According to reports in the print newspaper Ma’ariv earlier this week, Members of the Knesset (MK) Meir Sheetrit and others will be presenting a bill soon to legalize downloading of copyrighted material.

Alleged losses will instead be compensated via levies.

While levies are not always the fairest way (because they assume every use of a levied technology is an infringing one) it will reduce the pressure to legislate extensively on online behavior, a trend we’ve seen in copyright-lobby heavy countries like the US and UK.

The law is apparently supported by the Israeli collecting society ACUM, who have a powerful and well-connected supporter in Meir Sheetrit (who has held several ministerial positions over the last 15 years, including Justice).

The main issue has been one of religion, specifically Halakha, which we looked at several years back. With this new law though, it could probably remove any lingering doubts on that front from those who have resisted until now.

When we have more details on what would be levied and for how much, we’ll follow this up.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

This is a bad idea, according to the consumer watchdog artists unions. Instead, they have issued a counterproposal that would eventually legalize both the uploading and downloading of movies and music entirely.

“The parties find it essential to protect the freedom of consumers on the Internet and to ensure that the rights of artists are respected. A necessary condition for the adoption of the proposal is that the technologies used will not infringe on the rights of consumers,” the press statement reads.

Legalizing ‘illicit’ file-sharing would happen in two stages. The existing levy on blank media such as CDs and DVDs will be replaced by a levy on devices that can play an record movies and music. This includes, but is not limited to mobile phones, MP3-players and TVs.

The average levy would be around 5 euros per device, and the money collected should be fairly divided among artists and other rightsholders. The proposal does not apply to other digital files such as games, software and books.

In the future, when file-sharing is even more dominant than it is now, this levy should be changed into a general Internet levy which will completely legalize the uploading and downloading of movies and music for personal use. Commercial copyright infringement will remain illegal according to the proposal.

The proposal is an interesting one, especially coming from the artists themselves, but it also raises many questions. The proposal is quite vague about how the collected money should be divided. Also, it avoids the important issue that people who are not downloading at all will end up paying more for their mobile phones and TVs.

The proposal will undoubtedly meet some resistance from music retailers such as Apple, who will lose millions in revenue if it was adopted. That said, it’s good to see that the unions and the consumer watchdog are at least thinking about alternative solutions.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

For every blank CD sold in Canada, 21¢ used to go to the music industry, to compensate Canadian artists. This has now gone up to 29¢. However, the levy was introduced before the first iPod was sold, and this immediately brings up one of the key problems. The question is: How many of the blank CDs that are sold are used to copy Canadian music onto it? Furthermore, is it fair to ‘tax’ all the other people who buy those CDs for other means?

It seems that the levy is outdated by technology since most private copies are made on MP3 players, not on CDs. With the rise of MP3 players, and the ways to get them connected to audio equipment, blank CDs are becoming less relevant in the audio world. Further, as most computers now come with DVD burners, CDs may be following the floppy as an outdated storage medium. This raised levy might be the beginning of the end for CDs, at least in Canada.

Of course, the advances in technology were totally ignored by the Copyright Board. The only technology mention dealt with compression. Two reasons were given for the raise by the Secretary General of the Copyright Board of Canada, Claude Majeau.

“Two main factors led the Board to raise the CD levy rate to 29¢. First, the mechanical royalties that record labels pay to record a song onto a prerecorded CD have increased. Second, because consumers now use compression technology when they record music, the average number of music tracks copied onto a CD went from 15 to more than 18.”

Unfortunately for Mr. Majeau, the second point is greatly undermined by the fact that, according to the audio CD standard (commonly known as Red Book), CDs shouldn’t be compressed at all. If he was referring to mp3′s, then reducing the average size from 43Mb to 36 (assuming a 650Mb CD) is also unusual.

How fair the levies are is debatable. First, while it claims to be for compensating artists, the Canadian Private Copying Collective (CPCC) FAQ makes it clear that only Canadian performers and record companies qualify for payment. This is a significant blow against non-Canadian artists that don’t have a Canadian representative – the small artist. Worse, the payout of the collected levies is based on radio airplay and retail sales (physical and download). So, a starting Canadian artist that decides to burn 1000 CDs of his demo, he or she is actually paying $290 to established musicians and record labels.

There is also the question of payment. By their own figures, the CPCC had collected almost $242M between 1999 and 2007, of which just under $207M was available for payouts, but only $148.8M had been distributed, leaving $58M or so sitting around, roughly equivalent to the levies collected in 2006 and 2007.

Perhaps most unusually of all though, is that some consumers may be entirely unaware of the levies, let alone their rise. Despite the rise from 21¢ to 29¢ per disc, newegg.ca is selling spindles of 100 for under $20. Considering the levy cost on them is now $29, that’s quite a financial hit. The price of blank CDs may rise soon to compensate, putting them at similar prices to blank DVDs which have no levies. Fortunately for consumers, most DVD players can handle MP3s now. Another great example how technology has advanced since 1999, and also ignored by the Copyright Board.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.