All Canadians are criminals, officially

As you know, we are all criminals in Canada.

We steal music, ripping it from the skinny hands of starving artistes, leaving them and their 5 children and 3 spouses to the (rather tender, actually) mercies of the Canadian welfare system.

That is why the Copyright Board of Canada is re-introducing a levy on the sale of all blank media. It’s the least we can do for all those poor singers and songwriters out there. If they benefit even a tiny bit, we are happy to pay double or triple the actual cost of our CDs and DVDs:

As prices have dropped, however, the levy now frequently comprises a significant percentage of the retail price. Consider the purchase of 100 blank Maxell CDs. Future Shop retails the 100 CDs for $69.99. The breakdown of this sale is $48.99 for the CDs and $21.00 for the levy (even worse is a current Future Shop deal of 200 blank CD-Rs from HP, which retails for $59.99. The levy alone on this sale is $42.00 (200 CDs x 21 cents/CD) which leaves the consumers paying $17.99 for the CDs and $42.00 for the levy).

Since all Canadians are criminals, we’ll just charge them all right up front.

Bloody thieves.