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0 pointsRajT888mo ago0 comments

The film and music industries really shot themselves in the foot when they got a tax on recordable media introduced in Canada.

OK, CD-R's and flash memory cost a bunch more now. Streaming is legal, because customers already paid the record companies for their music they downloaded and put on that media.

At least, someone explained this was the current state of Canadian law ~10 years back when I first visited.

0 comments

Levitz8mo ago

This is basically the case right now in Spain.

We pay a tax on every piece of recordable media (don't think it's only SD cards or hard drives, it applies to phones, laptops, mp3 players, ebooks, even smartwatches). In exchange, sharing media for personal use is legal, and P2P is sharing media.

Doesn't stop corporations from trying to scare people off and complaining about piracy though of course.

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codedokode8mo ago

Tax on recordable media is unfair because honest people who don't pirate anything also have to pay. As with the case above, honest people get screwed the most.

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xethos8mo ago

Must have been a good while ago, as we're currently at $0.29 CAD for blank CDs and... nothing else. Nothing on uSD cards, nothing for floppies, hard drives and SSDs are levy-free,and blank Blu-Ray discs have no extra charge

I'd actually rather this than the million dollar settlements for torrenting Germans and Americans have. We have "Notice and Notice", which basically means the ISP sends us a letter with very little legal heft to it.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_copying_levy

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