DRM News

Meet Charlie Angus! I’m sure many of you are about to become BIG fans of his work.

Canada has long had in place a levy on various forms of blank media…blank cassette tapes and CD and DVD discs for example…as a sort of tax on expected acts of copyright infringement and media transfer to be committed with that media. Well, Charlie would like to extend that to include MP3 players.

Currently blank CDs, for example, have a levy of $0.29 per unit. MP3 players, or digital audio recorders, have been the subject of debate before, with the Canadian Private Copying Collective, which represents Canadian music publishers, seeking a levy of between $5 and $75 per MP3 player.

Yes, potentially as much as $75 surcharge thrown down on the purchase price of an MP3 player, a device which is incapable of actually committing or being responsible for loading itself down with potentially pirated music or illegally ripped CD tracks. That functionality is likely on the way in the form of Apple’s upcoming iLive unit. If you believed that previous sentence, and it made you happy, you really need to start looking for an evil lair and some dumb but loyal henchmen.

Now, this isn’t the first time that such a change has been attempted. A previous effort led by the Copyright Board to have the levy include MP3 players was shot down in 2008 by the courts. What’s changed since then to make Mr. Angus believe that now is the time for such an effort to succeed is beyond me.