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Canada May Tax Legal Music Downloads
Posted by
Zonk
on Sat Oct 20, 2007 09:42 PM
from the more-like-a-half-pounder-of-flesh dept.
from the more-like-a-half-pounder-of-flesh dept.
FuriousBalancing writes "MacNN is reporting that Canadians may soon pay a small tax on every legal music store download. This fee is the work of a measure proposed by the Copyright Board of Canada. About two cents would be added to every song downloaded, with 1.5 cents being added to album downloads. Streaming services and subscriptions would also be taxed, to the tune of about 6% of the monthly fee. Most interesting - the tax would be retroactively applied to every transaction processed since 1996. 'The surcharge would help compensate artists for piracy, according to SOCAN's reasoning. The publishing group draws similarities between this and a 21-cent fee already applied to blank CDs in the country; the right to copy a song from an online store demands the same sort of levy applied to copying a retail CD, SOCAN argues. The tax may have a significant impact for online stores such as iTunes and Canada-based Puretracks, which will have to factor the amount both into future and past sales.' The full text of the measure is available in PDF format."
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News: Study Says P2P Downloaders Buy More Music 158 comments
An anonymous reader writes "Michael Geist posts to his site about a study commissioned by the Canadian government intended to look into the buying habits of music fans. What the study found is that 'there is a positive correlation between peer-to-peer downloading and CD purchasing.' The report is entitled The Impact of Music Downloads and P2P File-Sharing on the Purchase of Music: A Study For Industry Canada, and it was 'conducted collaboratively by two professors from the University of London, Industry Canada, and Decima Research, who surveyed over 2,000 Canadians on their music downloading and purchasing habits. The authors believe this is the first ever empirical study to employ representative microeconomic data.'"
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WTF? (Score:5, Insightful)
So now we are taxing law-abiding citizens to make up for those who break the law? Is it just me, or does this *promote* piracy?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:WTF? (Score:5, Insightful)
It doesn't even immediately make sense. Until very recently major label music was DRM'd, which effectively prevented most casual piracy. I could potentially see streaming radio used as a piracy source, but that's only for MP3 streams, and then those guys do a number of things to discourage piracy.
Is there something I'm missing here? How can you tax someone for piracy when they're unable to use the taxed items to reasonably commit it?
Parent
Re:WTF? (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
It is NOT piracy in Canada! (Score:5, Informative)
In Canada it is NOT piracy to copy a song for personal use. It is not stealing, it is not copyright infrigement. It is a right granted by law, a law that was encouraged by the music industry back in the Audio Cassette days. Yes, they now regret it... too bad!
Parent
Re:It is NOT piracy in Canada! (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:It is NOT piracy in Canada! (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
A tax on not committing piracy (Score:5, Funny)
Re:A tax on not committing piracy (Score:5, Insightful)
http://www.cdc.gov/MMWR/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5114a2.htm [cdc.gov]
http://www.bera.com/smoking.htm [bera.com]
Diamondmagic, this isn't aimed at you personally, but I feel I have to say a few things here.
~rant on
This is what I hate about strident anti-smoking groups and individuals. You could say the same about a multitude of perfectly legal accepted behaviors.
What about over-eaters? Those that participate in risky sports? People who work really hard at their jobs? Explorers? Astronauts? Scuba divers? Mountain climbers? Consumers of alcohol? Those that choose to live in high-crime areas? What about those irresponsible people that go outside in cold weather without a hat and heavy enough coat? Those that don't have an exercise regimen? Meat eaters? Those that (in someone elses' opinion) spend too much time at a computer/surfing the net/playing games that some may consider harmful?
How about people who deliberately expose themselves to harmful ultraviolet radiation to get a tan? Driving or traveling by automobile is one of the riskiest common behaviors, and far surpasses the costs to society of tobacco, even considering the insurance required of drivers in most states.
I flatly refuse to believe all these 'secondary-smoke' alarmist advertisements, stories, and studies. They fly in the face of common sense, and I believe they are constructed as a reason to further regulate and legislate behaviors for the sake of politics power and money. They rarely work as "intended", witness Prohibition and the "War On Drugs", but usually succeed at expanding government power and reducing individual rights.
