Canadians kill MP3 player tax

Unlike the United States, where copyright infringers are hounded more thoroughly than violent felons, Canada takes a different tack on the notion: Tax cassettes and recordable media, then distribute that taxation back to copyright holders to compensate for losses. As a result, individual persons rarely, if ever, are pursued by Canadian authorities for their actions.

A recent proposal for 2008 would have levied taxes upon MP3 players, as a container for pirated material. Fortunately for Canadians, the movement was blocked because Canadian officials discovered that the copyright industry was grossly mishandling what it was already being given. A Canadian ministry of justice spokesperson had this to say:

You cannot give such a system the responsibility for a new levy if you know that it is not working properly.

So, the 2008 motion joins the already-defeated 2004 motion in the list of dead attempts to foist more taxation on the Canadians for a statistically-unproven “Epidemic.”