January 08, 2003
Bend Over, Canada - The Record Industry Has Something For You.
Here in Canada, we are currently paying tariffs for blank recordable media. The recording industry has successfully lobbied our government to have 21 cent tariffs applied to CD-R and cassette tape sales. Not satisfied with that, they are now proposing a whole new schedule of punitive tariffs on electronic devices and other forms of recordable media. The theory being that everyone who buys these discs and players is a thief who is stealing money from the poor people in the music industry. And of course, to take down the thieves, we're going to have to make the honest people pay as well. So the tariffs will also apply to FLASH media used in cameras, removable hard drives used to move files to and from work, etc.
This is the schedule of tariffs the Canadian Private Copyright Collective is asking for:
Audio cassettes of 40 minutes or more in length 51¢
CD-R 100 MB or more 59¢
CD-RW 100 MB or more 49¢
CD-R Audio, CD-RW Audio and MiniDisc $1.15
Recordable DVD 65¢
Internal memory in MP3 players
1 GB or less $0.0111/MB
Greater than 1 GB $11.10 on the first GB
$7.98/GB on GBs 2 to 5
$5.98/GB on GBs 6 to 10
$3.99/GB on GBs 11 to 20
$1.99/GB on GBs 21 and greater
Removable electronic memory cards sold bundled with an MP3 player As above
Removable electronic flash of 32 MB or more except where sold bundled with a device and micro-hard drive storage media capable of use in an MP3 Player
1 GB or less $0.0057/MB
Greater than 1 GB $5.70 on the first GB
$4.53/GB on GBs 2 to 5
$3.78/GB on GBs 6 to 10
$3.02/GB on GBs 11 to 20
$2.27/GB on GBs 21 and greater
If this schedule of tariffs is made law, a 20gb Apple iPod will have a whopping $72.42 tariff. A 10-pak of CD-R media will have a tariff of $5.90, which is more than half of the current retail price of most CD-R bundles. And, consider that the price of hard drives is still dropping rapidly. If the tariff stays the same, in a few years a 100gb iPod would have a tariff of $254.02. These tariffs also make the concept of hard-disk based personal movie players totally impractical. A 500gb movie player would have an $1150 tariff attached to it.
The CPCC also wants tariffs applied not just to hard drives in MP3 players, but to those that are 'capable of use in' an MP3 player. So if you buy a micro hard drive for your PDA, you get to pay some money to the music industry. Lucky you.
The small personal digital device is going to become a bigger and bigger part of our lives in years to come. The price of media is dropping fast, to the point where we will be able to carry around our personal photo albums, movies of the kids, personal files, and much more. Of course, by 'we' I mean, 'you'. Because here in Canada, we won't be able to afford any of it. These tariffs will destroy the big-memory personal electronics of the future in Canada and other countries where they are adopted.
The rationale being floated by the CPCC for these insanely high tariffs is that their research shows that over half of the digital media sold to the public is used for 'private copying'. What they didn't say was how much of the copying being done was of legitimately owned works. For example, I bought the new Wilco CD. I immediately copied it to the hard drive on my computer, so it could be added to my MP3 playlist for listening while I work. I burned a CDR for my car, and copied the files for listening at work or elsewhere. This is all legal, but would all be counted as 'private copying' by the CPCC, and thus included in their statistics used to justify these tariffs. In Canada, our copyright law was modified in 1997 to allow content providers to charge royalties for private copying.
And of course, those CD-R's containing VCD movies of my family represent a gift to the record industry, because no copywritten works were involved at all. Same for the hundred or so CD-R's used to back up all my personal data. Every time I make a 10-CD image of my hard drive, I will be donating six bucks to the record industry. I'd like to tell you how I feel about that, but it's hard to see the monitor when you're in a blind rage.
I'm guessing this nonsense will get signed into law in Canada. I have nothing to base that on, other than the fact that my government is incompetent, and when given several options can be counted on to choose the most ridiculous one. Canada is the sucker of the free world. Got a harebrained scheme to fleece the public? Come to Canada. We'll like it. We'll try anything.
Oh, and where does all the money go? To the artists, of course. Supposedly. Unfortunately, of the 28 million dollars collected so far, not a nickel has landed in the hands of a single artist. You weren't surprised, were you?
Posted by Dan at January 8, 2003 12:58 PM
The solution is clear. One of us needs to start our own record company, then sign contracts with every Canadian who asks. That way, we will be able to claim a share of every blank media sale. It's no more asinine then the rest of this story.
This is the same situation as Double Jeopardy (can't be charged for the same crime twice, or so the movie tells me)
So if you've already paid for the crime of stealing copyright material, you have the right to then actually steal as much as you've paid the tarrifs on, so fill up that 200GB bad boy with those thousands of MP3s, prerelease DVD screeners and corporate edition software, because as long as its on a medium that you've paid tax on, you've already paid for it.
