Canadians who own iPods can breath a sigh of relief — their last.
Well, their last for at least the next week or two.
Today, with very little fanfare, the Canadian Private Copying Collective threw in the towel in its efforts to get a levy slapped on iPods and competing MP3 players to compensate its musical members.
The CPCC, one of more than 30 collectives in Canada, had been trying since 2003 to convince the Copyright Board of Canada to extend the levy we pay on blank CDs to the memory inside MP3 players. The board agreed, but it was overturned by the courts in 2004 when it was challenged by the Retail Council of Canada and Apple Canada.
The court then ruled that the Copyright Board, a tribunal appointed by the federal government to set tariffs under the Copyright Act, had no jurisdiction to place a levy on digital recorders.
Undeterred, the CPCC last year changed its tack, claiming that the entire MP3 player, not just the memory inside, should be subject to a levy. The judicial review of the Copyright Board's decision of July 19, which favoured the CPCC, was heard on Jan. 9 this year, and the Federal Court of Appeal rendered its decision the very next day — the quickness of the ruling was taken by the Retail Council of Canada as an indication that the court felt its previous rulings had been clear enough, and the appeal was wasting the court’s time.
Or, as Kim Furlong of the Retail Council says, the CPCC was “just wasting money on litigation.”
Today, the CPCC confirmed that it will not appeal the decision to the Supreme Court of Canada.
There are two things interesting about this.
First, it shows how zealous some organizations can be to create their own corrections to the 1997 Copyright Act, even though the federal government has promised to revise the act very soon — it is expected to table its revisions perhaps as soon as in the next week or two. And by all accounts, the bill is expected to favour copyright holders.
But will it be tabled?
Just this morning The Globe and Mail reported that the federal government will introduce an unusual confidence motion as early as Monday demanding that the Senate pass the Conservatives’ crime bill by March 1. If the bill fails in the House of Commons, which could be next week, the vote could trigger an election.
There are other issues the Tories are counting as confidence votes — among them the future of the Afghan mission and the budget (expected at the end of February). In short, it looks like the Tories, who have already prepared the Copyright Act revision, are spoiling for an election, which would effectively kill it.
Just like the Liberals’ revisions to the act were killed by the previous election call.
Here we go again.
