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Canadians Burned By Blank-CD Levy
from the keeps-going-up dept
Wired News is pointing out that Canadians are (finally) getting fed up with the blank CD levy they're being charged. Canada forces an extra levy to be charged on every blank CD sold, which is collected by an organization to give out to musicians who feel they're being ripped off by people copying their music. It's basically a tax for musicians. Except... that none of the money actually goes to musicians. That part, it seems, is just too "complicated". However, even though the musicians haven't actually received the money they're due, the organization that collects the fees has decided that they're not nearly high enough, and wants to nearly triple the fees. It seems that their greed is finally causing some to notice the fact that there's this tax on CDs and complain. People are starting to fight back, saying the whole idea of a blank CD levy is unfair. The thing is, if they had kept the fees low, I doubt many people would have complained. But to increase it from $0.052 to $0.21 to $0.59 is extremely noticeable.
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The real reason
Canada is a confederacy, so the federal government has very weak powers of taxation. The feds will come up with these kind of strange taxes whenever they can.
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Justification?
"Frustrated by the CPCC's latest proposal, the Canadian Coalition for Fair Digital Access, a 16-member group that includes Intel, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Sony and Apple, as well as Wal-Mart Canada, Costco, Staples, Radio Shack and the Retail Council of Canada, has issued statements saying that consumers and businesses shouldn't have to subsidize the music industry." Well, duh. "The CPCC accuses the coalition of operating out of greed." Probably, but that doesn't diminish their point. Seriously, living in Canada, this comes up every once in a while (when increases are coming, mostly), and it is a real bone of contention. The majority still use CDs for non-music-copying purposes, despite the surveys the copyright board references. If those surveys only asked teenagers, then yes, maybe, but I find it extremely difficult to believe that greater than 50% of CDRs bought are used to make copies of music. Quite frankly, it sucks, but the governing party still has a large majority and manages to keep the issue fairly quiet each time. We'll see about this time....
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Re: Justification?
I find it extremely difficult to believe that greater than 50% of CDRs bought are used to make copies of music
Yeah, I'd say at least half of my CD-R purchases are for making VCD and SVCD copies of DVD movies... :-)
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CD-RWs
IF this is kept up, CD-Rs might cost more than RWs, which could be sold contianing a few pictures of floweres or whatever to avoid the tax.
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