Canadian copyright ‘collective’ scores $1.75 M
p2pnet news view Freedom | P2P:- The CPCC is well pleased with itself.
One of the reasons Canadians can download music for their personal use is because the Big 4 music labels, none of whom has a major presence in Canada, are in effect paid indirectly.
Under the Canadian Copyright Act, manufacturers and importers of qualifying blank audio recording media, such as CD-Rs, have to report sales and pay resultant levies to the CPCC.
CPCC stands for Canadian Private Copying Collective. Makes us think of the old Soviet Union CCCP [Союз Советских Социалистических Республик] collective.
Anyhow, “The levies are distributed to music copyright holders in recognition of the fact that Canadians copy without authorization hundreds of millions of tracks of recorded music for their own private use,” it states.
And now $1.75 million richer, “as a result of an action commenced against Samtack Computer Inc. and numbered Ontario company 1559435 for unreported sales of blank audio recording media over an 11 month period in ‘03″.
“Since November ‘04, the CPCC enforcement department has collected over $30 million through enforcement efforts which include market research, audits of reporting companies and litigation.”
Vivendi Universal (France), Sony BMG (Japan and Germany), EMI (Britain), and Warner Music (US) continue to lobby the Conservative government to have Canada’s copyright law’s changed to suit the corporate music industry, which would like to see Canadians in the same boat as Americans.
Across the border, thousands of people, including very young children, have been subpoenaed and accused of being file sharing criminals and thieves as the Big 4 continue their efforts to gain complete control of how, where, when and by whom music is distributed online.
(Thanks, Wenda)
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.Stumble It!
New York Times – Copyright Collective wins $1.75M settlement, August 19, 2008
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August 25th, 2008 at 6:23 am
“The levies are distributed to music copyright holders in recognition of the fact that Canadians copy without authorization hundreds of millions of tracks of recorded music for their own private use”
As a non Canadian songwriter, I have never received a single cent that can be traced to blank CD levies collected in Canada or anywhere else. Surely tracks of my songs have been copied onto blank CDs in Canada. I don’t mind the copying part, but do mind that money is being collected because my songs are copied and then no share of the money reaches me.
If the idea is that only Canadians benefit from the blank CD levies, what if in my country we never pay for royalties for copying songs of the rest of the world?