Canada rejects iPod levy
p2pnet.net News- Canada won’t be taxing digital music players and money so far collected between December 2003 and December 2004, some $4 million, will be returned to importers and manufacturers.
Will customers also be reimbursed? That remains to be seen.
On December 14 last year, the Federal Court of Appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada decided the tax set by the Copyright Board on the internal memory of digital audio recorders was illegal.
Acting for the labels and musicians, the Canadian Private Copying Collective (CPCC) has been demanding that a levy be imposed on portable music players and asked Canada’s Supreme Court high court to overturn last year’s Federal Court of Appeal decision which had quashed it.
The CPCC claims the board didn’t have the authority to impose a levy on memory permanently embedded in digital audio recorders and since December 12, 2003, has been collecting a tax on non-removable memory, including both flash memory and hard drives, in digital audio recorders.
The Supreme Court of Canada has now refused to allow the appeal.
The levies set were $2 for non-removable memory capacity of up to 1 gig in a digital audio recorder, $15 for memory capacity of more than one gig and up to 10, and $25 for more than 10.
"It is our responsibility to uphold that principle even when new developments in technology change the ways in which Canadians make private copies of music," said CPCC chairwoman Claudette Fortier at the veginning of the year.
But the private copying levies were introduced in an analogue era, the Canadian Press has Digital Access group spokesman Fraser Smith saying. "It was made for blank audio cassette tapes."
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See:-
private copies – Bring iPod tax back !, p2pnet, January 22, 2005
Canadian Press – No levy on IPods; Supreme Court refuses to hear appeal on MP3 players, July 28, 2005
July 29th, 2005 at 2:35 pm
Perhaps its appropriate to note here that several jurisdictions (and in particular the UK) have no concept of fair use. In other words the copyright notice on CDs that says “no unauthorised copying” is legal and binding and hence it is illegal to rip a CD to an MP3 even for your own use.
Needless to say, this doesn’t change anything. Very large numbers of people use Windows player and iTunes to rip CDs as you would expect.
Where this gets interesting is if Canada (or these other jurisdictions) take on board the Grokster decision. If ripping is illegal, then Apple and Microsoft are without doubt encouraging people to break the law.
This modern world is rubbish. What a crock of shit.
July 29th, 2005 at 2:54 pm
I’m curious what your elected representatives said to you when you explained to them that you thought all of this was “a crock of shit”.
Are you Canadian? If so, who is your MP? Would love to file away any comments the MP made in our BLOGS http://www.digital-copyright.ca/taxonomy/view/or/1