It is the nature of humans to engage in risky behaviors, even those that they know are harmful to themselves. The only way to stop it is to put everyone in a Matrix-type tube of goo for their entire lives.
Sure, by all means make sure people understand the risks, and try to place minimal, well-reasoned, and practical restrictions that are agreed to by the majority on the extremes, but drop the idea that you can or should try to regulate through law and taxes every behavior that someone thinks may be harmful, for it may be something that matters to *you* that may be the next crusade of the behavior-gestapo.
~rant off
Strat
Parent
Theoretically Speaking (Score:5, Interesting)
Can we just churn out some simple recordings, demonstrate it's theoretical pirating rates and call up somewhere to get some dough?
That would suck (Score:5, Insightful)
Has anyone followed up? (Score:5, Insightful)
Has anyone ever followed up to see just how much of the 21-cent fee actually makes it back to the artists, and how much is sucked up by the record company cartel?
Re:Has anyone followed up? (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Except . . . (Score:5, Insightful)
In related news, Canada proposed a tax on blank paper, by analogy to the sales tax which applies to books. "Someone might read what's written on the paper someday, and we won't then have the opportunity to collect the tax."
tax legal? (Score:5, Funny)
Ex Post Facto Laws (Score:5, Interesting)
What other taxes? (Score:4, Insightful)
[sarcasm]Will there be a Tax on earbuds too? How about we have a per child tax of $50/year to account for music piracy, starting from birth, of course.[/sarcasm]
What is this crap? Canada needs to get their priorities in order. People are more important than lobbyist groups. I hope Canadians are voting for the right politicians, because if this continues any industry could just come up and say "People are downloading/using our material illegally, we need to be compensated." Poof, another tax! With so many copies of Windows pirated, I'm surprised that Microsoft hasn't been trying to get a piece of this cake.
$0.02 (Score:4, Funny)
Not as stupid as it appears ... (Score:4, Insightful)
The music industry is trying to come to terms with the fact that they can't make money the way that they used to. Seeing that their traditional business model is approaching collapse, they need to either protect it or find a new business model. In this case the new business model is to get the government to tax citizens and give the tax revenue to the music industry. By encouraging more piracy, they will be able to demand more tax payer money down the road.
If you think that this is an implausible business model, just look the business of agriculture in most rich countries. Their business is to depend on government enforced price supports and subsidies, and very little about actual farming.
As ludricrous as it is unethical (Score:5, Insightful)
It would be comparable, I guess, to SOCAN collecting a tax on CD purchases. The whole beauty of internet distribution is getting rid of (or reducing the number of) middlemen. This is destroying every incentive people have to *support the artist*, which seems completely against what the whole point of SOCAN was. So if I make a band and sell my music using paypal, do I have to write cheques giving 3% of my profits to SOCAN? What am I getting from them? How does this help the artists? How does this help the industry? *
Down with middlemen.
So even the CRIA's against it. Who the heck is SOCAN representing?
Yeah, this makes sense! (Score:5, Insightful)
And you don't get taxed for not supporting the musics industry if you don't support the music industry?
Yes, this makes perfect sense! Thanks for this proposal.
I wholeheartedly support it. I can now much easier choose my proper action here and whether I should purchase legal music or not.
SOCAN sticks it to CRIA (and the RIAA) again (Score:4, Insightful)
Pure corruption. (Score:4, Insightful)
In short, a large cartel is trying to screw over the competition by lobbying politicians to create bad laws. This is pure corruption, and nothing else.
Double taxing? (Score:4, Funny)
Why am I reminded of the notion of charging a tax to have a meal and another tax to take a dump?
Why a *TAX*? (Score:4, Informative)
For legally purchased music, the CRIA defines the price, via their contracts with individual distribution channels.
Thus, if they see the need for an extra $0.02, they could just, y'know, raise prices by that much per download. No need to go through the government and needlessly complicate the issue.
So, why phrase this as a tax?
Scarily obvious answer: This has more to do with Radiohead than with piracy. Piracy scares the music industry, but not nearly as much as artists like Radiohead, Issa (née Jane Siberry), and NIN finally figuring out a viable way to escape the industry's evil clutches.