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Money collected from this levy is used to offset the losses incurred due to piracy -- or at least that's the theory.

In Canada for example, blank CDR and CDRW disks each carry a levy of CN$0.21 and there are proposals to increase that figure to CN$0.59 this year.

In theory, and certainly from the recording industry's perspective, this sounds like a good idea doesn't it? After all, everyone knows that quite a lot of the CDR disks being sold are going to end up holding illegally copied music.

Unfortunately, the downside is that strategies like this assume we're all criminals and that every CDR is going to be used for the unauthorised copying of copyrighted music.

Looking around at all the CDRs I've got here I can honestly say that there's not a single one which is an illegal copy of a commercial music CD.

I have to admit that I've got quite a few CDRs containing VCD and SVCD recordings of broadcast TV material -- but I've also got a whole bunch of VHS tapes with the same type of stuff on them -- as have most Kiwi households.

Readers Say (updated irregularly) AFC Disks... - Peter CD Audio's... - Ian Levy on blank CDs... - Peter Music Royalties... - Chris CDR Tax... - Paul It's even easier... - Allister Have Your Say

So why should I, and the huge number of other CDR users who don't engage in music piracy, be asked to subsidise those who do?

The answer is that we shouldn't and so far our politicians have had the good sense to realise this so there's no recording media/equipment levy here (is there?).

But maybe the idea isn't quite as stupid as it sounds.

Here's an idea for the recording industry...

Let's take it as read that people do, and always will, copy music CDs. Let's also accept the fact that such copying is costing sales and, regardless of how much we love to hate the recording industry, they deserve to be paid for those unauthorised copies.

Why then, doesn't the recording industry provide CDR manufacturers and/or distributors with the ability to create "Approved For Copying" (AFC) disks?

These CDRs would cost more than regular blank media but would carry a trademarked logo indicating that the purchaser had paid a copying levy that entitles them to use that disk to duplicate commercially sold music recordings.

Given that when someone copies a commercial CD themselves, the recording company is saved a raft of expenses such as disk pressing, packaging, freight, distribution, marketing, etc -- I would expect the price for one of these AFC disks to be no more than $5 or so.

This strategy even protects the humble music retailer, someone whose very existence must be threatened by the looming prospect of labels selling and delivering direct to consumers over the Internet. If these AFC disks were only sold through traditional music CD channels then the main-street music store would still be in the loop and earning their share.

Now I know a lot of you are going to ask "but why would anyone pay ten times the price for an AFC disk when they could still use a regular CDR?"

Well I have to admit that a lot of people won't buy AFC disks -- they'll continue to pirate music by copying onto regular CDRs as they always have. It's an unfortunate fact of life that there's probably nothing the industry can do to stop these people -- not even copy protection or complex DRM systems are going be effective, so why waste all that money?

However, the sale of AFC disks would give those people who simply want to create a legitimate, legal copy of a friend's CD the chance to do so.

I suspect that most people would continue to buy their Top-10 CDs at The Warehouse but there are a surprising number of people with eclectic tastes who already have a collection of illegally copied albums or tracks on CDR that they'd like to legitimise if they could. The problem is that much of this music is not readily available in our stores -- or perhaps they only want a track or two from each CD and don't feel inclined to pay $30-$40 for the whole disk just to get 3-6 minutes of worthwhile music.

AFC disks won't stop piracy but if the problem is as big as we're told it is then they could represent quite a significant earner and go some way towards offsetting losses due to piracy -- while allowing otherwise honest people to legalise their existing illegal collections.

To avoid the situation where individuals or companies might set up to simply duplicate top-10 albums onto AFC disks and then sell them at half the price of the originals, it would have to be illegal to sell AFC disks that already contained recordings. AFC disks would be for personal use only.

For what it's worth, something similar to the AFC disk concept was launched a couple of years ago when Phillips and a few other manufacturers started selling stereos with a built in CD copier. These copiers would only write to a special CDR media that had this copying levy built into its price.

Unfortunately these units were not sufficiently popular for the idea to become a commercial success -- but we've all got CDR/RW drives in our computers haven't we?

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