Canada May Tax Legal Music Downloads 246
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."
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?
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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?
Re:WTF? (Score:5, Informative)
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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!
Re:It is NOT piracy in Canada! (Score:5, Interesting)
O Canada, Founding Myth of Piracy (Score:2, Funny)
Our home and native LAN!
True pirate love in all thy lines command.
With glowing modems we see bits rise,
The True Bits strong and free!
From far and wide,
O Canada, we fileshare tunes for thee.
God keep our tunes gloriously free!
O Canada, we fileshare tunes for thee.
O Canada, we fileshare tunes for free.
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But they don't regret it. They're endorsing the principle by asking for it to be applied more broadly.
Re:It is NOT piracy in Canada! (Score:5, Informative)
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The next stage is for retailers to require a subsidy for loss of revenue due to shoplifting.
Then of course it will be compensation for loss of revenue due to "economic conditions".
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In Canada, it is legal to download music for personal use.
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Bad idea.
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"Hey, we can't find every single person in Canada who is pirating music, eh? So what we're going to do, you hosers, is charge extra for all the legal downloads. And we're going to charge for every single one of them back to 1996, eh?"
See, the punishment isn't so much the extra tax on all future purchases. Okay, if you add a new tax, people can decide whether or not they want to continue purchasing the same item with that new tax added on. But when you make it retroactive
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A tax on not committing piracy (Score:5, Funny)
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Actually, that could make sense. Smokers die much sooner; as a result, they are much less likely to receive the same benefits from their pension plan that a non-smoker would receive. Every smoker who dies at 60 or 65 saves the government and their employer a lot in pensions.
It is often said that smokers cost the health care system more - I'm not sure that is true. Since everyone dies, are smokers just running up their healt
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http://www.cdc.gov/MMWR/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5114a2.htm [cdc.gov]
http://www.bera.com/smoking.htm [bera.com]
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
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Many of the things you list, the major risk is injury (or death) which to much cheaper to treat (bandages, plaster cast, a few weeks in hospital or just a coffin) than the long term illness (years of in & out of hospital, expensive drugs and dedicated caring) that smoking creates. Others such as obesity, unhealthy diet, no exercise I would support a tax on. As for uv radiation, you could tax solariums but taxing people in
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Nonsense! What's so difficult about staying in the basement all day?
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You find it hard to believe that people who inhale smoke become damaged and/or die? Really now?
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Those that choose to live in high-crime areas?
Yes, because levying a tax on those who "choose" to live in a high crime area surely will make the problem BETTER. Seriously, you really believe people CHOOSE to live in a shitty neighbourhood? I've lived in one myself, and I thanked all the applicable deities when my circumstances improved enough for me to GTFO.
Meat eaters?
Meat eaters are a health risk now? What about the malnutritioned vegans who refuse to plan a proper vegetarian diet, and end up rich, spoiled, malnutritioned asses despite having all of the wea
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heather_Crowe [wikipedia.org]. Heather Crowe died from lung cancer after working as a waitress in a smoke filled environment for most o
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Besides automobile driving, there is not one of those activities that both immediately and irrevocably put the health and well being of the non-participant at risk.
You don't believe years and years of peer reviewed science? Second-hand smoke has been proven to be harmful to everyone involved.
The difference between astronauts, rock climbers, explorers, extreme sports folks etc. and smokers is obviously apparent. Each of those activities plainly demonstrate the risk and even go as far as
Passive *DOES* exist (Score:2)
Because there's no such thing as passive 2nd hand smoking. (And by the way, most of the example you gave aren't associated with strong addiction. Workaholic doesn't have the same biochemestry implication as cocaine or tobacco).
By engaging a random risky behaviour, you're only endangering your self. With smoke, your also compro
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So I think smoking is an excellent idea, so long as they do it away me. Plus any other non-smokers or children.
Same with motorcycles. We should repeal the helmet laws but require that all helmetless motorcyclists are automatic organ donors. I might need a kidney one day.
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Please, feel absolutely free to do so right before riding your motorcycle. Usually you'll either relieve your government by not requiring any more health benefits and pensions or you'll help finance those by giving that nice dude with the car with flashing lights on top some of your money. Way to go, lawbreaker
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It says the government probably is making more off taxes then the cost of smoking, and that it is stupid to say that its purpose is to fix the social/medical cost when it is really about bureaucrats making money, kinda like the music industry.
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I know, pretty weak, but I wasn't given anything witty to work with.
So, there ya go (Score:2, Funny)
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WTF, a government finding yet another way to take money and use it to buy votes!? I've never heard of such a thing.
Not particularly witty, but the best I could do after a few beers and not much sleep.
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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?
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I will pay a small extra fee if I can be subscriber number 000001.
That would suck (Score:5, Insightful)
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It's the law of unintended consequences. Due to the Levy on blank media, I can copy/download as much as I please, all completely legal in Canada
Add another Levy and I'll have even more protection from the lawsuit insanity going on in the US.
And I wonder how this works to the CRIA's advantage as that they are attempting to get rid of the levy on blank media for the afore mentioned reason.
I don't pay to download music now, Why would I start?
