Once again, the music industry has managed to do something so mind-bogglingly stupid, I barely know where to begin. This time, it's the Copyright Board of Canada stepping up to the plate, wearing a dunce hat. In an attempt to "compensate" artists for illegal downloads, they have decided to institute a 3-cent tax per single legal download, as well as a 1.5-cents per song on a legally downloaded album.
Way to go, braintrusts. "Hey, you, paying to download music! Want some incentive to find it by alternate means for free? Well, let me tell you about the new tax we've come up with...."
Of course, this comes from the country that came up with the "hey, let's charge 21 cents per blank CD regardless of what it is used for," also under the guise of compensating artists. Never mind that people use CDs to back up data, photos, and other things that have nothing to do with music....
Not shockingly, legal download companies aren't thrilled with the new tax. Seeing as so many people think music is free these days, any price raise -- no matter how nominal -- is going to alienate people who are trying to "do the right thing." It's unique, the idea of punishing people for doing what you want them to do -- in this case, spending money on your product. That said, we're dealing with part of the music industry, so do we really expect anything that actually makes sense?
