Maybe i'm opening a big can of worms but i'm interested in what others have to say regarding this interesting topic. I'm hoping we can have REAL intelectual posts regarding this.

According to recent new reports the Canadian govt. is looking at applying royalty charges to MP3 players as well as blank CD-Rs, CD-RWs, MiniDiscs and cassette tapes. This money would be pooled together and distributed to the music industry. They are currently coming out with an outrageous amount of taxes $400 added to a $600 MP3 players), but I can see this amount being lowered. (start high and see how big the uproar is and then lower it so they can say "look we lowered it to please everyone")

This has, of course, caused a major uproar in the software industry as many independent software developers, artists, graphical designers would be subject to this tax every time they buy a CDRom to distribute their work.

But this would put 2 things in effect.
1) Make it perfectly legal to copy any and all music without any repercussions upon either the user or the "supplier"
Yes, I know they would have a hard time doing anything with "open source" programs.
2) Eliminate Morpheus's new "Content Wrapping" b.s.

I am sure though that music artists that arnt signed onto the big record labels wouldnt see a cent of this $$.

So what I’m wondering is:
1) Do you think this is fair to the music industry?
2) Do you think this is fair to the software industry?
3) Do you think this will work?


Some links of interest:
http://www.canoe.ca/JamMusic/mar15_mp3-sun.html
http://www.canoe.ca/JamNapster/jan14_privacy-ap.html