[Fsfe-france] La taxe copie privee sur les lecteurs audios declaree illegale au Canada

[Laurent GUERBY]

http://www.cbc.ca/story/arts/national/2005/07/28/Arts/ipodlevy050728.html
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The Supreme Court of Canada has refused to hear further arguments
regarding a levy on iPods and similar digital music players. 

On Thursday, the court dismissed an appeal of last December's Federal
Court decision to quash a levy that had been charged for the popular
music devices.

The Canadian Private Copying Collective, a non-profit agency that
collects tariffs on behalf of musical artists and record companies, had
been pursuing the appeal. 

"Obviously we're disappointed. We felt it was self-evident that those
products are sold for the purpose of copying music," the collective's
director, David Basskin, told the Canadian Press.

The group argues that since many people use these new devices to make
illegal copies of songs, a levy should be collected for musical artists.
It also collects a tariff on CDs, mini-discs and other blank audio
recording media.

In December 2003, the Copyright Board approved the group's request to
collect the new levy, which was built into the Canadian prices of
digital audio recorders and MP3 players. The new charge ranged from an
extra $2 tacked onto the price of a music player using up to one
gigabyte of non-removable memory up to an extra $25 on the price of a
player using more than 10 GB of memory.

The Canadian Coalition for Fair Digital Access is made up of retailers
and manufacturers united against the levy. Representatives of that
group, from Apple Canada, Dell Canada, Hewlett-Packard Canada, Intel
Canada and Future Shop, argued for the policy to be thrown out. 

The Federal Court of Appeal overturned the policy in December 2004.

After the decision, the copying collective stopped charging the music
player levy. In the year the tariff had been collected, the collective
had amassed approximately $4 million, which it now says will be returned
to the importers and the manufacturers of the products. There has been
no word on whether consumers who paid the levy will be reimbursed.
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