This is a little off-topic, although it does relate to compensation for
home copying of recorded music, so it's not entirely spamactivism...
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 11 Aug 2000 14:59:42 -0400 (EDT)
From: Colin Hinz <asfiATeol.ca>
[ some personal stuff deleted ]
Hey everyone,
A few synapses exploded within my head at lunch today, and I did some
on-line research. The guts of the matter may be found at:
http://www.cb-cda.gc.ca/fact-e.html
This is the Copyright Board's factsheet about the Blank Recording
Media Levy (nope, it's not a "tax" as that would be unconstitutional
...hence, it's a "levy" instead). The upshot is...
1) It's heeeere!! Good thing I stocked up on blank cassettes a while
back, as they'd be 23.3 cents more expensive now.
2) Tax on CD-R blanks is less, a mere 5.2 cents each, because saner
heads prevailed and convinced the copyright moguls that most CD-Rs
aren't used for music duplication.
3) Tax on AUDIO CD-R blanks is now 60.8 cents...yeeeowtch!!!
4) The factsheet suggests that a zero-rating scheme (not an exemption,
as the Copyright Board cannot grant an "exemption" but can set the tax
rate to zero under conditions they consider suitable) may exist for
(blah blah blah) including "music... industries". Whether this means
that your friendly neighbourhood CD-R dupe shop is exempt is unknown.
(Oops, not "exempt" but "zero-rated", sorry.)
- Colin
PS: On the offchance that some of you are registered with
royalty-paying societies (SOCAN, etc) and thus think you're in on this
nine million dollar windfall: think again. This payola gets divvied up
on the basis of radio airplay, or retail sales, or something like
that. How do you code 'miniscule' into a spreadsheet?
PPS: The tax rates get revised at the end of the year. The proposed
rates are $1.00 for C-90 tapes, $0.50 for CD-R/CD-RW and $1.75 for
CD-R audio and MiniDisc. Ouch! Ouch!! Ouch!!! (But bear in mind that
they could be revised downwards...the initial proposal from a few
years back was a flat $2.50 tax on any media over an hour's length.)
PPPS: DAT tapes are explicitly exempted as they aren't considered a
consumer medium. Phew!
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