The Songwriters Association of Canada (SAC) have revealed a new proposal that would allow all Canadian citizens to download as much unauthorized music as they please for the low, flat-rate of $5 CAD per month.
The new proposal, which will require federal approval to pass, will add a $5 CAD surcharge to your monthly ISP bill but allow unlimited music downloading from sources of your choice.
“That’s a very reasonable amount of money to legally, without fear of any legal repercussions, to be able to download that and share it with [whomever] you want to and as many times as you want,” said Eddie Schwartz, president of the songwriters’ group. “On iTunes to download one album, it’s $10. This is half of that and this is pretty reasonable to have access to the entire repertoire of Western music.”
The organization plans to meet at Toronto’s Ryerson University to launch the proposal while asking for an immediate amendment to the Canadian Copyright Act. The new right will be called the Right to Equitable Reenumeration for Music File Sharing and would allow the songwriters to collect fees from all Internet subscribers.
The group went on to say that the new proposal would bring the SAC, and the songwriters, composers and lyricists behind it between $500 million and $900 million CAD per year.
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Sony has announced that its first Profile 2.0 Blu-ray players will be debuting this summer.
The BDP-S350 will be Sony’s first new player since the demise of HD DVD last week and will feature an Ethernet port allowing it to connect to a home network. Curiously, the player will not be able to access online Blu-ray content until Sony releases a BD-Live upgrade for the player. The company says the player will retail for about $400 USD. The new BDP-S550 will cost about $100 more but will be BD-Live capable from the get go.
Both players will be the first of Sony’s line to have picture-in-picture (PIP) content although some Panasonic players already have the feature meaning the new players are not the first of their kind.
More interestingly, HD DVD players have had PIP and Internet capabilities since 2006 meaning Blu-ray is still catching up
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A new survey published by the The National Research Institute of Legal Policy shows that about 70 percent of teenage Finns have used or currently use file-sharing applications to download copyrighted material.
Online piracy was far and away the largest form of ‘criminal behavior’ among the Finnish youth. 6 percent smoke marijuana or has, 11 percent have participated in a fight, and 15 percent have stolen something from their school or someone else.
29 percent of those who reported downloading unauthorized content also admitted they download movies or music every single day from file sharing services.
Finnish pro-piracy group Piraattiliittothe said, “There is an almost unanimous call from the readers to legalize private filesharing. The overwhelming change in the national opinion from anti-piracy to pro-piracy is somewhat surprising, even for us at Piraattiliitto.”
The Finnish copyright lobby however said the results of the survey were “alarming” and they are looking to pass new laws that will “allow copyright holders to force ISPs to pass their threatening emails to the alleged filesharing customers.”
