Canadians To Get Fleeced Even Further

Living in Canada comes with a premium cost to enjoy modern technology. From the highest prices for broadband service in the industrialized world, to system access fees on cell phone plans being a geek in the great white North means many numerous hits to the bank account. One biggest hits in the wallet is going to hit harder in 2009. The recordable media levy that is charged on blank CD's audio tapes (remember those?) and minidiscs is going up as much as 40 percent.

The levy intended to compensate musicians and songwriters for any potential revenue loses from home recording of copyrighted songs was applied to recordable media about ten years ago. In 2001 the levy on blank CD's was raised from 5 cents per CD to 21 cents due to the rise of peer to peer file sharing networks.

The Canadian Private Copying Collective is the body in charge of collecting the levy and dispersing it, but instead of musicians and songwriters the money collected has been going to recording companies. In the past I have been of the opinion that the term 'Corporate Welfare' was used by extreme left wing nut jobs to describe any favorable treatment that any private sector company gets from government but even I can't find any other phrase that more accurately describes the recordable media levy.

While the recording industry is getting a hand out taken right out of the pockets of Canadians many of which are using blank CD's for data backup, not music, the recording industry practically authored previous copyright bills that would have seen Canadians fined $500 per song downloaded from a peer to peer file sharing network.

Unlike other tech rip offs the recordable CD levy is one you can get away from. Because this is a levy and not a tax, it's not collected by Canada Customs on blank CD's that are imported from outside of Canada. So get on E-Bay buy your blank CD's, it's your duty.