Federal Appeal Court Quashes Levy on mp3 Players
Summary of Dec. 14th decision in pdf format
Levy proposal still on the books for 2005
The 2005 proposal still includes the following wording:
"the levy rates shall be
(a) 29¢ for each audio cassette of 40 minutes or more in length;
(b) 21¢ for each CD-R or CD-RW;
(c) 77¢ for each CD-R Audio, CD-RW Audio or MiniDisc;
(d) for non-removable memory permanently embedded in a digital audio recorder, $2 for each recorder that can record no more than 1 Gigabyte (Gb) of data, $15 for each recorder that can record more than 1 Gb and no more than 10 Gbs of data, and $25 for each recorder that can record more than 10 Gbs of data."
The proposal for 2003-2004 included the following wording:
"CPCC proposed rates of 51¢ for each audiocassette, 59¢ for each CD-R of 100 megabytes (Mbs) or more, 49¢ for each CD-RW of 100 Mbs or more, $1.15 for each CD-R Audio and CD-RW Audio or MiniDisc, and 65¢ for each blank DVD. For removable electronic memory cards, or a removable hard drive, CPCC sought a rate from 0.221¢ to 0.55¢ for each Mb. For (a) removable electronic memory cards sold bundled with a music device, or a removable micro-hard drive sold bundled with a music device, or (b) non-removable memory incorporated into a music device, or a hard drive incorporated into a music device, CPCC proposed rates from 0.193¢ to 1.08¢ for each Mb depending on capacity."
With the exception of how much they were asking for, they had the wording right the first time. No idea why it was altered to leave them with a description that excluded mp3 players - the 2003-4 proposal also includes DVDs and scaleable media levies, which makes more sense - the bigger the capacity, the higher the levy.
For the record I support a tax levy to 'cover off' filesharing in Canada. I have no problem paying into a fund to cover the modest losses to musicians resulting from whatever sales might have gone away due to filesharing.