As you might all know, in Canada it is perfectly legal for us to download music and to copy our audio CD's for use in our cars, home players and mp3 players. Because of this we have not only been able to avoid the RIAA problems that our friends down south have in the USA, but we also have something called a Private Copying Tariff. Currently in Canada we pay 21 cents on all CD-R and CD-RW discs that are purchased, no matter what they are used for. For the actual audio CD's, for those home recorders, the levy is a little steeper, at 77 cents.
Because of the proliferation of this tariff, and it's success, the CPCC has once again decided to try to get the tariff put on iPods and other media players and portable memory storage. For those who do not know, the CPCC is an organization outside of the government that is used to collect the tariffs and give it to the artists and songwriters collectively. The best thing about this agency, is they are non-profit.
Because of the popularity of portable players, and the downfall in blank CD purchases lately, the CPCC has decided that the time is right, to place a levy on players, in regards to how much memory they have. In its new submission to the Copyright Board, the collective is proposing levies of $5 on devices with up to one gigabyte (GB) of memory, $25 for one to 10 GB, $50 for between 10 GB and 30 GB and $75 for over 30 GB. That would take the price of Apple's 30GB iPod to $365 from $290, a 26 per cent increase. There are other surprises in the article as well.
Since it's inception in 1999, the CPCC has paid out 92 million dollars! I know for some people out there, this may seem like a small amount of change, but think of what could happen if every country started to follow this method. I know it is a pipedream, but it would definitely help the artists a lot more.
