We’ve touched on this briefly before: The Songwriters Association of Canada (SAC) came up with the barmy idea of a $5 tax being applied to all Internet users in Canada to compensate for all the people who get their music downloads illegally through filesharing programs or BitTorrent, etc.
The proposal was officially put forward last week. While it is understandable that artists are a bit annoyed at the way music downloads are taking over the world, such a tax is absurd.
Why should people who never use filesharing programs for illegal music downloads have to pay a tax that has nothing to do with them? And what about the fact that people who do use filesharing services might have never downloaded a single Canadian song? Why should Canadian musicians get all the money?
The arrogance of the SAC is astounding. Why stop at filesharing? Why not tax people for buying blank CDs. Oh wait, they already did that.
There would simply be no way to implement this bizarre idea. Canadians, eh. How long before Canadian musicians look at the filesharing clampdowns in Britain and Australia and try a different tactic? Filesharing is on the increase, but people are still buying music. A better solution than this tax would be to look at the marketing methods used in the Canadian music biz.
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It will look like this: Canadians propose Internet tax to compensate filesharing losses
One Response for "Canadians propose Internet tax to compensate filesharing losses"
[…] a stand. As Jessica says, the $3,000 settle is ridiculous, but this is the risk we all run by using filesharing programs to get free music […]
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