“The fight over a levy on iPods and other digital music devices ended Thursday when the Supreme Court of Canada refused to hear any further arguments on the matter. That means there will be no levy applied to digital audio recorders such as Apple’s popular IPod and IPod Shuffle as well as other MP3 players… ‘Obviously we’re disappointed. We felt it was self-evident that those products are sold for the purpose of copying music,’ said David Basskin, of the Canadian Private Copying Collective (CPCC), the non-profit agency which collects tariffs on behalf of musicians and record companies,” The Canadian Press reports.
“The group had wanted the high court to overturn last year’s Federal Court of Appeal decision which quashed the levy on the popular gadgets. The non-profit agency had been collecting the tariff – CAD$2 for non-removable memory capacity of up to one GB, $15 for one to 10 GBs, $25 for more than 10 GB – since December 2003 through a tax built into the price of the devices,” The Canadian Press reports.
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: The CPCC felt it was self-evident that iPods are sold for the purpose of copying music or they wanted to grab extra cash? iPods are for playing legally-obtained music. iPods don’t steal music. People steal music.
Related iPodDailyNews articles:
Supreme Court of Canada set to announce iPod tax decision – July 28, 2005
there is a tax levied on blank recording media in Canada (CD and tapes), to cover lost sales by performers. Tax is distributed to the performers, altho i don’t know how they determine who gets how much. Do large record sales equal large lost sales due to copying or is it vice versa.
Three cheers for the Canadian Supreme Court!
They made the “right” decision.
Good for Canada and Canadian customers that the court obviously did the right thing.
Good so now I can keep my iPod out of jail!
Canada must be losing their liberal grip.
I didn’t read the whole article, but I hope people get their money back from the CPCC mafia thugs.
How can one use the iPod to copy music without the use of a special peice of software or the direct intention to do it for duplicating perposes? It’s ‘self-evedent’ that the CPCC should go after the people who do it, not the things they do it with. I’m glad we have smart people in our supreme court system! 😀
My magic word is ”law”…that’s funny!
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I’m not too familiar with Canadian laws, but isn’t private copying of songs legal in Canada because of the CPCC tariffs? In other words, any copying at all (for personal use) is made possible because of the fees collected? And the money goes back to the artists, so it’s not really that bad of a tariff.
I’m don’t understand much about these laws, so correct me if I’m wrong.
can we find any proof anywhere that the tariff money actually went to artists?
“I’m not too familiar with Canadian laws, but isn’t private copying of songs legal in Canada because of the CPCC tariffs? In other words, any copying at all (for personal use) is made possible because of the fees collected? And the money goes back to the artists, so it’s not really that bad of a tariff.”
Copying for personal use is legal.
The levy is supposed to go back to the artist, but there is no evidence that any ever has, in fact, word is it just fills the war chest of the CPCC to try and get more levies.
As the price of CD’s has dropped the levy has gone up. The levy is now $0.21 per CD, almost 50% of the purchase price, and they want MORE!
The first goal of any institution is to GROW. Growth requires funds. No manager has ever requested lower funding during the budget process.
The CPCC’s suit is a classic example of an institution working to justify its existence and extend its taxing powers, thereby providing the funds for it to grow. The larger and more powerful it gets, the higher the compensation to those at the top.
Capitalists 1, Socialists 0
Heck, the iPod, iTunes, ITMS Trifecta was the first big step to combat online stealing of music by providing a reasonable legal alternative. Where do these guys get off trying to make Apple out to be the bad guys.
Sheesh.
I’m not sure why people in here think this has anything to do with liberal vs. conservative.
The recording industry doesn’t “get it” in any country– However, Canadian courts have never convicted children of downloading music, unlike the RIAA in the US.
the version of the ipod sold in canada steals music constantly
Canadian government charges huge ass taxes on everything. These bastards are blood suckers. I bought a CD spindle of 50 CDs for $20. They charged me another $12 at the counter.
I don’t think this money is going to the artists or software developers either. But that’s just my Canadian 2 cents…. (worht that much?)
The group said Thursday that approximately $4 million was collected between December 2003 and December 2004.
The money is sitting in an account and will be returned to the importers and manufacturers of the products, said Basskin.
This is just a little of your jam.
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ad nauseum
As a Canadian taxpayer, i’ve never liked the government imposing a tax that only benefits a private institution (and their lawers). so I’m glad of the SC decision.
