Canadian music industry doesn't want iPod levy

For years now, if you buy blank media in Canada, part of the price has gone to the local music industry to make up for the "losses" home taping and CD burning have caused it. Some well-meaning Canadians have started moving plans that will extend this levy to mp3 players and the like.

The Canadian Music Industry is rushing to try and stop this happening.

Yes, you heard: to stop it. As they've realised that it would effectively mean peer to peer fiel sharing in Canada would be perfectly legal, even for copyrighted material.

It's caused something of a split between the board which oversees the levy, the Canadian Private Copying Collective - which wants the lucrative "iPod tax", as there's not much future for it in levying blank tapes and CD-Rs - and the CRIA. A knock-on effect is the bringing into the open of a disjunction between the artists who have been recompensed under the exisiting scheme, and those who have had their work copied. In other words: Canadian artists have been getting an unfair slice of the levy pie all these years.