat is now they're trying to pass laws to explicitly retract those rights, but also keep the levy in place. It's enough to make me want to shoot someone.
Someone should push for this improvement (Score:3, Interesting)
These taxes essentially make copying music to canadian-purchased blank CD media legal.
I'm sure this will take a huge team of lawyers and a lot of public outcry to make it happen, but one way or the other, the music industry will have to give something up -- they can't have both a 'tax' and pursue additional civil penaties against individuals at the same time. If a person who downloaded music can show that he did so in order to utilize his rights granted to him by purchasing blank media from Canada, then I doubt there's much more damage that can be claimed. If this idea holds up, I predict a huge increase in the sale of blank CD media from Canada.
Re:Commerce, its not national anymore (Score:3, Interesting)
In the US, the Federal law regarding chemicals that people put in their bodies is just wrong.
Many of the "FDA" approved drugs are horrible, expensive, have side effects up to and including death, etc.
In 5 years, I will be free from having to take FDA approved drugs on a daily basis. The medication that I am on now gives me dry heaves, makes me insane at times, gives me headaches, disturbs my sleep, gives me vertigo to the point that I have almost died in a car accident, and being that it is a relatively new drug on the market, nobody knows what the long term affects are.
I have much better results and fewer side effects from uncontrolled and/or "illegal" drugs than the FDA ones.
I'm probably the only one that has these issues though.
Re:Assumed Guilt (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Unfair (Score:1, Interesting)
If the boycott is actually effective, it will decrease revenue. They'll take the decreased revenue numbers back to the legislature and say "See - It's those bloody pirates. They're bankrupting us! Raise the levy!"
Throw in a few well timed campaign contributions, and you've bought yourself a pay raise.
Re:Unfair (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Unfair (Score:4, Interesting)
The audio CD-Rs have a bit set somewhere that audio equipment looks at before deciding if they'll record on this media. So if you have cd writer in your stereo, it probably will only work with audio CD-Rs. Of course, the audio CD-Rs cost more, and some equipment can be hacked to not require this bit to be set, or you can swap it with a data CD-R at the right time and things will work, etc.
The cd writer in your computer, on the other hand, has no such restriction, since it's meant to store data. Of course, you can also burn audio onto your data CD-R on your computer, and people do do this.
As for the law changing in Canada, I have no idea. In the US, I know that audio CD-Rs include a tax that goes to the RIAA or the artists or somebody, and data CD-Rs do not. More on the DAT tax here [brouhaha.com]. (It's called the DAT tax because it was originally written for DAT (4mm tapes) and is probably the #1 reason why we don't have consumer DAT audio drives in our stereos now.)
In any event, when I'm at Frys and I see somebody pick up a batch of Audio CD-Rs, I'll often ask them if they're going to burn them on a stereo component or a computer, and 95% of the time, the answer is `computer'. And then I tell them that they don't need the expensive audio CD-Rs -- the data ones will work just as well.
The DAT tax does have one good benefit though. From the article above --
Of course, this page was written pre-DMCA. I've no idea if the law has changed since.Re:Why CDs? (Score:2, Interesting)
"Why do I have to pay the Record Industry, to send a CD with the holiday pictures to my mother?"
It would make a *lot* more sense to tax something that's used entirely for music, such as speakers or portable music players.
no, taxation is not the way to go
The mods, and you, are on crack (Score:3, Interesting)
The levy is here, it's real, and it's by far the biggest cost of blank CDs in Canada.
It's also a load.