Canada’s Copyright Board passed a new tax Friday to be placed on mp3 media. Recorders with 1GB or less of storage will increase by $2, 1-10GB of storage will face a $15 increase and anything greater than 10GB will face a $25 increase.

The reason for this increase was due to excessive downloading of illegal music through Peer 2 Peer services such as Kazaa.

In addition to these increases, hikes on blank CDs, cassettes and MiniDiscs are frozen until the end of 2004. Blank DVD’s, removable memory cards and micro hard drives will not see an increase in their price.

“The board majority found that, based on the available evidence, increasing existing levy rates as proposed by the CPCC was not justified at this time, and that fairness and equity dictated that the status quo for the existing levies be maintained,” he said.

Currently, the Society of Composers is fighting a battle in the supreme court of canada, for Internet service providers to pay royalty fees, since they assume everyone downloads music.

Breakdown of the new and old taxes:

New:
MP3 Players < 1GB increase by $2
MP3 Players > 1GB and < 10GB increase by $15
MP3 Players > 25GB increase by $25

Old:
CD-R and CD-RW – 21 cents each
CD-R Audio, Minidiscs and CD-RW Audio – 77 cents each






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