Canadians Burned By Blank-CD Levy
from the keeps-going-up dept
Wired News is pointing out that Canadians are (finally) getting fed up with the blank CD levy they're being charged. Canada forces an extra levy to be charged on every blank CD sold, which is collected by an organization to give out to musicians who feel they're being ripped off by people copying their music. It's basically a tax for musicians. Except... that none of the money actually goes to musicians. That part, it seems, is just too "complicated". However, even though the musicians haven't actually received the money they're due, the organization that collects the fees has decided that they're not nearly high enough, and wants to nearly triple the fees. It seems that their greed is finally causing some to notice the fact that there's this tax on CDs and complain. People are starting to fight back, saying the whole idea of a blank CD levy is unfair. The thing is, if they had kept the fees low, I doubt many people would have complained. But to increase it from $0.052 to $0.21 to $0.59 is extremely noticeable.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
The real reason
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Justification?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Justification?
Yeah, I'd say at least half of my CD-R purchases are for making VCD and SVCD copies of DVD movies... :-)
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
CD-RWs
[ link to this | view in chronology ]