Who needs contracts? You can just publish my new single "Angry American Beating on Desk Like Gorilla". When I say "publish" I mean burn it onto 100 CD-R's and give it to your buddy at the local guitar shop to give away as a promotion with other purchases. Sounds like a promising business model to me.
Should we just append 'Darth' to the names of record executives?
So what is going to stop Canadians living on the border with the U.S. from coming over here on the weekends and stocking up on good, tariff-free recordable media and then coming back home to sell it off to people? And if they were to purchase their media “honestly” in Canada, what is going to stop them from filling up said media with the illegal copies of whatever that they’ve now paid for the right to copy.
Of course not dime one of any of this money is going to go to the artists. It never was – the sole purpose of RIAA and other organizations supposedly protecting the rights of the artist is to actually protect the profits of the company that owns their contract. The average artist is lucky to see a fraction of the profits of their hard work. Just watch MTV’s “Cribs” sometime if it’s still on. The rock musicians all live in small, almost modest dwellings. They have contracts with big-name labels, how much you want to bet they can’t afford more? The rap musicians on the other hand have large estates – they did the smart thing and formed their own label when they hit it big – now the only person who benefits from their talent is them. I think it’s time we cut out the middleman as well, why should no-talent button-down business types have the right to fleece our artistic heritage?
"So what is going to stop Canadians living on the border with the U.S. from coming over here on the weekends and stocking up on good, tariff-free recordable media and then coming back home to sell it off to people?"
Nothing, other than the threat of arrest, jailtime, etc. if caught - that's just plain-old smuggling, I'm afraid.
"So what is going to stop Canadians living on the border with the U.S. from coming over here on the weekends and stocking up on good, tariff-free recordable media and then coming back home to sell it off to people?"
Who cares? Buy it off eBay. Find friends on the US side who will ship "gifts" to you. There are only about a thousand different ways to get around this.
When we're talking about a black market for CD-R's, you know it's getting sad.
And you know what the worst part is? The worst part is that there is a small but real chance that a few cents of MY money will go towards supporting the music of Celine Dion.
I may have to send an anonymous donation to the estate of Robert Johnson just to balance out my karma.
I don't think Robert Johnson had an "estate" as such, and if he did it would as soon put a knife in your belly as look at you, but maybe you could appease his tormented soul by killing Ralph Macchio. Or leaving a bottle of whiskey at the crossroads some night. Or just drinking the whiskey and throwing up a lot.
Well, SOMEONE has to be getting the big bucks from those songs. Who does get the money for Johnson's songs? They've all been covered a zillion times. There must be tens of millions of dollars in royalties floating out there somewhere.
I know - I'll just sell my soul to the devil, and then when I die Bobby and I can sit around and kvetch about how much pop music sucks.
I'm tellin' ya, man, he'd stick you with a shiv the first chance he got. RJ was not a gentle man.
It's been a long time since I was reading books about the blues, but I suspect that Robert Johnson probably signed over all rights to the recordings to Alan Lomax (?), or whichever guy it was that toured the south making recordings of the old blues guys. Or maybe he traded them for corn liquor, but it doesn't matter, 'cause he didn't live long after making the recordings.
Let me get this straight: I'll be sitting in hades, in a river of fire, with the Prince of Darkness himself ripping my flesh and torturing my soul, and I'm supposed to worry about a SHIV?
Bring it on, baby.
I did some reading on Robert Johnson a few months ago. Strange life, strange man. Haunting music. If he didn't sell his soul down at the crossroads, he sure as hell rented it out.
"So what is going to stop Canadians living on the border with the U.S. from coming over here on the weekends and stocking up on good, tariff-free recordable media and then coming back home to sell it off to people?"
Probably the 60 cent dollar.
It's still smuggling. Canadians are only allowed a certain small personal exemption each year. Everything over that must be declared and taxed.
Yeah, here's a tip, how Americans handle their government's excessive taxes:
We lie. :)
Yeah, so I'll just go down to the local Future Shop here in Red Deer, Alberta and lie about my nationality, maybe? I'll tell them I'm American, and therefore exempt from the tarrifs. Also, I'll tell them I am a musician (not a lie), who needs to purchase thousands of CDR's to do my recording of my own material, and so any taxes they have collected are actually due to me. Yeah, that'll work. Sure. And since lying about taxes has always been a successful strategy for Americans, it's a wonder no one suggested this one sooner. Of all the crimes Al Capone committed, the one they got him on was tax evasion. So, the message seems to be, you can murder, pimp, run drugs, guns, and alcohol, smuggle, run illegal gambling operations, bribe high officials, etc, just so long as you declare it all when you file your taxes. In Canada, our personal Income tax laws have proven to be in conflict with the original act and its intents, but that has never stopped the government from insuring it corn-holes us on regular basis. Go figure.
