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Canadians are encouraged to pirate |
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Written by Felix Da Silva (fdasilva@bitnip.com)
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Tuesday, 23 October 2007 |
 The Copyright Board of Canada has just decided to impose a 3.1% tax on legal music purchases from
sources like Apple's iTunes store. This would add about three cents to the cost of individual songs that now sell for about 99
cents, and 1.5 cents per track for downloaded albums. The idea is to compensate the musicians whose
music you're buying.
According to Canada.com, this decision to add a tariff is to compensate artists for the reproduction of their songs, the charges
follow similar levies that add 21 cents to the price of every blank CD sold in
Canada. And they are retroactive to 1996, when Canada's music industry first
began pushing for tariffs on transmitted music files.
The Copyright Board of Canada also set a tariff for Internet radio stations,
requiring them to pay the Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of
Canada (SOCAN) at least 48.1 cents a month per subscriber. At least this makes sense as regular radio stations have to pay SOCAN, too.
Such online radio services likeLast.fm and Slacker.com, which allow people to pick
their favourite artists and create a customized, commercial-free radio station,
now will be required to pay 6.8% of all monthly subscription fees or a minimum
of 43.3 cents a month per subscriber
For temporary music sales or subscription based, such as songs that erase themselves after a
predetermined period like Napster, stores will pay 5.7% of the selling price, with a minimum
of 54.8 cents per subscriber per month.
However, I think they're insane to tax a digital download service as it will just discourage people that download legally and even convince some of them to pirate.
It is hard to compete against free on pricing alone which is why they should not compete on pricing. They have to provide value to the customers and give them something that they want in order for them to buy. Something like really high quality audio files with no DRM. What is the point of DRM anyways other than to piss of customers when it will be cracked eventually.
Sometimes you'd have to wonder if these copyright folks live under a rock. I know money is important but adding taxes to legal downloads right now is a short term solution which in the long run will do more harm than good in my humble opinion. This feels like being punished for good behaviour and for something you did not do.
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