Copyright Board Freezes Levies

[narc]

so much misinformation on this board

Copyright Board Freezes Private Copying Levies for 2003 and 2004

December 12, 2003

Ottawa. The Copyright Board of Canada has today issued a decision on private copying levies for 2003 and 2004. This is the Board's third substantive private copying decision. The first was issued in 1999. It established Canada's initial private copying levies for 1999 and 2000. The Board's second decision, issued in December 2000, set revised levies for the subsequent two year period, 2001 and 2002. Until today, interim levies had been in effect for 2003 which were set by the Board at levels identical to those in place in the previous two years.

The case was heard by a panel composed of the Honourable Mr. Justice John H. Gomery, Chairman, Stephen J. Callary, Vice-Chairman and CEO, Sylvie Charron and Brigitte Doucet, Members. Vice-Chairman Callary wrote a dissent.

Today's decision freezes all existing private copying levies at their current levels. As a result, the current levies of 29¢ on audio cassette tapes of 40 minutes or longer (no levy applies to tapes of shorter length), 21¢ on CD-Rs and CD-RWs and 77¢ on CD-R Audio, CD-RW Audio and MiniDiscs will remain in effect until the end of 2004.

The Board also sets for the first time a levy on non-removable memory permanently embedded in digital audio recorders (such as MP3 players) at $2 for each recorder with a memory capacity of up to 1 Gigabyte (Gb), $15 for each recorder with memory capacity of more than 1 Gb and up to 10 Gbs, and $25 for each recorder with memory capacity of more than 10 GBs.....



source

[Dean]

hmm thats not too bad