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James Moore on the Private Copying Levy

As technology changes, the levy is not an effective mechanism to compensate copyright creators for possible theft of their work. For that reason, our Government has not included an expansion of the private copying regime to iPods and other devices in our recently proposed amendments to copyright. Instead, we have included strong measures to deter and prevent all forms of piracy in order that creators can be rightly compensated for their work through market mechanisms.”  Full letter here.

22 Comments

  1. Karl Stevens says:

    This sickens me.
    The fact that Moore would show such blatant misunderstanding of section 322 of the criminal code shows that he should *not* be minister of anything.

    And the fact that he called bill C-32 “fair”, when it goes a lot farther to legalize *actual* theft of our culture (through the “digital lock” provisions) sickens me. This clown has to go.

  2. Clown wannabe says:

    @Karl
    How is it “your” culture when someone else created it?

  3. @Clown
    lol, do you know what culture is? It is by definition a communal concept. Someone doesn’t “create” culture, they contribute to it.

  4. Clown wannabe says:

    @crade
    why would they contribute to it if others can help themselves without payment?

  5. @clown
    LOL. Wow, you must live in an alternate reality. Individuals have been contributing to culture long before individuals ever thought they should “paid” for contributing.

  6. @Clown,
    Its not like any law can actually stop that. (See the US DMCA failure for a big example and at how much P2P traffic comes from the US still).

    Bottom line is if people WANT to get a piece of big content content for free, be it games, software, ebooks, movies or music and whatever, they WILL DO SO. End of story. The internet doesn’t even have to be involved either. 2TB disks can be sent through the mail you know.

    There needs to be some good incentives to actually get these people to buy content instead of pirate it.
    Right now the entertainment industry is doing a wonderful job at encouraging these pirating activities instead, including very high prices, little value and blatant anti-consumer activities.

  7. Selective Taxation
    Well, at least Moore acknowledges that the old way of compensation doesn’t work. Hasn’t really stopped him from trying to shape things to conform under a nice, tidy oligopoly, though.
    Mr Moore, I think you are correct that the established levy won’t work beyond physical media, but your inability to apply that same heuristic to the supply side of this equation still leaves me questioning your underdeveloped macroeconomic perception & role(s) as an elected representative. I hope I don’t find my way onto your “radical extremist” list, for not simply agreeing with you, but frankly, if I wanted unelected control of the media market, I would have voted Marxist-Leninist last time ’round.

  8. Piracy?
    Why is Mr. Moore using the word “piracy”? What we actually have here is *copying*. In absence of copyright laws, any copying is legal. If we introduce a copyright law, we can restrict copying by introducing limits to what can be copied and under what circumstances. Once the law is adopted, we can talk about “illegal copying” or “copyright law infringement”. But piracy? Where did he bring that word from? Maybe some radical extremist dictionary?

    Nap. 🙂

  9. Clown wannabe: “why would they contribute to it if others can help themselves without payment?”

    Why don’t you tell us; what motivated you to post your comments, knowing that others would be able to read your words without paying you?

  10. Keep copying legal!!!
    Suppose there was this little nagging problem that every person alive had. Now suppose you were the first person to figure out the solution for it. Does that mean that you should be able to restrict anybody from copying you?
    Should you get paid every time someone does? Should we use tax dollars to enforce this for you? Should we re-invent the Internet and re-write the US constitution so that we can enforce this for you?
    Moore thinks so. I say that to think so is to stretch an outdated notion out so far that it’s ridiculous, and untenable.
    We simply can’t make copying illegal, it doesn’t make any sense, it’ll cost us an unspeakable wealth, it’ll put unthinkable power in human hands, and it is not needed. Personal copying has been legal for a generation now and we have put more culture on the international stage than we ever have. But of course, I’m a radical extremist “pirate” who just wants something for nothing and would never contribute anything without payment, right Mr. Moore?

  11. Minister Moore is either a liar or a fool if he believes ‘market forces’ will be fair when his legislation prevents just that. Give fair use provisions to users then the keys to the distributors? Wonder how that’s gonna play out 0_o

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjCNErd0gao

  12. RE: Napalm
    Piracy is just the term used to make the act of unauthorized copyright sound many times worse than it actually is. It’s meant to spread FUD, plain and simple. The media conglomerates even go as far as to suggest that “piracy” funds “terrorism” in order to make it sound even more scary. Of course, I don’t really see how a torrent tracker providing links to copied content is going to have the funds to finance anything other than keeping their server online. By the MAFIAA’s logic, any site with a Google Ads account *could* be funding terrorism.

