Steinbring Inc.

I really hope that this doesn’t pass. If it does, the RIAA might think they could get away with it in the US.

Canada’s Private Copyright Collective is taking another stab at introducing levies on digital music players and memory cards.

The charges could add as much as $75 to the price of a new Apple iPod.

The collective, which seeks to compensate artists for unauthorized copying of their music, said Friday it’s taking a new tack after a 2003 Federal Court of Appeals decision rejected the levies.

…

In its new submission to the Copyright Board, the collective is proposing levies of $5 on devices with up to one gigabyte (GB) of memory, $25 for one to 10 GB, $50 for between 10 GB and 30 GB and $75 for over 30 GB. That would take the price of Apple’s 30GB iPod to $365 from $290, a 26 per cent increase.

The group is also asking for levies of $2 to $10 for memory cards, which are primarily used to store photographs in digital cameras.

It’s also asking for eight-cent increases to the current 21-cent levy on blank CD media and 77-cent charge for CD-R Audio, CD-RW Audio and MiniDiscs.

Link [ Via SlashDot ]

What the heck! When they released this stupid thing, they said:

(a) The music industry will be getting a kickback for each Zune sold for no real apparent reason

(b) You can only use music bought from the Zune marketplace and can’t even use the music you already bought from Microsoft via MSN Music

(c) Everything is infected with their DRM crap

The only cool thing was that you could do was to share (or squirt) music (for only 3 plays or 3 days) to other Zune owners (if you can find another one) via built in wifi. Now, they’re saying that for music from certain artists (40-50% of Universal and Sony artists) you can’t even do that?!?!? That’s insane! This is why the Zune is failing so miserably.

From cliczune:

Here’s what we found from the 50 songs tested by Zunerama:

Universal Music Group

* Prohibited Zune Sharing: Gwen Stefani, Snow Patrol, Eminem, Blue October, JoJo, Jay-Z;
* Accepted Zune Sharing: Nickelback, Nelly Furtado and Maria Careh;

Sony Music

* Prohibited Zune Sharing: Beyonce, Weird Al Yankovic (not sure if song is from Sony) and Ciara;
* Accepted Zune Sharing: Shakira, Wyclef Jean, The Fray, Christina Aguilera, John Mayer and Brad Paisley;

Link

So, the RIAA is going after artists now?  This is why I don’t buy music from RIAA member labels.

On Tuesday night he was arrested with Don Cannon, a protégé. The police, working with the Recording Industry Association of America, raided his office, at 147 Walker Street in Atlanta. The association makes no distinction between counterfeit CDs and unlicensed compilations like those that DJ Drama is known for. So the police confiscated 81,000 discs, four vehicles, recording gear, and “other assets that are proceeds of a pattern of illegal activity,” said Chief Jeffrey C. Baker, from the Morrow, Ga., police department, which participated in the raid.

James Brown, the dynamic, pompadoured ‘’Godfather of Soul,'’ whose rasping vocals and revolutionary rhythms made him a founder of rap, funk and disco as well, died early Monday, his agent said. He was 73.Brown was hospitalized with pneumonia at Emory Crawford Long Hospital on Sunday and died around 1:45 a.m. Monday, said his agent, Frank Copsidas of Intrigue Music. Longtime friend Charles Bobbit was by his side, he said.

The RIAA is suing the website AllofMP3.com on behalf of EMI, Sony BMG, Universal Music, and Warner Music in the amount of $150,000 for each of the 11 million songs that were downloaded from June to October of 2006. That comes to a lawsuit totaling $1.65 trillion! I think that may be a little excessive.