Canada? Are you becoming as regressive as your Southern neighbor?

According to the National Post:

Bill Rodgers. communications director for Jim Prentice, the Industry Minister, said in an e-mail the government will introduce new copyright legislation within the next few months, but declined to give details on what it could entail. "The government is committed to improve the protection of cultural and intellectual property rights, including copyright reform," said Mr. Rodgers. "We need to move ahead with copyright reform, and intend to do so. It's a complex matter and the government wants to get it right."

WTF IS "GETTING IT RIGHT"?
I think the Canadian government got it right when it decided to oust SOCAN’s application for royalty rates on streaming music by voting down Tariff 22.

“[We’re] not about to go after average consumers,” said Graham Henderson, president for the Canadian Recording Industry Association."We have among the weakest intellectual property rights protection in the world.”

Bullshit. You might not sue the average consumer, but you'll tax them Graham. The average consumer doesn’t want to pay more money for anything including legal downloads – hell, you’re lucky they are even downloading legally. The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission’s (CRTC) 1999 decision to let internet radio be was one of the best decisions made for independent Canadian musicians as the barriers for consumers (namely money) were reduced and people could just listen and enjoy.

GET A CLUE
So…essentially after losing the battle to recoup money from online music hosts, the same people are trying the same bloody tactics with a new administration and are being taken seriously. Wha? This is NOT good. The internet is one of the last great distributing houses for music and the music companies know that. Let’s put it this way, the CRIA and SOCAN might as well be the Canadian subsidiaries of Virgin and Sony. It’s been eight years since the CRTC’s decision on online music and these puffed up money bags still haven’t figured out a way to work with the internets. WTF? Even the power companies are supposedly researching green energy as an alternative revenue model, what gives you the right to be so lazy?

THERE’S MONEY TO BE MADE SANS ROYALTY INCREASE
Panic! At the Disco. AHHHHHHHHH! These Vegas-based vaudevillian lads managed to gain a huge following by uploading their music to MySpace and Pure Volume. Within a few months, more than 1 million fans had linked to their MySpace page and more than 5 million were visiting regularly. From here, they were offered an album deal with Fall Out Boy bassist Pete Wentz’s label Fueled by Ramen and have since been on the cover of Rolling Stone, featured on MTV’s TRL and receive regular radio play. Despite their fame and fortune and the fact that they are indeed talented, do you really think they would’ve been given a shot without a fan base like this? Hell freaking no.

Give away your music people. Maybe not the whole album, but at least 2 hot songs. A good number of people will actually pay for the rest of the album. Those who don’t pay are still advertising for you by playing your music and making it viral. For every person you deter from downloading your music, you lose 5 more of their friends who might actually pay. Be nice to your fans and if you need to bilk money out of people, bilk the advertisers and make them pay a premium on the fact that you are cooler than those other manufactured music industry pukes.

Emo-girl says, "Long Live OUR Music!"

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Canada? Are you becoming as regressive as your Southern neighbor?

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