(OVER THE EDGE ~
danuary 30, 2006

Opinions

On the Digital Front

Jeremy Johnson - Staff Writer

ederal Court of Appeals Strikes Down iPod Levy

Levies are not all bad news. Many foreign television com-
panies broadcast in Canada, but pay in to a fund to support
Canadian television as well. It’s kind of like a levy and it does
a good job at preventing Canadian broadcasting from being
completely flooded out of the market.

Now, going into something like the blank media levy
brings in a nice layer — and sometimes justified — criticism.
How would you like to make nearly 200 million dollars in
seven years because technology moved forward? That’s the
total revenue the blank media levy has raked in between 1999
— 2006. The revenue has gone up with the exception of one
year on a per year basis. I’m sure a business can survive quite
nicely with that amount of money going in for, well, no other
reason than the fact that a series of holes can be placed on a
cheap piece of circular plastic and be read as music. Bear in
mind that this does not include DVDs. As it stands now, each
CD has a tariff of 21 cents. No big surprise that when millions
and millions of CDs are being sold that a huge amount of rev-
enue is going in.

Apparently, nearly 180 million dollars in profit in seven
years isn’t enough to feed the poor starving artists like Nick-
elback. The Canadian Private Copying Collective (CPCC),
which holds the reins on collecting and distributing CD royal-

ties is currently trying to put a levy on MP3 players like the
iPod. Yup, a series of incredibly profitable holes isn’t enough,
now they want a levy on a pocket-sized player that is capable
of reading ones and zeros too.

With all the rage of iPods (and, to this day, I’m still a little
puzzled at the necessity of having one attached to your pelvis
24/7) and iRivers and many other players becoming a feature
on people’s cell phones, it probably isn’t a wonder how the
CPCC saw dollar signs on people who have to pull out those
tiny white earbuds to hear you asking for directions.

The proposal was to slap on an extra 75 bucks per portable
MP3 player — also known as the ‘iPod tax’. Let’s put this into
perspective. Say you were one of those people who absolute-
ly had to have an iPod. Looking at the prices at the Apple
Store (at least, as of now) online, the iPod classic costs about
279 dollars. Add a nice 75 dollars to cover the proposed levy,
you'll then get a price of measly 354 dollars before taxes. Im-
agine trying to pay for that on the average student wage with
everything else. Bit of a commitment.

So the Federal Court of Appeals in Ontario saw the case
and quashed it — no iPod tax. A relief for many indeed, but
some experts warn that this also ultimately means that if you
take a CD you legally paid for and put the music into your

iPod, under Canadian law as it stands today, you become one
of those evil thieves that is destroying the industry by swip-
ing the music and putting millions out of work and costing
the Canadian economy billions and billions of dollars every
year (among other FUD made by the foreign record labels)
— though I prefer the term ‘format shifting’ myself. It is also
noted that CPCC can.appeal the decision.

So where does that lead us if the courts won’t budge due
to the fact that the case was brought up and defeated in 2004
when they first attempted to put a levy on MP3 players? It
leads us right to where all the controversy, protests and out-
rage brought advocates to the last time things boiled over
— the copyright reform bill that Jim Prentice backed out of
in the first place. This is the same bill that deals with that one
seemingly boring concept known as ‘copyright’. As you may
note from my other column piece, one can only hope that a
consultation can take place before the bill is tabled so many
Canadians can have their voices heard — though Prentice, for
now, seems a little unwilling at this point in time to come to
you — going to the Conservative Party of Canada on the other
hand (face to face is best, letter format is good) is a little easier
through our local MPs.

ANDREW KURJATA-FPEATURES AND OPINIONS EDITOR

Assimilate, Already
How Canadian Stories Segregate “Aboriginal”

Here’s a thought experiment for you: think
back to your high school social studies class
when you were learning about pre-Confed-
eration Canada. A new continent is ripe for
the taking and two great European powers,
the French and the English, are duking it out
on the Plains of Abraham to decide who gets
it. When you were learning about this, who
did you most identify with? French? English?
Before you answer, I’m going to make a quick
guess: if you were educated in English, you
identify with the British. If, however, you
were educated in French (either in Quebec or
an immersion program) you identify with the
French, This is because of the role language
and culture has in shaping your identity and
making it fit into a broader national identity.
Americans learn about the Civil War, Can-
adians learn about the War of 1812. French
speakers identify with French speakers, Man-
darin speakers with Mandarin speakers, Por-
tugese with Portugese. Albertans are Canad-
ian and Quebecois are Canadien. As a result
of the way our language and education sys-
tems work, I’m guessing it didn’t even occur
to you that there’s a third group (or rather,
hundreds of third groups) you might have
chosen-- unless, of course, you’re one of the
million individuals who, as the latest census
tells us, identifies themself as Aboriginal.

