The Canadian Private Copying Collective (CPCC) has a long history of trying to squeeze money from people by labeling them as criminals. It’s tried slapping a ‘you’re a criminal’ tax first on iPods (because everyone who owns an iPod is a thief), and then on ISPs (because we all know that internet connections are only ever used to steal).
Having failed to put a ‘criminal tax’ on the iPod or the ISP, the CPCC is now turning its attention to SD cards. Yes, those postage stamp sized bits of plastic are tools of the devil himself and the CPCC want to see them taxed because they promote music piracy.
50¢ for each electronic memory card with 1 gigabyte of memory or less, $1.00 for each electronic memory card with more than one gigabyte of memory but less than 8 gigabytes of memory, and $3.00 for each electronic memory card with 8 gigabytes of memory or more.
But wait a minute … what do SD cards have to do with music or music piracy? I really don’t know. They’re used in digital cameras, and micro SD cards are in a lot of cell phones (and could be used to store music I guess), but I can’t think of many music players that make use of SD cards, and I doubt that SD cards filled with pirated music are traded. Bottom line, I can’t see any tangible connection between SD cards and music piracy.
Seems to me that the CPCC is once again on a cash grab, and seems SD cards as an untapped resource (as opposed to tidying up the music industry). Maybe this is the CPCC’s latest money-making idea … taxing law-abiding photographers who buy storage for their digital cameras.
Or how about this idea CPCC … what about taxing every Canadian who has ears? That might work too.
