Canada Declares P2P Downloading Legal, Levies Tariff on MP3 Players

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on December 12, 2003 - 5:19am.

Ottawa, Canada -- In a surprise move, the Canadian Copyright Board has ruled that under current Canadian copyright law, downloading music over peer-to-peer file-sharing services like Kazaa is legal. The board said that downloading was legal if the acquired file was used as a "personal copy;" uploading files to such services, however, was not declared to be legal. Additionally, the board voted to freeze the tariffs that Canadians pay on recordable media like blank CDs -- fees that go into a fund that compensates artists and copyright holders -- at their current rates until the end of 2004. The decision ignored recording industry requests for an increase on the tariffs, as well as its desire to add recordable DVDs and computer hard drives to the list of taxed devices. However, consumers will now pay $2 per GB on hard drive-based MP3 players, with a maximum tariff of $25 for MP3 players with capacities over 10GB. The Copyright Board did not rule out a future tariff on computer hard drives, but decided in the mean time to rule in favor of the consumer.
http://www.cb-cda.gc.ca/new-e.html
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