  13. Found it!
    Thanks Eric…

    I think I found Mr. Moore’s source of words:

    http://www.osnews.com/story/23750/Obama_Administration_Piracy_Is_Theft

    Nap.

  14. @Boothie
    Copying was free for the whole history of humanity…. until Her Majesty The Queen decided to create a monopoly for her favorite printers and introduced the first copyright law. As any monopoly, the business was very lucrative so over the years it got extended beyond printing of books.

    Nap.

  15. who needs record industry racketeers says:

    good riddance to the blank media levy concept
    The levy on blank media has long been a sham – and has never benefitted the great majority of recording artists in this country. It’s a toll/tool of the mainstream industry. The sooner we get beyond this sort of racket the better.

  16. Well, yet again Jimmy Boy inflames the debate on both sides with a wedge issue. I find this comment interesting and absolute. Only extremists are absolute in ideology. What I find more interesting is that he actually responded to McOrmond. I am very surprised Harper kept him in cabinet past the summer.

    I was actually expecting some leadership on this, than again we’re dealing with the Conservative’s here, who admittedly describe their supporters as uneducated, beer drinking, gun slinging nuts, so I guess hoping for real leadership under the Con’s is just that a hope.

  17. Piracy
    Maybe this one could help Mr. Moore understand the difference:

    🙂

  18. I have published music out there…
    And never saw one damn dime bacause “Inde lables are not covered under the CPCC agreement”.

    All hail the downloaders who appreciate my music and damn you to hell government backed thieves!

  19. Cartel language is evil public policy
    > How is it “your” culture when someone else created it?

    In my mind, you can just drop “wannabe” from “Clown wannabe”.

    Culture is a popularity contest, nothing more.

    You imply you create culture as if it’s a grandiose work on its own. In fact, you create only a work in hope of being accepted in culture. A culture is the masses’ appeal on the global scale due to the internet, while a work is a single person or a small group of people’s appeal. Thus, you do not create culture, but you create works contributing to culture.

    > why would they contribute to it if others can help themselves without payment?

    Everyone creates works, even Stephen Hawking in his physical disabilities. The payment issue depends on popularity of the work, but middleman copyright owners only focus on getting paid rather than focus on quality or popularity for a work. The Copyright Act doesn’t say anything about quality or popularity, which then had allowed middleman collectives to circumvent culture and free market principles to collect payments for their private gains. This raises the question if the middleman collectives deliberately infect and plague the law for their own profit. These taxing levy systems are failing culture and free markets, not encouraging them.

    Are you into contributing to culture or are you into collecting payments? I think your posts conclude nicely, pay-per-play the world over. Here’s the Supreme Court of Canada’s interpretation on the SOCAN collective society:

    ‘The respondent, SOCAN, is a collective
    society recognized under s. 2 of the Copyright Act, to administer
    “performing rights” in Canada including those of (1) its Canadian member
    composers, authors and music publishers, and (2) foreign composers,
    authors and music publishers whose interest is protected by a system of
    reciprocal agreements with counterpart societies here and in other
    countries. _Essentially, SOCAN administers in Canada “the world
    repertoire of copyright protected music_”.’ [11]
    http://scc.lexum.umontreal.ca/en/2004/2004scc45/2004scc45.html

    > As technology changes, the levy is not an effective mechanism to compensate copyright creators for possible _theft_ of their work.
    > Instead, we have included strong measures to deter and prevent all forms of _piracy_ in order that creators can be rightly compensated for their work through market mechanisms

    It’s funny seeing a _law maker_ using _cartel language_ expecting respect to be fair, honest, and respectful of public rights. Who does James Moore thinks he’s clowning for here?

  20. The levy is not intended to compensate for theft
    This is a huge misunderstanding of what the levy is for. It is meant to compensate authors for losses caused when private copying was made legal. It was never meant to compensate for theft or piracy, which remain illegal. Very odd that the Minister would be unaware of the difference.

  21. The language is indeed chosen with care by the HarperGov people to mold the terms of the debate to their liking.

    Glad I bought Orwell’s Why I Write to learn this sort of thing…

  22. Johnny Cash Grab says:

    CDR levy = utter BS
    “who needs record industry racketeers” has it figured out. As an indie artist, collecting royalties both here in Canada and internationally, I’ve yet to see a spike in my payments. Meanwhile, every musician I know is being copied and downloaded more than ever before. If CDR discs are being used, where’s our share of this levy? Utter BS.