To accuse iPods of somehow taking money out of the pockets of the recording industry is rediculous. didn’t ITMS just sell half a billion songs? don’t they get a cut of that? I havn’t purchased a CD in over 3 years ( i got sick of the high price) and at most i’ve only illegaly downloaded perhaps a dozen songs.(was always way to slow) since iTMS opend in Canada i’ve puchased over $75 worth of content. I’ll gladly pay $10 for an album that downloads in a minute Apple has shown the way to the recording industry but they are too blind to see it. Unless of course they arn’t really interested in selling music, just plastic disks and the jewel cases they come in.
If you take the CCCP’s… er sorry, the CPCC’s argument to it’s logical conclusion you would have to put a levy on everyones phone line or cable. They are the ultimate means of “illigal downloads” after all.
The purpose of listening to music and that’s all.
Hey Canadian Ipod guy,
I don’t think you should give them any ideas.
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MW: “cent”… as in “just my 2 cents”
> If you take the CCCP’s… er sorry, the CPCC’s argument to it’s
> logical conclusion you would have to put a levy on everyones
> phone line or cable. They are the ultimate means of “illigal
> downloads” after all.
If I pay the tax does that mean I can copy/steal all the music I want? I paid my fee to the “musicians and record companies.”
Who’s collecting on behalf of Podcasters?
This is absolutely the right decision. iPods (and other portable music players) are about carrying your music for your own use, not about distributing music illegally. Apple don’t even allow you to extract music from your iPod, you have to go to a third-party hack for that. There’s some slight justification that CD-Rs are used for distribution but it doesn’t take into account what else you might use them for: I burn a lot more of my photos than music. And $0.21 on a product that sells for $0.50 to $1.00 is waaaay too much! They should levy on the original CD: “it’s obvious you’re only buying this so you can copy it and give it to all your friends.”
PS Yay!!: I don’t get your analysis. It seems to me that the capitalists in the music biz got shafted. Oh, I get it: you think that tax=socialism, no tax=capitalism. You have a lot to learn. Taxes on expenditure are just the way that capitalist politicians take money off you while pretending that it’s not tax because it doesn’t affect the better-off. That’s why it’s called regressive taxation…
As a Canadian, this decision actually bothers me, and for a VERY good reason…
That being, that one of the main reasons why the Canadian equivilant of the RIAA ,(their name escapes me at the moment), isn’t able to go about suing everybody who downloads music, is because of that levy, which essentially has ‘shielded’ us Canadians from that kind of prosecution, because we were, up until now, able to say “you can’t sue us for downloading music, because we ALREADY pay a tax for the media we use to download them onto, [eg mp3 players, blank discs, etc]”.
Now, with the levy gone, so is that ‘shield’, and now the courts will be able to go ahead and allow such lawsuits to occur, as music copyright holders can NOW claim that they no longer get compensation, (when they did before, albiet minimally).
Don’t be fooled into thinking that this decision was reached purely for the benefit of Canadian downloaders, because i don’t believe that’s so. The Canadian government, nay, the government of any and all nations, won’t change a law in a way that wouldn’t ultimately benefit them in the end.
by doing this, the music corporations are released of a shackle, and now have every justification for unleash sweeping bouts of legal extortion. that makes them happy, and the canadian legal system happy, (more lawsuits = more business for them), and if the corporations are happy with this new symbiotic relationship, (where in the past, them and the courts were more adversarial because the levy prevented them from getting their way), than they’ll be more likely to sponsor/support the Canadian government for special events, etc.
I’m now fearful that my ISP will keel over and let them try to sue me for $200 per song that i may have obtained illegitimately. sure, that’s probably a consequence of my own online activities, but it sure as hell would suck for me. and for every other Canadian internet user who can’t prove that all the digital songs they have were either purchased legally, or came from CDs they own.
NOT a good day. 🙁
MDN = “response”, as in, “That was the legal system’s response to years of corporate pressure.”
PTRIX
The levy is not gone, it is still in place for recordable media, (CD-R/W) The SC has refused to allow a levy on iPods! They wanted $10 per Gb! A 60Gb iPod would cost about $1200. Just means more people would smuggle them in, lots of people buy blank media in the US while on vacation to avoid the levy.