If you’re Canadian, you’re probably aware that we pay a large levy on all recordable media (like CDs, DVDs etc) due to the fact that those media can be used to pirate music and/or movies off the internet. The money raised gets split between Canadian artists and their companies in an effort to level the playing field. In effect, the government assumes you’re a rotten criminal, punishes you for it, and gives the money out to the people you’ll likely be hurting. It’s called pre-emptive justice, and it’s loads of fun.

However, one side effect of this policy is that it essentially makes P2P use legal, because in essence, you’ve already paid for songs (via the levy), so you should have the right to download them. That particular argument was obvious to quite a lot of people, but the Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA) apparently didn’t catch on until a judge ruled along those lines a little while ago.

The always-genius Michael Geist picks up from there in his latest post…

CRIA, which spent more than 15 years lobbying for the creation of the private copying levy, is now fighting to eliminate the application of the levy on the Apple iPod since it believes that the Copyright Board of Canada’s recent decision to allow a proposed tariff on iPods to proceed “broadens the scope of the private copying exception to avoid making illegal file sharers liable for infringement.”

I mean, you can’t blame them for trying, but still…

I actually find myself wanting the levy to be expanded, despite it meaning that I’d have to pay more for my next iPod, because I want to make CRIA cry. Really, they should just include coupons with all media purchases that say: “Good for $40 of P2P downloads! Have fun!”. That’d be a lot more honest.

I wonder if they can un-lobby this issue to get what they want, now that they’ve changed their minds…

Tags: captain copyright, ipod

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