News Copyright body may slap levy on digital music players

From the Toronto Star...

Would boost price of storage media
Economy will suffer, retailers say

TYLER HAMILTON
TECHNOLOGY REPORTER

That 20-gigabyte MP3 player going under the Christmas tree this season could soon cost 20 per cent more if the Copyright Board approves a proposed levy tomorrow on the sale of digital music devices.

It could also mean new levies on recordable DVDs, removable flash memory and micro hard drives, as well as increased tariff rates on blank cassettes and recordable CDs, assuming a music-industry group called the Canadian Private Copying Collective, or CPCC, gets its way.

Claude Majeau, secretary-general of the Copyright Board, confirmed yesterday that a decision on the controversial levy is to come out Friday morning.

Both the CPCC and a group of electronics manufacturers and retailers aggressively fighting the levy have been arguing their respective views since the Copyright Board began formal hearings on the matter in January.

"It's the kind of decision that's likely to leave everybody unhappy," said Michael Geist, a professor of Internet law at the University of Ottawa and technology counsel for Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP.

"The retailers won't like it because they don't like the levy, period. Consumers won't like it because they won't be paying a fair price for the product. And copyright holders will probably feel they're not getting enough."

The CPCC already collects a levy on blank cassettes, recordable CDs and Sony minidiscs, but in May, 2002, the organization, which collects and redistributes the levy on behalf of the Canadian music industry, proposed that existing tariffs be substantially hiked and expanded to cover M3P players and other digital-memory products that carry music files.

The original purpose of the levy was to compensate artists for the widespread activity of making personal copies of music that an individual already owns.

The full story is here...


This just begs the question: If they would legalize P2P networks, would you be willing to pay a levy on each piece of digital media, cd & dvd burner, mp3 player and so on - eventhough you may not be using that blank cdr to copy music?

 

Personally I DESPISE and HATE levies placed on CD recordables and DVD recordables and all the other means of storing legit files. If I need a micro HDD for a portable custom computer I get to fund the record companies and it's affiliates.

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If I filtered all the MP3s I have to ones that were downloaded (not ripped), then to ones that can be bought (unlike the theme to the Pink Panther or Predator, which come with the movies that I own), then to ones that weren't freely available for download from the author (Westwood used to release some of the ingame music for download), I have 6 or 7 MP3s.

Assuming an average of 7 Megs each (192 bitrate) I have a max of about 50 MB of downloaded music that I should not have, and that I feel no desire to search for legit coppies of, as I like only one song from that particular artist, and because I would pay $120 - $140 for those 6-7 songs and would recieve 63 or more songs that I don't want.

Yeah right, I'd rather not listen to the stolen stuff (which isn't that good anyways) and just listen to the legit stuff and save a whole bunch of cash on media.