Enrollment for taxation mosaic at Chora – by Meister der Kahriye-Cami-Kirche in The Yorck Project (2002), from Wikipedia, used under CC 1.0
A proposal by the Screen Composers Guild of Canada (SCGC) to The Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage, released on September 25, 2018, aims to introduce a ‘copyright tax’ on Internet use, according to the documents released by TorrentFreak [1] In the report [2], the SCGC proposed a tax collected by internet service providers “that is inspired by the blank-media levy”. Wikipedia explains that blank-media levies are special taxes added on top of the purchase of recordable media, such as blank CDs and DVDs [3].
Currently, in Canada, the private copying levies are $0.29 per CD-R. CD-RW, CD-R Audio, or CD-RW Audio [4]. Of this levy:
- 58.2% is distributed to the Society of
Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada
(SOCAN), the Canadian Musical Reproduction Rights
Agency (CMRRA) and the Society for Reproduction
Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers in Canada
(SODRAC) - 23.8% to Re:Sound Music Licensing Company performers
- 18% to Re:Sound Music Licensing Company makers
According to the SCGC proposal, internet users would be allotted 15GB of unrelieved data per month. The SCGC states this allowance should enable “ample room for email, commerce and downloading, but beyond that, a copyright levy could be collected and re-mitted to a collective for distribution to copyright holders”. The Screen Composers Guild of Canada argue that compared to ‘terrestrial’, or traditional forms of media distribution for screen compositions (such as the music in TV shows), royalties from internet distribution “are 50 to 95% lower when compared to those from terrestrial broadcasters”. As a result, under this proposition, users who use more than 15GB of data per month, for whatever purpose, are subject to a levy for the potential of over-using copyrighted material that may contain screen compositions. An example of how this arrangement can impact internet users who are not media consumers is for server hosts, who require a constant internet connection to maintain uptime for their clients.
“[W]hen you’re downloading and consuming over 15 gigabytes of data a month, you’re likely streaming Spotify. You’re likely streaming YouTube. You’re likely streaming Netflix. So we think because the FANG companies will not give us access to the numbers that they have, we have to apply a broad-based levy. They’re forcing us to.”
– SCGC quote from TorrentFreak
What do you think?
- Is a tax collected for internet use of any kind a reasonable way to provide content creators with performance royalties?
- Does the ‘blank-media’ model of royalty payments translate well for the format of ‘blank’ or ‘unused’ broadband data?
- Do you agree that internet distribution services are less capable of dividing royalty payments to creators?
- What do you think of a cap of 15GB of untaxed internet use per month?
Let us know what you think about this article and your responses to our questions in the comments below!
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not constitute legal or financial advice.
Always do your own research to make informed decisions.
Image Credits
Enrollment for taxation mosaic at Chora – by Meister der Kahriye-Cami-Kirche in The Yorck Project (2002), from Wikipedia, used under CC 1.0
Sources / Articles You May Find Useful
Screen Composer’s Guild of Canada – https://screencomposers.ca/
Canadian Private Copying Collective – http://www.cpcc.ca/en/
Copyright Board of Canada – https://cb-cda.gc.ca/home-accueil-e.html
Copyright Board of Canada – Tariff of Levies to Be Collected by CPCC in 2017
TorrentFreak Article – https://torrentfreak.com/canadian-music-group-proposes-copyright-tax-on-internet-use-181006/
SCGC – COPYRIGHT IN THE 21ST CENTURY FOR THE CANADIAN SCREEN-COMPOSER Remuneration Models for Artists and Creative Industries (via TorrentFreak)
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