If socan can’t, won’t or didn’t help them get a good deal with the record label, then what is it good for?

It produces no records … runs no radio networks … composes no music. It does not facilitate the enjoyment of music … rather it impedes it with litigation … producing significant antipathy towards canadian musicians in the domestic and global markets … but it does take donations.

So, I buy a CD from a record label. Then socan comes along and says that I have to pay them again for access to the same CD. This occurs often many years after the original sale.

Since the record label who made the CD has bought rights to to the music on the CD, why isn’t the record label suing socan for selling access to it’s copyrighted materials?

But it gets better. Not only does socan want to charge me 2 (presently) or 3 (planned) times for the same product, it now wants to force the CRTC to regulate the content of all Canadian websites, and force them to include socan’s music. This is a conflict of interest, as well as an attack on free speech, my property rights and the property rights of the record label.

I like canadian music … but not that much.

In the ‘real world’ … If socan doesn’t understand the difference between a concert … and the radio playing at a bar or cafe … this just underscores how in touch socan is with the public.

If socan thinks that this is going to help canadian musicians, they (candian musicians) should know that instead of buying a CD today, I spent 20.00 worth of time complaining about socan on the web.

You actually think I am going to pay extra by patronizing businesses that support socan with these fees, and pass these fees on to me?

Sure I will, if when I visit those businesses, they will LET ME SELECT A RADIO STATION, SET THE VOLUME AND EQUALIZER AS I PLEASE, OR LOOK THROUGH THEIR ALBUM COLLECTION AND PUT ON SOMETHIGN I WANT TO HEAR. If not, then I will shop elsewhere.

I’m not going to pay for hearing a song that I didn’t choose to hear, and to hell with socan if it thinks it can make me.

If I go into a cafe, have a meal, pay my bill and leave, I am done. If the union rep for the staff at that cafe tries to shake me down for more money in the parking lot because the managament of the cafe ‘pays low wages’, or because I ‘gave someone else a bite of my steak’, or beacuse ‘there wasn’t enough money left for the staff’, I’m going to laugh at them and NEVER EAT THERE AGAIN.

Besides, this is the same socan that already collects a fee, but ‘there wasnt enough money to give any to the artists’. The artists are probably mistaken if they think they are going to get any this time, either.

Bile rising at the notion of socan regulating my web content, and vowing to never buy a socan product again.

Being so incredibly old, DRM-free isn’t such a novelty to me that it deserves an exclamation mark. I’ve got shelves groaning with DRM-free vinyl. Instead of iTunes or eMusic I’d recommend http://www.jamendo.com.