I recently went to my local London Drugs and decided to grab 50 more blank CDR's for some backups that need to be done at home and work (amonst other things).  They advertised a price of $29.99, which I felt was a decent price so I grabbed a pack.

Little did I know that their advertised price did NOT include the relatively new Copy Levy that we have in Canada.  An additional $10.50 on the price shocked me.  I quickly ran to the Computer Department and got a refund.  I dont belive I should have to pay the levy for backup CD's. 

Interesting enough, this tax was put in place to accomodate those people that pirate/copy music but they have no way to ensure that the media is used for that specific purpose nor do they pay that money to any artist or recording organization.  Seems weird that our government wants exploit this fight and take a very undeserved piece of the pie. 

Ill find a shop in town that doesnt charge the levy, cash only, no questions.

Interesting Q/A in this faq:

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Can I legally share music over the internet?

The simple answer is NO.

If you post a song on the internet, or make it available to others via a peer-to-peer network, or if you send it to someone as an email attachment or via FTP, you are considered to be making a public transmission of the work. It is also clearly not for your own private use. You would be infringing copyright unless you had explicit permission from the rights holders.

However, unless the legislation is changed or the courts interpret matters differently, it appears that making a private copy for your own use of a musical work downloaded in any manner from the internet is not an infringement of copyright. In their decision, the Copyright Board states:

The regime does not address the source of the material copied. There is no requirement in Part VIII that the source copy be a non-infringing copy. Hence, it is not relevant whether the source of the track is a pre-owned recording, a borrowed CD, or a track downloaded from the Internet.

The more complex answer to the question posed above is you cannot post a song on the internet in any manner, but you can make a private copy of any songs you find on the net.

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2 Comments

• Fred said Wednesday, February 4, 2004 3:28:00 PM

  $29.99 or 50 CDR's ??? That is expensive....

• Bruce said Tuesday, October 9, 2007 6:35:59 PM

  I love the new levy that they have placed on the recordable media. This now puts us all in the LEGAL position of being able to copy any thing that we want. With the government placing a levy on every CD/DVD, they have taken the responsibility for paying the artists out of our hands along with any rights that the music/entertainment industry had for any legal action against copyright infringers. The artists have now only the government to sue for there royalties, as they have no legal rights to sue any person or company that is using a recordable media that the levy has been attatched. This is the law! Call it a levy, call it royalties, the money has been paid and it is now up to the collector to pay the proper individuals from the collection.