Fair pay for work is much older than most of these copyright laws. Whether it is legal to up/download may vary with each country, ethical actions require appropriate transfer of equally valuable commodities ( gold/silver/cash for works/art/effort ).
The U.S. has the tax . . . er . . .
levy, too.
QUOTE
At least 25 countries, including most G-7 and European Union members, have introduced comparable regimes with respect to the private copying of sound recordings. Canada is one of the last to do so.
The USA is often held out as an example of a place where "this could never happen", but as far as I can tell, it has been law there since December 8, 1994. It is part of Title 17, section 1004, and if you go to:
http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/1004.html you will find this paragraph:
(b) Digital Audio Recording Media. - The royalty payment due under section1003 for each digital audio recording medium imported into and distributed in the United States, or manufactured and distributed in the United States, shall be 3 percent of the transfer price. Only the first person to manufacture and distribute or import and distribute such medium shall be required to pay the royalty with respect to such medium.
Note, however, that in the US there is NO levy collected on "ordinary" CD-Rs When the legislation was last changed (in 1994/1995) CD-Rs were not seen as a media intended for copying music. There IS a levy applied to other digital media, such as DAT and CD-R Audio.
There is
no tax on iPods in Canada, though.
QUOTE
Canadian iPod price drop after tax ruling
Posted Dec 22nd 2004 11:02PM by Barb Dybwad
iPods
A recent federal court ruling means lower prices on iPods in Canada. Expect to pay $25CDN less for a 20 or 40GB model, and $15CDN less for the 4GB iPod mini at Canadian retailers Future Shop and Best Buy, or through the Apple store.
The ruling handed down by the Federal Court of Appeal of Canada says that the Copyright Board of Canada improperly imposed a levy on digital media devices, beginning in December 2003. The price reduction is being immediately passed on to consumers directly from Apple, who until now has been picking up the tab for the tax.
There is no end to the
labels' greed.
Here's
another story about all the deductions (including "breakage," mentioned in the previous link, that dates back to 78s). It sounds like the 18th-century Royal Navy's practice of deducting pay until the sailor owed the navy.
QUOTE
If the same contract terms apply to digital sales as terrestrial sales, at the $9.99 retail price for albums on iTunes, an artist would get somewhere between $1.00 and $1.40 per sale. For a 99 cent single download, an artist would get 10 to 14 cents.
This story that appears to have been written in 2004 discusses the Canadian levy.
QUOTE
Given the tens of millions of dollars that the Canadian government spends annually to support the creation of Canadian music, it is apparent that the relative impact of lost royalties due to file sharing pales by comparison.
<snip>
While artists may only receive a few pennies per blank CD, those pennies add up to millions. By the end of this year, the CPCC will have collected nearly $120 million since 1999 (the levy is expected to generate $30 million in 2004), though the collective has been agonizingly slow in distributing the proceeds.
<snip>
Despite the apparent success of the private copying levy, the record labels, who lobbied to create the system in the 1990s, now criticize it for failing to provide adequate compensation.
The labels argued for it, and one of the reasons their lawsuits against downloaders failed is because it was implemented. Such is greed.
