Want to pay $75 extra on your next MP3 player?
p2pnet news view | P2P | Music:- How’d you like to fork out an extra $75 on top of the sticker price of your next mp3 player or music-capable cellphone?
It would, “compensate artists for revenue lost to illegal file-sharing,” says New York writer Sam Gustin (right) in Daily Finance.
That may sound totally ridiculous, but it’s what the Canadian Private Copying Collective (CPCC) has in mind, says Gustin.
Speaking of collectives, wasn’t the CPCC another name for the heavy booted Soviet Union before it collapsed? But wait! — that was the CCCP.
Anyway, the CPCC may be similarly close to disintegration, and while it thrashes around in its death throes, “Canada is weighing whether to impose a $75 tax, “on top of the base price of any mobile device that plays music as a way of compensating songwriters, publishers, producers and other artists,” says Gustin, stating, ” Of course, nothing like this could happen in the U.S.
“Could it?”
It could, he states, going on »»»
Canada’s proposed levy recalls various “collective licensing” schemes floated in the U.S., such as a $5-per-month internet service fee, aimed at creating a pool of money to compensate rights-holders for digital piracy. A levy like the one being debated in Canada would most likely be illegal under U.S. law — but that doesn’t mean Congress couldn’t establish one by passing legislation.
A few years ago, Universal Music honcho Doug Morris lobbied unsuccessfully for a similar fee. US Code Title 17, (17 U.S.C. § 1008), established by the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992, holds that non-commercial copying by consumers of digital and analog musical recordings is not copyright infringement. Section 1004 provides for a royalty of 3 percent of the initial price for CDs labeled and sold for music use, as well as a 2 percent royalty for standalone CD recorders. A 1998 legal battle involving an early MP3 player, Rio’s PMP300, established that such “computer peripherals” are not subject to this type of royalty in the U.S.
But in Canada, David Basskin (right), who runs the Canadian Private Copying Collective, “a non-profit agency charged with collecting and distributing private copying royalties,” advocates for such a levy. Canadians already pay 24- and 29-cent levies (worth 23 and 27 U.S. cents) on blank cassettes and CDs. Canadian legislators are currently weighing the iPod levy, and Basskin says it would take many months for Canada’s copyright board to hold a hearing to set the amount of the levy.
The issue erupted during a heated exchange on Canada’s Business News Network last week, when Basskin argued that Canadian law should require anyone who uses a “digital audio recorder” — anything that can copy a sound recording, like an iPod or iPhone — to pay a levy on top of the base sticker price. The levy would be priced according to storage: a 64GB iPhone would face a higher levy than a 16GB model. On BNN, Basskin disavowed his group’s call for a $75 levy on “high-capacity units” as far from a sure thing. “While that may be a wonderful thing in some people’s eyes — probably mine,” he says, “it’s not going to happen, and certainly not any time soon.”
An opponent blasted the proposed levy as a tax that would force music pirates further underground. “If it looks like a tax, and it sounds like a tax, and it walks like a tax, then you know people are going to call it a tax, even if the courts say that it isn’t technically a tax,” countered Howard Knopf, an Ottawa-based attorney at Macera & Jarzyna, a firm that has criticized the levy. “People will see it for what it really is, which is a bailout of a dying collective that has outlived its usefulness — if it ever had any — and only ever did a good job serving its lawyers and consultants.” Basskin, in the background, dismissed Knopf’s charge as “just nonsense.”
“Canada’s levy on blank CDs, Baskin says, has generated more than $160 million and has been distributed to 97,000 rights-holders, ‘most of whom would not be able to continue their careers without this revenue’,” the CPCC says, Gustin adds.
Knopf puts things into perspective in Daily Finance saying, “That’s less than about half of the cost of pint of beer a week at a typical Canadian pub.”
Stay tuned.
Daily Finance – Would you pay a $75 levy to compensate music artists?, September 17, 2009
almost ten years – Canada`s blank media levy proceeds, September 15, 2009
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September 18th, 2009 at 9:03 am
Because cell phones aren’t expensive enough already.
When will the movie industry jump on board?
Do we get credit if we can show we already own all the content being copied to the device? I thought not.
September 18th, 2009 at 9:41 am
These corporations of parasites are becomming more and more toxic!
Now they lobby the governement to extort all the citizen at once and directly!
Time to grab our guns folks and shoot in this bag of crap called the entertainment corporations!
Wer are not entertain!
September 18th, 2009 at 10:21 am
You don’t own any content you purchased unless you wrote it yourself. And oddly, even if you thought you own your own content you created, just wait, all collection groups will want to collect on performance royalties even though it was your own song and even if it was not registered in their repetoir.
