Canadian Government Announces Plans To Block Copyright Levy on MicroSD Cards
July 4, 2012
Share this post
6 Comments

Law Bytes
Episode 272: Build Canada’s Lucy Hargreaves on Canada’s AI Strategy and the Need to Shift From Being Users to Builders
byMichael Geist

May 25, 2026
Michael Geist
May 11, 2026
Michael Geist
Search Results placeholder
Michael Geist on Substack
Recent Posts
Gary Anandasangaree’s Vic Toews Moment Shows the Government Has Lost Its Way on Lawful Access
Government Moves to Shut Down Lawful Access Hearing In Order To Fast Track Passing the Bill This Week
Canada’s Digital Super-Regulator: Bill C-36 Pushes Out the Privacy Commissioner and Hands Private Sector Privacy to an Overloaded Commission
The Commission: How Bill C-34 Creates an Internet Super-Regulator That Will Touch the Lives of Millions of Canadians
The Law Bytes Podcast, Episode 272: Build Canada’s Lucy Hargreaves on Canada’s AI Strategy and the Need to Shift From Being Users to Builders

hopefully it’s for all memory cards
hopefully it’s for all memory cards, or users will face and endless slew of tariff filings for each individual card format, something only CPCC can readily afford.
Good on them, glad to see some sense on the hill.
@guest: MicroSD card where the only one concerned on the tariff. Originally it used to be *all*.
Now the question is why didn’t they just put that into C11? Oh yeah that’s right, so that the can change it and they can use it to claim they did good.
That’s silly. If the levy is reasonable, it should apply to everything that can store music, video, images, text, or pornography. That includes MP3 players, CD-Rs, hard drives, any flash media (SD, USB sticks), PCs and laptops, maybe even paper. Expanding the levy “would increase costs for Canadian families and impact the adoption of the latest technologies”, but the levy already does that.
Either apply the rule consistently, or not at all. It either makes sense or it doesn’t. Politics may be a game, but law shouldn’t be.
So we’ll just get fees on products with built-in memory that can play audio instead I suppose.
They explicitly left it wide open to be changed whenever they please.
Memory Cards
Think the any levy on any storage device is BS.
I have a DSLR with a 32 Gig for example it is for pictures not music.
So how and why should a levy pertain to the use of that card or any others that are used for anything but music.
My 2Kw’s