James Delahunty
7 Sep 2009 11:01
In Canada (and many other countries), levies are places on the sale of blank media (CDs, DVDs etc.) that are collected and distributed to artists and record companies to make up for lost revenue due to copying. Similar mentions of "iPod tax" that would put levies on MP3 playing hardware depending on the potential storage capacity have also been proposed in several countries in the past few years.
The Canadian Private Copying Collective has paid over $160 million in such levies to 100,000 songwriters, recording artists and record companies since it was established. However, file sharing on the Internet is not covered by any surtax or levy, and it would like the government to change legislation in order to allow it to generate revenue for that too.
If it were to become reality, a government would have to increase the tax on charges for Internet service for "all" users, regardless of whether they download music at all - legally or illegally. Comparing Internet usage to what you can do with a blank CD, the amount of "other possibilities" for practical uses is overwhelmingly larger for the Internet - so this tax would be even more unfair than the blank media levy that punishes all buyers, not just pirates.
Also, the music industry puts an estimate in the billions of dollars for damage done to the industry from Internet piracy - how could you possibly make up such a huge hole (if its true) without dramatically hiking taxes? This would put pressure on ISPs that already lower prices to attract new customers of broadband services.
Similar ideas have been put forth in countries other than Canada too, but any attempt to make it policy should (and most likely will) be met with a lot of opposition.