Right now they don’t do that, but don’t count on them staying in that position for very long. From what they’ve said and recommended, they won’t be happy unless EVERY performance of ANY music produces royalties for them.
So when you pay your $75 for the labels, you’ll also pay $20 to collection groups each month for songs people may or may not hear through your earbud headphones. You’ll pay $25 if you use non-earbud headphones and $35 if you use studio quality headphones (yes more for the unlikely event that people could hear, because if you can afford studio quality headphones, you can pay more). Then you can pay for driving in your car with the windows down or up, down is $25 per month and up is $15 per month. Next if you sing while walking/running/at a concert/in the park, that’s $1 per song, whether it was just a line from the song or the entire song. If you whistle, that’s only $0.25 per partial or complete tune.
At home, if you play recorded music you pay $15 per month with windows up, $25 per month with windows open. If you have live performance of any type, that’s $45 per month windows up or $75 per month windows open.
Regarding monthly charges for sometimes windows open and sometimes windows closed, SOCAN will assume the greater, that is windows open fee for that month. Should you not open your windows or door at any point in time for any duration of time during said month, you will be charged the windows closed fee. All other instances, regardless of how long the windows are open, results in windows open fee.
Thank you for complying with SYCAA royalty licensing and thank you for supporting your artists.
Our News Letter:
We’re at 157 000 artists now and with revenues of (75[home] + 25[car] + 20[earbuds] + $1*60sings + $0.25*60whistles) * 12 months * 30 million people = 70.2 Billion dollars per year, we are confident that each artist receives, less our internal costs (aka bribes to government officials and lawyers to sue everyone and anyone), and since we graciously give 1% of our revenue to artists… each artist will receive $4471.33757962 per year!!
What a huge increase from $160 per year!
Thank you to the fans for supporting the artists! All the best…
ScrewYouConsumersAndArtists (SYCAA)
Disclaimer, this is intended as sarcasm towards the implied collection agencies, whom are only following the greed of the record labels and publishers, trying to squeeze blood from a stone!
September 18th, 2009 at 12:05 pm
âCanadaâs levy on blank CDs, Baskin says, has generated more than $160 million and has been distributed to 97,000 rights-holders, [snip]
– That’s for the whole ‘levy on blanks CDs’ program folks, not annually! –
Now that’s $160,000,000
divided by 97,000
————–
$1,649.4845360824742268041237113402 per Rights-Holder
Not annually, since the inception of the levy.
[snip]
âmost of whom would not be able to continue their careers without this revenueâ,â the CPCC says
– $1650 CDN over the course of however many years but they ‘would not be able to continue their careers without this revenueâ
It takes a special breed to be that kind of a douchebag. You fu(<ing bag of douche.
September 18th, 2009 at 12:10 pm
If they did this I would simply buy my next MP3 player from the US or China and I’m sure many other people would too.
September 18th, 2009 at 4:53 pm
I stopped buying blank CD’s. Wasn’t a big deal as there were plenty of better alternatives. I guess the choice this time around will be to buy your player from outside Canada or don’t buy one at all. I have a feeling even the law abiding citizens (a mythical creature IMHO) will balk at being gouged on their next player purchase.
September 18th, 2009 at 5:50 pm
Without counting the CPCC, Music has 11-Copyright Collective Societies in Canada, according to the Copyright Board of Canada website:
* ACTRA PRS Performers’ Rights Society
* AFM American Federation of Musicians of the United States and Canada
* ArtistI – the collective society of the UDA Union des artistes
* AVLA Audio-Video Licensing Agency
* CMRRA Canadian Musical Reproduction Rights Agency
* CCLI Christian Copyright Licensing Inc.
* NRCC Neighbouring Rights Collective of Canada
* SOCAN The Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada
* SOPROQ Société de gestion collective des droits des producteurs de phonogrammes et vidéogrammes du Québec
* SOGEDAM Société de gestion des droits des artistes-musiciens
* SODRAC- Society for Reproduction Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers in Canada
I would love to know how many millions they collect each year, and how much of it makes it into the hands of Canadian artists. SOCAN’s revenue for 2008 was $255 million.
September 19th, 2009 at 10:08 am
Makes sense.
If you can’t sue a technology out of existence, Tax it to the point where no one can
purchase it and the company goes under, problem goes away. At that point you
can buy the owner of the tech out and make sure it never sees the light again
through strict patent and copyright legislation.
They have quite the little machine going, EVERYWHERE, in the world.