A number of countries have had a "levy" on recordable media, for example, Canada had it since the mid 90's, starting with audio tape and recordable CDs. I have a vague recollection of a concept called "innocent until proven guilty", but the levy assumes every bit of media will be used only for recording copyrighted works. It is not even guilty until proven innocent, there is no more "innocent".
Now they want to not only raise the levy, but expand it to other media as well, including the flash memory card in your digital camera:
"The proposed tax would be paid by manufacturers and importers of digital media to the Canadian Private Copying Collective (CPCC). The CPCC would then distribute the funds collected (minus administration fees) to musicians who hold copyrights on music in Canada.
If approved, the new tax would levy an additional fee of 59 cents (Canadian) on blank CDs. Memory cards, such as those used in handheld computers or digital cameras, would be taxed at 0.8 cents per megabyte of storage space. Manufacturers of blank DVD discs would pay an extra $2.27 per disk.
Hardware manufacturers would also be affected. Makers of MP3 players would pay $21 in fees for each gigabyte of memory available on their devices, raising the cost of devices like Apple's iPod".
After all, why would you want to waste the valuable space on that memory card with pictures when you could be carrying your media library on it? And of course, who would ever want to save to CDs or DVDs their pictures or video shot with their digital camera, or even, horror of horrors, send them to friends or relatives? No, it is obvious we are all just using them to avoid buying extra copies of our commercial music and movies.
Now, having said that, I do believe personal copying is legal in Canada due to these levies, but only for personal use, which by any sane definition, should be totally free of any tax or levy. After all, with both audio cassettes and CDs, you could play them in your home stereo system as well as your Walkman for audio tapes and portable CD players (need I say for your CDs?) What difference is there now that mp3 players are able to hold most if not all of your audio tracks, rather than carry the portable player and a suitcase for your audio tapes and/or CDs?
If is a cash grab, pure and simple, but the government who likes to tax everything, sees nothing wrong with this.