Canadian songwriters propose P2P sharing levy

Stephen Withers
Monday, 07 January 2008 11:28

Your IT - Home IT

The Songwriters Association of Canada has proposed a mandatory licence fee applied to all Internet and wireless subscriptions that would be channelled to music creators and rights holders.

"The new right would make it legal to share music between two or more parties, whether over Peer to Peer networks, wireless networks, email, CD, DVD, hard drives etc," says the proposal.

The proposed fee is $C5 per month, which the Association describes as "excellent value" given that existing download subscription services charge considerably more for a much smaller repertoire.

Revenue would be allocated in proportion to the results of an ongoing census of file-sharing activity, allowing creators and rights holders to "be paid with a level of speed and accuracy never before possible." Companies are already prepared to carry out this type of tracking, according to the SAC.

"The CMCC wishes to congratulate and endorse the Songwriters Association of Canada in pushing this proposal forward," said Andrew Cash of the Cash Brothers, on behalf of the Canadian Music Creators Coalition. "We think the Canadian government should be facilitating discussion over the merits of this forward thinking approach to file-sharing rather than introducing legislation that looks backwards to approaches that have already failed."

Coalition members include Feist, Sarah McLachlan, Avril Lavigne, and Barenaked Ladies.
 
Bart Herbison, executive director of The Nashville Songwriters Association International, said "Monetizing 'file-stealing' is essential for the very profession of songwriting to continue.  America has lost more than half of its professional songwriters, in large part due to Internet piracy. The Canadian approach is to be applauded!"

Canada currently imposes a levy of $C0.24 on audio cassettes (40min or longer) and $C0.21 on each CD-R, CD-RW, CD-R Audio, CD-RW Audio or MiniDisc. Revenue from the 'Private Copying' tariff is distributed to the Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada, the Canadian Mechanical Reproduction Rights Agency, the Society for Reproduction Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers in Canada, and the Neighboring Rights Collective of Canada. Thus authors, performers and makers share in the proceeds.

A plan to impose the levy on memory permanently embedded in digital audio recorders was set aside by the Federal Court of Appeal.