Saw this on the news last night. It was bad enough when they introduced the CDR tax so now every time I burn a backup of my computer files I get to pay Canadian songwriters.
Canada’s songwriters will ask the Supreme Court of Canada next week to force Internet service providers to pay them royalties for the millions of digital music files downloaded each year by Canadians.
Obviously, the ISPs are scratching their heads. The next step will of course be levies against movies, books and software. And what pisses me off the most is that SOCAN only represents Canadian authors, so even though 95% of the stuff teens are downloading off the internet is by Brittany and Clay, this tax only goes to support Canadian composers and songwriters.
If this goes into law, you can bet I’m going to start pirating everything I can get my hands on because I’m already paying for it. They just don’t get it, do they?
No, they really don’t. I wrote to three MP’s on the issue of the recording levy and never got a response from any of them. Go, Canada!
The levies treat everyone as a criminal and that rankles me so much I can’t even articulate my response properly. It actually makes me not want to support Canadian music. Maybe I should try writing to the artists instead and tell them the government is doing them no favors.
You could argue that the levies and fees are tacitly encouraging piracy (you’ve already been dinged for your illegal downloads, go crazy). Sheer idiocy.
I checked my CD usage. I find I’ve burned more data than music. As for the burned music, the majority of it is compilation mixes of songs from CDs I already own. I can’t gwet a rebate on the CDR tax, so as far as I’m concerned, I’ve paid for the rest of the music.
What we really need is a truly socialist Canadian solution. Let’s say Celine “the praying mantis” Dion and a few others among Canada’s musical glitterati would be made to distribute their lavish income to lesser Canadian acts that have had to struggle to survive due to rampant piracy, public disinterest and/or discernable lack of talent.
This would probably result in an overall friendlier climate in the music biz and the release of more “feel good” albums coming from the likes of Rush and Avril Lavigne. This positive effect would trickle down into general Canadian society and lead to a happier and more productive populace.
From Vancouver to St. John’s, Canadians would rejoice as we led fruitful, levy-free lives.