One million being the exciting number that
it is, and it having been such a long time since
there were a million Aboriginals in Canada
(something to do with cultural genocide’),
the media has latched on to this story with
numerous accounts of the “challenges and op-
portunities” a growing Aboriginal population
presents to Canada. That term-- “challenges

and opportunities”-- is actually a code way of
saying that we still really don’t know what to
do about this group of people who don’t just
go on and assimilate like they were supposed
to years ago.

Now, I don’t want to turn this into a big de-
bate about who should apologize to whom,
and what was where when. What I want to
examine is the role that language and myth-
making have in the Aboriginal-Canadian
divide (this is, after all, the creative writing
issue). So let’s go back to the last sentence
of the previous paragraph, the part that says
“we still really don’t know what to do about
this group of people”. Think about that word,
“we.” What does it mean? It signals a div-
ide in groups-- there is “us,” and then there
is “them.” Right now, if I’m talking about
Canada’s relationship with the United States,
I could say “We play hockey, they play base-
ball.” If I talk about Western culture vs. Asian
culture, I might say “We favour individual-
ism, they favour community.” And every time
I do this, I am subtly drawing invisible lines
around identities, segregating larger groups
into smaller ones, North Americans into Can-
adians into British Columbians into Prince
Georgers, and so on and so forth. And while
you may not think much about saying a sen-
tence such as “What are we going to do about
Aboriginal land claims,” every time you do so
you are drawing a subtle line between “we”--
the Canadians-- and them-- the Aboriginals.

And it is not always this subtle. Putting
aside things like the Indian Act or the fact that
someone who identified themselves as “In-
dian” was not allowed to vote until the last
thirty years, think about some of the under-

lying ideas about what it is to be Canadian that
are antitheitical to Aboriginal identity. First,
the idea of two founding nations, French and
English. This ignores the literally hundreds
of nations that had existed prior to the arrival
of Cabot or Cartier, Or the multicultural idea
that this is a “nation of immigrants.” Yes, you
might argue that scientifically speaking First
Nations came to Canada by sea, too, but you
don’t really hear people claiming that ethnic
Germans or Turks or Chinese aren’t really
the original inhabitants of their countires be-
cause original man was in Africa. As a rule
of thumb, if a group of people were living in
a place during the time of Ancient Egypt (as
the Aboriginals of Canada were), then that
group is the original inhabitants. Then there’s
the protection of French and English as offi-
cial languages that need to preserved because
they are integral parts of Canadian idenity,
while the seventy-odd Aboriginal languages
that have managed to hang on this long are on
the verge of extinction with very little being
done about it. Or pretty much every history
book on Canada, where the first five to twenty
pages provide an overview of “pre-contact’”
life, lumping together thousands of years of
history and hundreds of independent nations,
with the other five hundred talking about pi-
oneers and John A. and the War Measures
Act. Which story do you think is seen as be-
ing more important? Which one do you think
plays a greater role in making students in
Canadian schools identify themselves and
others who have learned the same things as
“Canadian”?

For the most part, the broad strokes of Can-
adian identity deny any part played by Ab-

original nations. Lip service is paid, but how
much of your self-identity as a Canadian has
Aboriginal roots? Do Aboriginal mythologies,
histories, and perspectives shape your idea of
“Canada” in as deep of a way as things like
hockey, peacekeeping, having better beer than
Americans, or the usage of the word ‘eh’? Do
they even enter into the equation?

This is why it’s so frustrating to me to see,
once again, ideas being thrown out there
about how to make Aboriginals better Canad-
ians. They don’t say this, of course, they just
talk about the need to get them into schools,
into politics, and into the work force. But, by
and large, school, politics, and the work force
are still run in a system where the Canadian
identity is European-based, and those who
don’t adhere to these ideas are not going to
go very far.

Canada is a welcoming society. We don’t
ask newcomers to give up their religious be-
liefs, or their languages, or their histories.
We simply ask that they learn a little bit of
our history, gain a cursory knowledge of our
languages, and adhere to our laws and values.
Maybe it’s time we extended some of that atti-
tude towards Aboriginal nations. And I’m not
talking about letting them keep their language
and history and values so long as they learn
ours. I’m talking about letting us keep our
language and history and values so long as
we learn some of theirs. Let’s start by rewrit-
ing the Canadian story to include more than
a superficial glance at the rich heritage that
existed prior to Cabot and Cartier. There’s
been a lot of talk over the years about assimi-
lating. Maybe it’s time we did.