Great Canadian Digital Media Rip-off
Slashdot has a discussion of Canadian Government plan to put a tariff on importing CD-R, CD-RW, DVD-R, DVD-RW, and flash media and MP3 players with hard disks into Canada. The rate proposed is $0.60 per cassette tape, $0.59 per CD-R, $1.23 per CD-RW, $2.27 per DVD-R or DVD-RW and $21 per gigabyte of hard disk space on an MP3 player (over $100 per I-Pod!) The board is requesting comments but they state:
The levy is payable on all media that qualify, without regard to end use. No purpose is served by asking that the tariff include a mechanism that would allow those who can prove that they use qualifying media for purposes other than reproducing musical works to be exempted from payment or to receive a refund.
So Anne Murray gets my money when I want to back-up my hard disk.
10:55:13 PM 
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