OTTAWA- Canada's Private Copyright Collective is taking another stab
at introducing levies on digital music players and memory cards.
The charges could add as much as $75 to the price of a new Apple iPod.
The collective, which seeks to compensate artists for unauthorized
copying of their music, said Friday it's taking a new tack after a 2003
Federal Court of Appeals decision rejected the levies.
The court overturned the Copyright Board of Canada's approval of the
charges after protests by a coalition of industry groups that included
retailers Wal-Mart, Staples Business Depot and Future Shop.
The collective had argued the memory inside a digital audio device
such as an iPod is an audio recording medium primarily used to store
music, and therefore should be subject to the Canadian Copyright Act.
The act states an audio recording medium is "a medium regardless of its material form on which a recording can be reproduced."
The court, however, found the memory can't be defined as an audio recording medium.
Now, the group is going after the devices themselves. It says
devices such as the iPod can be classified as a "recording medium" and
should be subject to taxation.
"It is simply a matter of fairness that the creators of content, the
creators of culture actually, should receive some compensation for the
large volume of unauthorized and uncontrollable copying onto these
media," said collective chair Claudette Fortier. "Private copying is a
fact - Canadians do it."
The group is responsible for collecting a levy on blank recording
media and distributing the money to those entitled to royalties.
In other words, every time a Canadian buys a blank CD, or audio
cassette today a portion of the cost is sent to artists all over the
world such as Kid Rock, Justin Timberlake and Paris Hilton.
In its new submission to the Copyright Board, the collective is
proposing levies of $5 on devices with up to one gigabyte (GB) of
memory, $25 for one to 10 GB, $50 for between 10 GB and 30 GB and $75
for over 30 GB. That would take the price of Apple's 30GB iPod to $365
from $290, a 26 per cent increase.
The group is also asking for levies of $2 to $10 for memory cards,
which are primarily used to store photographs in digital cameras.
It's also asking for eight-cent increases to the current 21-cent
levy on blank CD media and 77-cent charge for CD-R Audio, CD-RW Audio
and MiniDiscs.
10:16:29 PM 
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