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There's one detail that can potentially be argued, and that's whether SHARING (or uploading) music is the other guy making a copy for himself (legal), or you making a copy for him (which is illegal). The precedent is that this too is the other guy making a copy for himself, and therefore legal.
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I started doing this about ten years ago. If you decide to take this route, you'll discover the same thing I did: you're not missing anything. For any given musical style, there is a VERY small subset of originality which gets exhausted after just a few songs.* From that point on, it's all just minor variations on the same old themes.
* Yes, I know that mathematically music has much more range than I'm stating.
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)
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This would seem to require (Score:2)
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."
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This is the second story of the day that sounds like it got cross posted from The Onion by accident.
tax legal? (Score:5, Funny)
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Ex Post Facto Laws (Score:5, Interesting)
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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.
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Don't worry, you don't have to pay the tax if you're deaf, and tone-deaf get half off.
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In the US they (you?) pay a silly levy on blank CDs and get sued into oblivion when they (you?) download music. Not only does the government pass anti-piracy legislation when the industry asks for it, but also pressures other countries (like Canada) to also pass such legislation.
Whose prior
$0.02 (Score:4, Funny)
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A ripoff.. (Score:2)
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.
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if the money actually GETS to SOCAN, it will make it to the artists - even the little ones. SOCAN is a stand-up association and not a douchebag riddled litigation society like RIAA.
Assuming that other Canadians feel as you do, then there would be some genuine support for a government subsidy of musicians (through their representatives of SOCAN) in Canada. The proposed (and existing) taxes would encourage piracy so in the end to model would be, "pirate what you want, but we will tax citizens to compensate artists (through SOCAN) with public money."
I personally think that such a model would lead to disaster and corruption (which artists? Only signed ones? Who controls who's signed
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It has always astounded me that such an organization could continue to enjoy such legislative influence despite their interests being so contrary to capitalism, and to 99.9999%+ of Canadians.
It appears that the AC who posted this [slashdot.org] earlier in this thread is among the (100 - 99.9999)% of Canadians who have little problem with SOCAN managed welfare for musicians at taxpayer expense. South of the 49th parallel few would support introducing something like that (but think nothing of existing subsidies), but I wouldn't be too surprised if a substantial minority of Canadians would willingly support such a thing. SOCAN might be counting on just that.
What about free ad-supported sites? (Score:2)
What's the problem? (Score:2)
If you really want to make it fair, then if the tax is, e.g., 1%, just download one illegal song for every 100 you buy. Then you're paying for your own piracy, right?
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?
Huh?!? (Score:2)
So... the people who pay for music are paying for the people who don't pay for music?
"The publishing group draws similarities between this and a 21-cent fee already
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.
New tax on air (Score:2)
SOCAN sticks it to CRIA (and the RIAA) again (Score:4, Insightful)
Tax evasion (Score:3, Insightful)
More and more ... (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
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Apparently this retroactive BS came up recently (Score:2)
http://www.ctf.ca/articles/News.asp?article_ID=2350 [www.ctf.ca]
"""
The Joint Committee said that retroactive tax law detrimental to taxpayers is inappropriate for two main reasons: it undermines the rule of law and the confidence that taxpayers have in our self-assessment tax system, and it is perceived as being reflective of a tax system that is neither stable nor predictable and is
Sure thing (Score:2)
Endorsement of right to copy (Score:2)
We occasionally hear expressions of doubt from the music industry about this arrangement, despite having proposed it originally. If the industry now asks for the principle to be extended to downloads, then clearly it is underscoring its endorsement of the arrangement.
It's good to have this question cleared up, because if a legislative reversal were to take place, I'd want
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?
Legalize It! (Score:2)
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Retroactive? How?? (Score:2)
Its not about Piracy, its about Thieft from artist (Score:2)
They really should not be using piracy as an excuse to hide their own acts of robbery from artist.
such acts only beget more of the same
Artists should wake up and realize this and dump the traditional music industry.
The more I see this sort of disgrace going on the less likely I'll buy from any label.
The traditional business model doesn't work any longer as the reasons for the mechanics
of it to have been the way it was no longer exist. Th
Taxes ho! (Score:2, Insightful)
Not a Senator: Sir, in 20 years, you'll be taxing it.
Public sector gone mad (Score:3, Funny)
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.
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Wait a sec, did you mean *piracy*?
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I very much doubt a retroactive tax would fly in court. Our Charter of Rights and Freedoms prohibits that sort of thing.
Care to provide a reference?
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I'm pretty sure SOCAN and CRIA were involved with the crafting of the law [via completely above-board lobbying, I'm sure], and I'm pretty sure they NEVER intended for the levy to allow Canadians to legally download all the music they want. That's why they are now lobbying the gov't to explicitly make uploading and downloading music illegal [at least, before the last minister in charge of copyright laws got sacked for let
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And as a result iam stuck with a cookie in my throat which i swallowed whole...
In effect this tax means i can pirate the music???
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Or does the tax apply to all legal downloads, big label related or not? In which case, they are targeting the wrong people! Sites with free legal downloads would shut down rather than charging the tax, and those who legally charge for their music are mostly serving people who have found alternatives to piracy, and thus woul