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Canadian Government Announces Plans To Block Copyright Levy on MicroSD Cards

July 4, 2012

The Canadian government announced yesterday that it will use its regulation-making power to block the attempt to apply the private copying levy to MicroSD cards. I noted last November that it had this power to stop a Copyright Board hearing into the matter and that the Canadian Private Copying Collective (the group that manages the private copying levy) had explicitly argued that it could use it to stop the imposition of the levy on media deemed “inappropriate.”

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6 Comments

guest678530478 says:
July 4, 2012 at 8:18 am

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.
Crockett says:
July 4, 2012 at 11:25 am

Good on them, glad to see some sense on the hill.
Hub says:
July 4, 2012 at 11:57 am

@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.
Anything says:
July 7, 2012 at 6:32 pm

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.
Spike says:
July 8, 2012 at 8:25 am

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.
barry says:
July 8, 2012 at 12:08 pm

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