This ignores the 5% of artists not part of the CRIA

Oh man, you really don’t have your facts right. No artists are members of CRIA, it’s an industry trade group consisting of the big four record labels and companies who specialize in producing sound recordings. Artists need not apply – and for that matter are not welcome. However the CRIA has nothing to do with the CD Levy.

SOCAN (Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada) is the organization you have to be a member of to collect on the CD Levy. The fee to join is $50.00 Canadian, which isn’t very much, and it’s a one time fee.

But 95% of artists are not members of SOCAN. Quite frankly, SOCAN is set up to benefit the big name acts. If you are Anne Murray, or Avril Lavigne, you can do well out of the CD Levy. If you are Downtown Freddie Brown, or Urban Tapestry, well, you don’t matter to SOCAN. They don’t care about you, though they make a lot of noise (like the RIAA and CRIA) claiming that they do.

Independent artists get nailed badly by this. The CD Levy is based on reported sales by the CRIA. Since independent artists usually sell direct, avoiding the Big Four labels, their sales are not recorded. And since a lot of them do their own CD mastering, they pay the levy when they buy CDs to produce their own material.

And guess what – SOCAN doesn’t care. There is a method set up so you can buy Levy exempt media, however it has been setup in such a way, that it’s almost impossible to qualify.

I should mention, that my wife is an independent artist, and I have a definite axe to grind. I suggest that you check my information because of this, but it is accurate.

I hate to sound like a zealot, because I’m really not and actually support copyright, but that phrase is really annoying. The works don’t need to be protected. War and Peace isn’t going to be hurt because somebody reads an illegal copy of it. What you meant to say is that the people who created the works need to be protected. This is basic grammar and usually isn’t tolerated well outside of buzzwords and catchphrases. Nobody wants to say “and to protect the artists” because “the works” sounds better. I don’t have perfect grammar so please don’t think I am trying to be the grammar police, but that particular meme has gotten far more mileage than it deserves.

I think Trey Parker and Matt Stone have the copyright issue figured out pretty well. They are the creators of South Park, a TV satire cartoon that shows on Comedy Central. They never really became jaded and lost their original sense of what it means to be an artists. When just starting out, most artists struggle to give their creations away for free and are happy when anybody reads/listens/watches their works. The real irony begins if they are one of the lucky few who obtains a wide audience and high demand. Instead of spending all their time trying to get people to enjoy their works, they spend all their time tying to get people to stop, unless they have paid of course. A few hundred thousand people turns something that was original a sign of appreciation into thievery and crime.

The South Park crew makes all their material available free on the internet. They realized that other people were putting their material online and that lots of people were watching it and that it was creating demand for watching the show on Comedy Central where they make most of their money. Even if they stopped making money, they said they were glad that people still wanted to watch after all those years. Instead of trying to shut those people down, they said go ahead and later did a more professional job of giving it away online. Contrast this with Seth Macfarlane and his crew who strictly enforce IP on Family Guy and their other shows.

I have much more respect for Trey Parker and Matt Stone than I do for Seth McFarlane. I know where my money goes when I buy merchandise and I bet you can guess as well.

As far as Microsoft is concerned you literally have to pay me to use their shitty software because I wont use it unless I am at work. I wish people in China would stop stealing their software, not because it hurts Microsoft, but because they are using inferior software when free alternatives are available.

I decided to ditch the POP name since I post regularly and I’m not usually pissed off, but feel free to continue referring to me as POP if you want.