As I understand it, a long time ago in Canada, a law was created that added a surtax to any recordable media that is sold. This includes cassette tapes, VHS, CD's and DVD's to name a few. The purpose of this surtax was to offset losses of artists due to piracy. This law was pushed through by the music industry back when cassette tapes first came out.
A few years ago, a case went to the supreme court over music piracy. The supreme court ruled that because ALL Canadians are forced to pay this surtax to pay for music they may or may not have pirated, they have the right to download music for their own use. Canadians cannot "share out" music but they can download it for their own use. From what I understand, this only applies to music. The courts ruled that the music industry couldn't have it both ways. If you are going to charge people to cover the costs of piracy then you are technically saying that piracy is expected and "ok". So now the music industry is trying to get rid of this tax so that they can prevent music piracy.
Funny how the law came full circle like that and ended up causing them more of a headache in the end.
