Taxing The Life Out Of Obsolete Technology
The geniuses at the Canadian Copyright Board have increase CD taxes by 39%, rasing them to 29 cents per CD.
In 1999, (the last time I used a blank CD), they decided to tax blank CDs by 20 cents each, and give this money to the music industry to distribute to Canadian Artists. I won’t even begin to debate the percentage of Canadian vs US music gets burned to CD.
The reason from the Secretary General of the Copyright Board of Canada, Claude Majeau:
“Two main factors led the Board to raise the CD levy rate to 29¢. First, the mechanical royalties that record labels pay to record a song onto a prerecorded CD have increased. Second, because consumers now use compression technology when they record music, the average number of music tracks copied onto a CD went from 15 to more than 18.”
Someone forgot to tell him that 20 CDs go for around 20 bucks. (Don’t tell them about MP3 CD players where you can now record hundreds of songs onto a CD.)
Where the rub lies is that the CPCC has collected almost $232 million so far, and only $148.8 million had been distributed, leaving almost $85 million sitting around. Take away expenses of $25 million to collect this money, and they are sitting on $60 million.
Not a bad business model. Imagine if your business could raise it’s prices by 39% for a product that is declining in sales and reaching it’s end.
Better get a terabyte portable drive before they catch on and find a way to tax those…
photo credit: nickwheeleroz
December 15th, 2008 at 9:42 am
To me that 29 cents means it’s open season to download and record or copy anything I want.
They are getting their 29 cents, the bill is paid.
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