Digital Home Thoughts: Canada Drops MP3 Price Gouging

"Consumers may soon be paying less for MP3 players after the Federal Court of Appeal ruled that special copyright levies applied to digital music players are not legal. A 71-page decision by Mr. Justice Marc Noël found that although the Copyright Board of Canada was seeking to protect music writers and performers from the “harm” caused by digital copying of music when it imposed the MP3 levies last December, the board did not have the legislative authority to do so."

Ah, the wonderfully complicated nature of Canadian bureaucracy. :roll: I'm curious to see if the price drops on any of these - retail stores were obligated to pay a chunk of the selling price to the CPCC (Canadian Private Copying Collective), but now that they don't have to, will they simply pocket the extra money themselves? There's nothing legally forcing them to drop their prices - iPods are flying off the shelves in Calgary, the city where I live, so why drop the prices if consumers are willing to pay that much? This part of the article worried me a little:

"Mr. Audley argued, for example, that the judge's ruling that MP3 players are not a recording medium could technically place the devices into a kind of legal purgatory. He said the Copyright Act clearly defines media that legally can be used for private duplication of copyrighted material and MP3 players no longer meet that criteria."

The future of digital audio players remains a bit murky in Canada...