OTTAWA, December 13, 2002 — Minister of Canadian Heritage Sheila Copps and Industry Minister Allan Rock today announced the passage of Bill C-11, an Act to amend the Copyright Act. This Bill is the first in a series of initiatives to update Canada’s copyright legislation.

It dismisses the compulsory license option that was proposed by certain groups for internet retransmission.

[Via BNA ILN]

It seems that France is keeping on track with the adoption of a tariff similar to the canadian tariff 22 regarding blank digital media. They also tax hard disk in Tivo-like devices.
I think those tariffs are generally a good thing since they provide some form of compensation for usage of copyrighted works.

It’s not quite compulsory licensing, it’s a bit of a stretch to raise a tariff to compensate uses of works that are most of the time allowed under the law and it is quite unfair to put a tariff on CD-R when I know most of my use these days goes to back-ups of my own data. Yet, it seems like an acceptable compromise on both sides of the issue. Now, the shocking thing is the amount of the tariff. In Canada, it amounts to a 50% tax on media (0.21$ per data CD)…

[via BMCK E-Law]