Are eye eh eh

[greatbear]

Well, it seems the music industry thinks it can shake down our Canadian friends upstairs a hell of a lot more than they are doing already. For years, Canadians have 'enjoyed' paying a 21 cent 'tax' (actually a 'levy') on each blank CD-R disk purchased, whether or not that disk is used to store music. Disks designed to store music data ("Music CD-Rs" and MiniDiscs) carry a 77 cent tariff. That's about to change, and expand, if a proposal by the Canadian Private Copying Collective (CPCC) becomes law. In addition to raising the current tariffs, the new law would attach a hefty levy to flash media according to capacity, and some whopping fees onto MP3 players, topping out at $75 bux for a player with 30 gigs or more of storage.



As far as I see it, this 'levy', which is meant to compensate artists for their work (and to date I think has not contributed one red cent to anyone but industry lawyers) should now give carte blanche to everyone up in the Great White North to download, trade and share music via any means possible with full blessings of the industry. Artists be damned, go forth and fill those iPods up. After all it was Universal Media Group CEO Doug Morris who exclaimed last year, "These devices are just repositories for stolen music, and they all know it.". Makes you just want to give up buying music forever, doesnt it?

More info can be found here.
Proposal can be viewed here (.pdf)

Comments

[wrascalism.livejournal.com]

Faced with that, if I wanted to buy an iPod (and I don't) I would consider getting it across the border in the US. The rate of exchange is now much more favourable and the only ones they'll be hurting is themselves.

[ciddyguy.livejournal.com]

I've said this before, but the music industry is really about to bite off more than they can chew as this whole thing may backfire, get too greedy and yes, it will backfire, whatever it is.

Sooner or later, something has got to give and it can't all be just the RIAA and it's ilk getting it all forever.

[sfmini.livejournal.com]

People will be baking them into cakes and sending them over the border as birthday presents.

[furr-a-bruin.livejournal.com]

Can't agree with you more.

After reading some of the articles that Janis Ian has written about the recording industry, the idea of them claiming the moral high ground makes me want to hurl. If I thought buying music through them would actually put money in the pockets of any artist other than ones with enough marketing clout to force something resembling a decent share, I would - but I no longer do.

Buying direct from an artist's website (such as lynnemusic.com) or from a company like CDBaby where my understanding is that the artist gets a substantial cut of the price paid by the customer are far superior options, IMHO. I want artists paid for their creativity and hard work; I don't want to feed a bloated bureaucracy whose only justification for existing is to persecute their own customer base.

Now that non-DRMed music is being sold throuh iTMS - at a premium, though admittedly also at a higher bitrate - I think the recording industry needs to stop throwing rocks at a service like AllOfMP3.com/AllTunes.com and realize the value they represent in terms of freedom of codec/bitrate choice and reasonable pricing.

I won't even go into the crap they pull by claiming shared music is "stolen" when they refuse to reissue those out-of-print recordings because they "aren't economically viable."

[greatbearmd.livejournal.com]

Oh, but the industry begs to differ. You are guilty by association.

Nothing like government-backed extortion to make life worth living, eh?

I'm moving to the Republic of Bruno.

[greatbearmd.livejournal.com]

The majority of Canadians live so close to the US, it's a simple matter to take a little shopping trip down south.

[greatbearmd.livejournal.com]

People are slowly waking up. I've been stumping this for years and years now, but back then, very few people were 'touched' by the technology. Nowadays it's all the rage, and the new rage is slowly being vented as people discover how they are being ripped off.

[greatbearmd.livejournal.com]

Yep!

iCakes! lol

[ciddyguy.livejournal.com]

I'm sure you have and I also say, that the industry has been like this to a large degree for over 30 years, if not from the very beginning

[greatbearmd.livejournal.com]

The labels are sitting on a goldmine, and they just cant see it for their fat heads and big asses. It would take the tiniest of investment to make available so much out of print stuff, and people would snap it up. Even if a track sold at most a hundred copies, it would be almost pure profit. Add up the countless thousands of these 'long tail' tracks and you are talking a fortune. Problem is, though, one of the reasons these old tracks "aren't economically viable" is that they would undoubtedly undercut sales of the latest, poor excuse for 'music' the big labels are pushing. They want return on investment for the new shit they hope brings in millions. People would head to the past for all those good, but often forgotten songs.

[greatbearmd.livejournal.com]

It's been this way since the first commercial recorded music was produced. It gets worse with every iteration of new recording/playback technology.

[furr-a-bruin.livejournal.com]

Yup. There's no longer any excuse for ANYTHING to ever go out of print. Granted, some albums I never expected to see on CD have come out - witness this comment's icon - but as you say there's a HUGE amount of material that's never been released on CD - and for that matter, there's material that HAS come out on CD and subsequently gone out of print.

[sparkygearhead.livejournal.com]

Huh. I don't know about you, but it makes me more than a bit angry when someone who doesn't know me assumes I'm a criminal.

Like those FBI warnings they make me watch at the beginning of every DVD? Even though I've paid lots of money to buy the stupid movie, I STILL have to get lectured at as if I'm a naughty child.

The way I see it, if I'm having to pay "royalties" when I buy blank media, where's the incentive to purchase music legally? Thank God they're in Canada. I'd hate to think that any of my hard earned tax dollars had gone to developing a stupid plan like this.

[ciddyguy.livejournal.com]

Well, that goes without saying.