OH Canada!!!

OH CANADA!, Canada to TAX MP3 Players $21CAD per GB!

Seems The Canada copyright office is listening to the IFPI, the CRIA, And The RIAA.

They have issued a proposal to put a tariff on all recordable media for 2003-2004 that can be used for audio recording. This includes MP3 Players that are hard drive based such as the Archos Players (more on that later). Canadians will have to pay an outrageous amount of tax on almost every form of recordable or removable media and non removable media. Comments and objections are due by May 8th 2002. The rules are slated to go into effect Jan 1, 2003. What is worse the tax would be distributed as they see fit, no one is specifed. Want to be the first 5 filers to receive these funds are AOL Time Warner, Vivendi/Universal, BMG, Sony, and EMI?

Some would point out that in the US we have the AHRA. But those rates are not anywhere near those listed below, and don't cover audio cassettes, compact flash, SmartMedia, or hard drive based MP3 players. The rate in the US is approx 2% on Music CDs, and about $2.00US per CD recorder.

If you are Canadian, I would suggest buying you MP3 Players this year. Because Next year they will be out of sight price wise.
As an example: A $584 CAD (US $369) 20 gig Archos MP3 player would have $420 CDN (US $265) worth of tariffs levied upon it, making the price $1004 CDN! (US $634)


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From the PDF All figures are in Canadian Dollars. To convert to US Dollars, multiply by .631371 (answer is approx)

Section 3

(1) Subject to subsection (2), the levy shall be:

(a) 60¢ for each audio cassette of 40 minutes or more in length;

(b) 59¢ for each CD-R, CD-RW or each unit of any other type of recordable or rewritable compact disc of 100 megabytes or more of storage capacity;

(c) $1.23 for each CD-R Audio, CD-RW Audio or MiniDisc;

(d) 0.8¢ for each megabyte of memory in each removable electronic memory card, each removable flash memory storage medium of any type, or each removable micro-hard drive;

(e) $2.27 for each DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+RW, DVD-RAM or each unit of any other type of recordable or rewritable DVD;

(f) 2.1¢ for each megabyte of memory in each non-removable electronic memory card or each non-removable flash memory storage medium of any type incorporated into each MP3 player or into each similar device with internal electronic or flash memory that is intended for use primarily to record and play music;

(g) $21 for each gigabyte of memory in each non-removable hard drive incorporated into each MP3 player or into each similar device with an internal hard drive that is intended for use primarily to record and play music. (approx. $13.26 USD per GB)


In accordance with the provisions of the same subsection, the Board hereby gives notice that any person who wishes to object to the statement may file written objections with the Board, at the address indicated below, within 60 days of the publication of this notice, that is, no later than May 8, 2002.

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Too lat to protest I guess

In reply to:

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(g) $21 for each gigabyte of memory in each non-removable hard drive incorporated into each MP3 player or into each similar device with an internal hard drive that is intended for use primarily to record and play music. (approx. $13.26 USD per GB)

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I can see this tax will start a whole plethora of file-taxi products and in-car games platforms (Rio Car Emptris anyone?), who just happen to be able to play back MP3s, but for which that is a "secondary" intention.

Hmm, may the Rio Central better load up some more games to make it competitor to the Xbox, PS2 etc :-)))

Is this something they plan on re-evaluating Constantly? every 6 or 8 months dont hard drives double in size?
I'd hate to see what the tax would be on my brand new 2.5 tera drive(in the future).

If we follow Moore's law, these taxes will be absurd in no time at all.

-Zeke

what are they saying the money goes to unless they are giving it to record compaines what it the point of the tax

> If you are Canadian, I would suggest buying you MP3 Players this year. Because Next year they will be out of sight price wise.

That sucks. Anybody want to set up a MP3 player smuggling ring?

My powers of prognostication are very limited, but I forsee a LOT of lawsuits if this thing goes through. Does Canada have fair use laws like the U.S. does? Does it apply to American players and is therefore an illegal tariff according to NAFTA? I can see a lot of ways to attack this.

I sure hope companies like SonicBlue are having their say with the Canadian government about this one.

Actually the NAFTA thing will probably mean that US-based online retailers will the be the winners of this, and Canadian-based retailers the losers.

Then if the Canadian government has any sense, they will realise that they are losing sales taxes because of this, and of the Canadian-based sales, a large percentage of the sales cost goes straight out of the country, further adding to their trade deficit.

Oh well, it'll all blow over in the end.

The Canadian government will just tax all imports from the US. Like they do now.

They proposed the same type of tax on CDR media a few years back. It ended up getting shot down (after the fact?) and never affected prices in but a few stores.

As usual, this is something that has a deadline of a couple of days before it's ever made known to the general public in an obvious manner. I probably would have heard nothing about this if I hadn't been reading this forum.

We're already taxed to death on everything else, so why not? And if it isn't taxes it's bloody importer and whomever else sucking up the profits. It costs at least $4 to by a head of lettuce right now! That's bloody insane.

Bruno

Can I get a link to the original PDF and any other originating sites with this material? I'm going to forward this to a large number of people here at work.

Bruno.

im not ready to move out anytime soon.. man i could make a fortune smuggling in media and hard drives.. hrm..