thundros Posted September 13, 2003 Share Posted September 13, 2003 Blame Canada -By Jay Currie A desperate American recording industry is waging a fierce fight against digital copyright infringement seemingly oblivious to the fact that, for practical purposes, it lost the digital music sharing fight over five years ago. In Canada. "On March 19, 1998, Part VIII of the (Canadian) Copyright Act dealing with private copying came into force. Until that time, copying any sound recording for almost any purpose infringed copyright, although, in practice, the prohibition was largely unenforceable. The amendment to the Act legalized copying of sound recordings of musical works onto audio recording media for the private use of the person who makes the copy (referred to as "private copying"). In addition, the amendment made provision for the imposition of a levy on blank audio recording media to compensate authors, performers and makers who own copyright in eligible sound recordings being copied for private use." -- Copyright Board of Canada: Fact Sheet: Private Copying 1999-2000 Decision The Copyright Board of Canada administers the Copyright Act and sets the amount of the levies on blank recording media and determines which media will have levies imposed. Five years ago this seemed like a pretty good deal for the music industry: $0.77 CDN for a blank CD and .29 a blank tape, whether used for recording music or not. Found money for the music moguls who had been pretty disturbed that some of their product was being burned onto CDs. To date over 70 million dollars has been collected through the levy and there is a good possibility the levy will be raised and extended to MP3 players, flash memory cards and recordable DVDs sometime in 2003. While hardware vendors whine about the levy, consumers seem fairly indifferent. Why? Arguably because the levy is fairly invisible - just another tax in an overtaxed country. And because it makes copying music legal in Canada. Read: Full Article Source: Zeropaid.com Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ayepecks Posted September 13, 2003 Share Posted September 13, 2003 Think we've already gone over this here, but yeah :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thundros Posted September 13, 2003 Author Share Posted September 13, 2003 I know don't know if it was talked about, that's why I posted it. I've seen a few discussions going on and people wondering will Canada be next when it comes to legal action a la RIAA. This way the debate ends :) There is a more recent article on the subject (that I posted) where they ask a law professor his views, which is in another thread: https://www.neowin.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=100625 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MR_Candyman Posted September 13, 2003 Share Posted September 13, 2003 oh ya, I totally forgot the reason behind the levy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Allen Veteran Posted September 14, 2003 Veteran Share Posted September 14, 2003 Yay Canada...I think Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts