The Canadian government has decided to give a huge pile of cash to the record companies for no justifiable reason, and take it out of the consumer's ^$$es.. Very depressing. And you Canadians thought only the US government was obviously in the pocket of the RIAA...

The scope of the tariffs is amazing: $1.23 EACH for all CD-RW's, $2.27 EACH on all DVD-R's, and best of all: $21 per gigabyte of storage on portable MP3 players.

My favorite quote:

In reply to:

---

The levy is payable on all media that qualify, without re-
gard 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 repro-
ducing musical works to be exempted from payment or to re-
ceive a refund.

---

Read the whole depressing story here..

Has this passed, or is it just proposed?

Wow, that's $1260 in tariffs alone for a 60G player! (of course, that's just canadian dollars... :^)

Wouldn't laptops fit into this category too?

In reply to:

---

$21 per gigabyte of storage on portable MP3 players.

---

I forsee a big market in drive-less empegs

Wouldn't laptops fit into this category too?


Their primary use is probably felt not to be to record and play music.

Hmmm... Is a 2.5" hard drive considered a "micro-harddrive"? Or is that reserved for the 1.8"ers? (3. 1(d))

What ease of access does it take for a hard drive to be considered removeable? (3. 1(g))


/Michael

Their primary use is probably felt not to be to record and play music.

Yeah.. So I say we ship the Empeg with nothing but Emptris and say it's an in-dash game system which just happens to play MP3's if you get the player software.

Oh, wait, this is moot because the Empeg is EOL.

This is interesting though - the whole purpose of tariffs on recordable media is to compensate the music industry for copyright infringement that may occur using it.

So if I've paid $21/GB, does that mean I'm within my rights (*) to rip *any* CD I like and stick it on my player. After all, they've already been compensated by me for the infringement. The fact that I've compensated them on a per-capacity basis suggests that they have based this compensation on the amount of music that I could stick on a player.

This might turn around and bite them where it hurts.

*assuming that I'm Canadian, (which I'm not).

So if I've paid $21/GB, does that mean I'm within my rights (*) to rip *any* CD I like and stick it on my player.

You'd think that, wouldn't you?

That's exactly the situation here in the US. We, as consumers, already pay a tariff to the RIAA on digital audio recording devices and media. And you'd think that'd shut them up about home copying. In fact, the whole point about the AHRA and the tariff was to shut them up. But it hasn't, has it?

GO FIGURE.

(What I'm saying is that this tariff will only line pockets, it won't solve anything and it won't shut anyone up.)

Not only digital recording media. We pay that tax on blank cassette tapes, as well. Not so sure about reel-to-reel.

Nice idea, but the US Government does this too, the taxes are just less. I think we pay around .20 per CD-R or something like that, but our government hasn't yet caved to the point of also applying the tariff to *ALL* portable media including Hard drives or memory cards...

You know, if it would shut the RIAA up for good, I would happily pay a tariff on hard disks.

Not the huge tariff suggested in the Canadian proposal (that's just ludicrous considering that hard disk prices are getting cheaper per gig... Eventually the tariffs will outweigh the price of the disk 100 to 1, which would be just wrong), but something small, perhaps 1 percent of the purchase price of the disk or player.

But if the AHRA is any indication, it won't shut them up. So it's a moot point.

I would have trouble paying a tariff (if any of it went to the RIAA) for a HD that I'm going to use for only photos....

does the RIAA freak about WMA too? I'm sure that MS doesn't!

The majority (vast majority) of CDRs do not ever get used for music. We go through countless numbers of CDRs in the office. None are for music. I've been through 100 discs in the past year for my own personal use. None were for music.

I haven't read the full text of the proposal, but this smells like what was attempted before, only now they've applied it to more than just recordable optical media. Will it apply to all bare hard disks? All flash storage products? If it were an MP3-only problem it wouldn't have as big an impact. Manufacturers would be selling a lot more players bare. If they stick this to all the media, in it basic form, this is a problem of the worst porportions imaginable.

Bruno

what does a record company gain by being a member of this lousy organization. Maybe we should be complaining to the record labels.

I looked at the list of members on the RIAA website and it's really not that big of a list. Surprisingly (to me anyway) Epitaph was listed. How can they support the RIAA and totally embrace the internet by having all their music available to download on emusic in mp3 format even.

There are CD-Rs in the US that are specifically marketed for music. It is these, I believe, that have that tax applied to them. Now what the technical difference is between an audio CD-R and a data CD-R I don't know. I doubt that there is one, but that's how it works, nonetheless.

Yeah, it'd be bad for a while.

But consider the scenario where we *only* need bigger drives for media storage. That is pretty much now. My photo album from the past couple of years fits onto a single cdrom (over 800 images at 1280x1024 - 450MB). Computer applications aren't that big, even with M$ bloatware. My entire CD collection is under 20GB in mp3 format at the moment, so that only leaves ripped DVDs to take up these huge hard drives. They *may* have a point.

But, the reality is that by the time they got any tariff on HD through government, we'll already have TB hard drives or bigger. So what's going to make us buy larger HD and pay the tariffs?

Working on the assumption that a DVD is 5GB, allows 200 DVDs/TB. How many people own 200 DVDs at $20 or more? Of those people, how many would find benefit in ripping them all to HD. There just isn't as much to be gained from doing this as there is with music. You typically watch a whole movie at a time for 1-2 hours, so the convenience factor is less of an incentive. You can't realistically watch a movie and drive/work/read/jog/do stuff around the house etc., so the need for portability is also far less.

So, the only 2 reasons that I can see for buying a new hard drive at that time are (a) to store home video, or (b) to rip as many CDs or DVDs as I can beg, borrow or steal without regard to copyright.

I still think that the RIAA/MPAA are a bunch of politician-purchasing thieves though. (*** Personal opinion ***)

So, the only 2 reasons that I can see for buying a new hard drive at that time are (a) to store home video, or (b) to rip as many CDs or DVDs as I can beg, borrow or steal without regard to copyright.

and when the HDD dies

I don't know about you, but when I work on a SMALL website, I will probably generate at least a FEW gigabytes of image data. If I'm working with digital images, maybe even more. A piece of original artwork (non-jpeg) may be a 10MB file at one point. For anyone working on many jobs, source files will easily eat up gigabytes of space. If you don't want to keep archiving and cleaning your drive, having big drives is a must.

Working with any digital video is going to fill 100+GB drives in no time. Easy enough to do just shooting straight onto the disk. When you start editing mutiple streams it grows substantially.

Doing all this work you also need a certain minimum amount of free space. A nice swap partition of a few GB is nice. Better still to have a dedicated swap drive of around 20-30GB.

BTW, I have nearly 200 DVDs. My brother has over 300. I don't consider ripping them to be a worthwhile effort. DVDs are already lossy compressed. Do I want/need them to be cut down in resolution and encoded with DIVX for any reason? Don't think so. For the reasons you mentioned primarily. Movies just aren't a portable cosumable like music is. Not right now anyway.

Bruno

Audio CD-Rs do have a different identifier on them then normal CD-Rs, so that most consumer CD copiers can tell the difference and refuse to work with computer CD-Rs. This info is in the same "ring" as the info about the speed rating of the media.

My wife and I own nearly 700 CD's. So, we aren't borrowing, begging or stealing yet my 60GB RioCar is too small to hold my collection at either 192kps or higher. I also have a digital camera that I have taken 3000+ shots with (this Kodak works like a champ!). And if you think that Bruno's gig per small web site is excessive (since most web sites are under 20mb when posted), imagine what a professional [bold]print[/bold] graphic artist would need?

I know you were talking about your own needs, but I just want to point out that not all media usage is copyrighten and in my case - even if it is - it is legitimate.

I don't know about the 'stereo component' CD-R/RW devices but my CD-R's in the PC's don't complain one bit about writing music to a data CD (although I can't speak for the newer ones). I don't think I've ever bought an 'Audio' CD-R ever, and judging from the amount of shelf space they get at Staples, I don't think most folks do.

-Zeke

In reply to:

---

You know, if it would shut the RIAA up for good, I would happily pay a tariff on hard disks.

---

I wouldn't. The only hard disk I have that's used for storing MP3s is the one in my empeg, and those MP3s all fall under the non-infringing backup of media (i.e. single copy of CDs that I've purchased) that's allowed by law. I don't believe I should be required to give extra money to the RIAA when purchasing items that have naught to do with the RIAA or even music because I "might" break the law. Doesn't that fundamentally go against the innocent till proven guilty tenet that the US criminal law (which copyright infringement falls under) is built upon?

The biggest loophole comes from "blank" in P2 and "on which no sounds have ever been fixed" in P2(a). Expect to find more songs from unsigned artists being included on MP3 players and media. Heck, the act doesn't define sound to mean music, so ambient factory noise or someone breaking wind would be sufficient.

Is the US I would expect the courts to look at the phrase "Ordinarily used" and either toss the whole thing for being overly vague, or choose an extremely narrow interpretation. Sound applications are not the primary market for most storage devices and media.

Has anyone considered that Apple's "Rip Mix Burn" campaign clearly turns the iMac into a qualifying "digital audio recording device" under the AHRA? There is no "computer" exemption in the act, only one for data storage media. If the RIAA were to fight and win, it wouldn't be a stretch for the courts to further determine that any CD-ROM equipped computer qualifies. SCMS would then be forced upon us all without the need for new legislation.

Has anyone considered that Apple's "Rip Mix Burn" campaign clearly turns the iMac into a qualifying "digital audio recording device" under the AHRA? There is no "computer" exemption in the act, only one for data storage media.

If by "no computer exemption in the act", you mean that there's no computer exemption in the AHRA, I think you need to look at the actual text of the AHRA a little more closely.

I keep reading, and I keep seeing the word "computer" in Title 17, Chapter 10 exactly twice. The first establishes the exemption for media intended for data use, the second in turn excludes computer data from the AHRA's protections.

http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/ch10.html

The definition of a "digital audio recording device" in Paragraph 3 would generally seem to exclude a personal computer. First, it is only concerned with the primary purpose of it's digital recording function. Second, it takes the device's marketing into account.

"Rip. Mix. Burn."

Applying it to any computer with a CD-ROM may be a stretch, but every iMac now has CDRW standard. As do computers computers from many other manufacturers.

Or are you arguing that computers represent "professional model products" ?

I'm arguing that computers are specifically exempted from coverage by the AHRA and are not required to pay the tariff nor are they required to implement SCMS.

The AHRA only applies to the USA correct?

The AHRA only applies to the USA correct?

Or to any company that wants to sell consumer digital audio products in the USA. In other words, any digital audio company on the planet.

Uhh.. What about us companies who store terabytes of databases? Are we suddenly MP3 pirates, subject to this illegal taxation, just because we need bigger hard drives for non-media-related purposes??

If this keeps up, I'll start "Vanuatu-Media.com" which will sell media only to residents of non-AHRA/SSSCA countries and be based somewhere with strong corporate secrecy laws...

Anybody wanna throw some VC my way?

That's exactly the situation here in the US. We, as consumers, already pay a tariff to the RIAA on digital audio recording devices and media. And you'd think that'd shut them up about home copying. In fact, the whole point about the AHRA and the tariff was to shut them up. But it hasn't, has it?

An US congressman has recently asked RIAA to explain why they think they could continue collecting media tax if they insist on 'protection' measures (I think I saw the article about that here linked somewhere here). Combined with strong intention by Phillips to keep the morons from putting CD-DA logo on broken media, and actions by Drakino and, obviously, many others, I think RIAA will back down from their 'copy protection' plans'. The fact that no such plan can work for long also helps.

The trouble is, with taxes mentioned in the leading post, RIAA has reached its ultimate goal: collecting huge money without actually working at all. I doubt that such a law could pass (or even be contemplated) without some serious Enron-type 'sponsorships'. I advise our Canadian members to write to their representatives, especially those in opposition.

Should something like that be passe here, I will feel perfectly morally justified to actually download equivalent amount of copyrighted music (taking into account my dowloading costs and the fact that inferior rips and lack of booklet make such downloads much less valuable than actual CDs, I would value them at, say, $2, $3 tops, per album ) So, 7-10 albums per gig. Well, that's about half the capacity or more.... (The trouble is, I *want* to have physical CDs... )