8 Days of Tariff 8: What is the Copyright Board of Canada’s definition of ‘fair’?
The Copyright Board claims to operate on a “fairness principle” but has made a decision that is inherently unfair to Canadian artists, and does not take into account the differences between web and terrestrial radio, on which they based the Tariff 8 rates. This decision has created a regulatory precedent and decision that ignores the reality of the marketplace and will continue to harm the business climate and create a market uncertainty.
We believe that if the Copyright Board of Canada wanted to embody a ‘fair’ approach, it would not have discarded existing market rates at which digital music service providers had been operating in Canada. In fact, Tariff 8 discarded years of agreements freely negotiated between digital music service providers and the music industry, setting the rates for webstreaming in Canada at 10% of the rates that the same services pay in the United States and many other countries.
Help raise awareness about the disastrous effects of the Copyright Board of Canada’s Tariff 8 decision by retweeting the image below:
8 Days of Tariff 8: What’s the Copyright Board of Canada’s definition of fair? http://t.co/wjwYDrhOTU #IStandForMusic pic.twitter.com/1e3QcZo4UO
— Music Canada (@Music_Canada) June 19, 2015
