Canada may tax legal music downloads

FuriousBalancing writes: MacNN reports:

Canadians may soon pay a small tax on every legal music store download, says a new measure (PDF) sanctioned by the Copyright Board of Canada. Requested by the Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada (SOCAN), the tax would apply at least 2.1 cents to every individual song download and 1.5 cents per track for complete albums. Subscription download and streaming services would themselves be charged between 5.7 and 6.8 percent of a user's monthly fees. Minimum fees would also apply for every larger download or subscription. The new tax would be retroactive to January 1st, 1996.

Fees

[tabytomcat]

The article does a pretty decent job of arguing against itself, but then goes on to say 'the board disagrees'

I think a few of the big issues that need to be addressed are the fact that we are already paying taxes on all blank media, It seems like were being double taxed (as in they better be dropping the tariffs on cds and mp3 players if there going to be charging tariffs on downloading music). And making the fees retroactive to 1996 is really going to hurt, even if this was proposed in 96' it's not fair

A 'tax', eh?

[rakslice]

Eek... Misleading headline! I'm skimming through the linked PDF, and it sounds like what is proposed is a statutory tariff where content providers would pay set royalty rates to song rights holders for transferring songs over the Internet, sort of like the existing royalty schemes for song performance rights. I don't get why anyone would call this a 'tax'... If rights holders can negotiate specific agreements for use of their rights at lower prices than the set rate, then how could this _increase_ the cost