Well, it’s been more than a month since the Copyright Board came out with its decision Private Copying III. For the sake of simplicity and to make future reference to the decision easier, I am putting up a little summary of the decision for those who are interested in its general content. We are bound to hear A LOT on it in the following months, so I thought that a summary would be helpful in any future discussions.
One aspect of this decision struck me in particular. The majority of the Board seems to have based much of the justifications for maintaining status quo of the current levy rates on the grounds of “uncertaintiesâ€. In fact, one has the feeling that the many of the rates established in the tariff was done by a lack of information. Very shaky ground I would say. For example, the Board agreed that individual consumers might use CD-Rs more than CD-RWs for the purpose of recording music, thus it would make sense to establish two different rates for these two media. However, the Board is “unable to update the valuation model†due to “uncertainties surrounding important figuresâ€. Yet, this same kind of “uncertainty†didn’t stop the majority of the Board (agreed by the dissident) from assigning some rather poorly justified and “out there†levy rates to non-removable memories embedded in digital audio recorders. Another example would be the Board’s view on the effects of the black market (illegal) and the grey market (legal personal imports of blank music recording media from foreign suppliers). In response to arguments that higher levy rate might encourage smuggling and the prosperity of a black market (though without concrete evidence) and in fear of destabilizing the blank media market, “the best the Board can do is to proceed with caution. Keeping the rates at their current levels should avoid these pitfalls.†It’s a cry for help for intervention from a higher force!
Update: Retailers, device manufacturers and CPCC are all challenging the Copyright Board’s decision. There is no way out of this one!