Welcome reddit.com readers! You've made yesterday by far the best day for The Trawler. There was some discussion of the blank media levy in the comments on yesterday's post. In Canada, a blank media levy is tacked onto the price of every blank media. That money is then distributed to the rights holders to compensate them for private copying of their work.

As a result of this levy, downloading music is 'legal' (sort of) in Canada since the courts ruled that the rights holders are already compensated as a result of this levy (which is not cheap: 21 cents per CD-R or 77 cents per CD-R Audio....whatever THAT means).

However, recently, they CRIA has been lobbying government to change the laws to prohibit downloading. Although I've not seen any mention of them removing the levy. They were lobbying hard to re-elect Sam Bulte, a Toronto MP with questionable connections to the industry who supported their crusade.

Below are some links related to the Blank Media Levy, and the CRIA - the RIAA's northern counterpart. Next week I'll debunk their preposterous "Free Music Myth" and propose some sensible alternatives. Make sure to come back!

CRIA: The Free Music Myth
http://www.cria.ca/freemusicmyth.php

CPCC: They distribute the levy to rights holders
http://cpcc.ca/english/about.htm

Wikipedia page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blank_media_tax

Commentary by Michael Geist:
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/resc/html_bkup/june62005.html

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Glad to hear that reddit could send some traffic to The Trawler, thanks for a great post.