These kind of shenanigans are why I and every Canadian I know feels absolutely no obligation whatsoever to pay for music. (In the circles I travel, the general view is “Never pay for music. They don’t deserve to be paid twice.”)

It seems to me that, if I was paying a tax on blank CDs because an assumption was made that I would copy music, that would actually give me the *right* to use those CDs to copy music.

After all, I’ve paid for the right, haven’t I?

I’m not sure I understand how they can tax the media that many times. Are all these levies and taxes added to the purchase on iTunes? Because otherwise you could only tax the HD and iPod only once.

This doesn’t make sense. If Canada were to overtax the media then most people would be criminals because the price would push people to file sharing as the only reasonable way to get media.

A couple of things…

First of all, the levy isn’t to subsidize illegal actions. It’s exact purpose, as publicly stated, is to provide compensation to artists for private copying of copyrighted works, which has been a perfectly legal activity. Regardless of the ethicality of them wanting a slice of that pie, the activity being “taxed” by the levy is still entirely legal. Again, the levy does not legalize filesharing in Canada, it is to subsidize private copying only. The confusion often arises because of a court case in Canada where the judge appeared to legalize firesharing, but the judge was actually focusing strictly on the activities of the person being tried directly, and as far as this person was concerned, he was really copying something for his own private use. That it also happened to be publicly shared (by somebody else) was deemed superfluous to the case.

Second of all, the Conservative Party of Canada, with less than 5 percentage points short of a majority government in parliament, has often stated that they strongly oppose the expansion of the levy. However, this same government also wants to bring into legislation amendments to the copyright act that will make it illegal to engage in any form of private use copying of digital works except those where the publisher has expressly permitted it (either by providing tools to the consumer or else by not having copy protections on their works). If such legislation passes, the levy will become utterly unjustified even from the stance of organizations that benefit from it, and is liable to be abandoned because taxation without representation is illegal (the levy is already questionable on this basis, in spite of its claims, but without private use copying being legal, it loses even the weak justification it once had). Thus, it makes sense why the Conservatives oppose the levy expansion, and why they will likely want the levy dropped entirely if they get these amendments put through.

NOW i went a whil backand contributed to the fair copyright for canada that turned out to in the end to be swarmed with marketers nd swarmed with lawyrs for the industry

IT BECAME A JOKE
but in a shinng brief moment 95 000 of us did make a statement nd no where no country has ever done so much to prevent abuse of these mafia driven cartels.

I sat there for a month working on a levy like system while the industry shills attacked and attacked and attacked until they looked soooo bone headedly retarded i just gave up.

ANYHOW it will never work cause THEY WANT CONTROL OF IT
and they will up and up and up the cost till us fucking poor disabled cant afford the internet
I SWEAR if i come across any musicians or actors in the next 6 weeks im a fucking beat you to a pulp as a message
IM FUCKING SICK AND TIRED OF PANDERING TO LAWYERS AND FUCKING GREEDY MOTHERFUCKING coke headed asswipes that are so fraking lazy that with hollywood and music they’d all be bums on a street half dead form starvation.

UNLKESS the majority of a council over looking it is elected by non association members of music and industry i say NO TO THEM
agree to that simple thing and you could sell it , we can even experiment with letting PEOPLE online vote and yes that means some development there but in the right way.
THUS you have people with net accounts get a vote card and youd be able to vote. OTHERWISE fuck it im never going to sanction such a thing.

IF you want to see how it currently works look at how the CRIA even before th levy hasn’t paid 300000 ARTITS since 1980 in a 6 billion dollar lawsuit. THATS WHO THE THIEVES ARE.
COMMERCIALLY SELLING GOODS owned by others is a 20000$ offense per item. thats 60 billion dollar fine…if one album per artist…..ya see now where hollywood profits been coming from?

WE should have the RCMP go arrest them all and toss them into life in prison as a message to treasonous politicians looking to get a bribe.

btw that Geist is wrong
its a “blank media levy”
not a “blank MUSIC levy”

this means non commercial downloading of all things and trust me they WANT geist drilling JUST MUSIC into your heads hes a puppet. MEMBER the fight i got into with him of TPM which is just fancy hardware DRM?
member the fight over how he started appearing at conservative meetings about the so called copyright consultation
member the fight over warrant less search and seizure laws?

yea hes a lawyer they all the same and hes making money no matter what you or anyone says off IP. HE’D be unemployed otherwise. HE got sued and now even though he won he just presents information will not speculate no more or add it all. THE comments on his site after hes done censoring it hard core look like a lawyer form the cria owns the site.

JOKE BIGTIME.
he claims fair copyright for canada
BUT that means same as it is which is still balanced far to the right for the industry and not the end user.

FAIR wold be at worst 15 year copyrights and 8 – 10 year patents
fair would be NO MORE levies then.
FAIR would be making it a treasonous offense to bribe or lobby a poltician or govt emploee when you represent any foreign entity( READ THAT RIGHT – TREASONABLE OFFENSE)
that would be what fair is ,
NOT increasing terms to 80 years
NOT making a download non commercially the same as a commercial sale – 20000$ fine or max 2.7 years prison at 90,000 $ a year to the tax payer.
NOT makign it so that its again so vague as to be interpreted by your favorite judge whose investment portfolio happens to include hollywood and RIAA
YA know that clause of ACTA where you dont know if more then 2 of a thing makes you an infringer? is it two tracks of a song , 2 seconds , 2 minutes of a movie WHAT?

this law will cost the tax payers billions literally billions and they will get nothing in return
NOTHING.