Don’t forget that the $25k wouldn’t all be gains in the first place. If the investment had increased in value by 25%, it would be 20k base and only 5k gains; if it had increased by 100% it would be an even split. We’re talking about taxing a part of a part of the sale value.
Its just unreasonable to expect spotify to be able to afford that when they already barely pay musicians.
The audiobooks help them pay even less for music:
With the introduction of the stand-alone audiobooks offering, Spotify is now able to pay lower music-licensing rates for the music-and-audiobook bundle, introduced in the U.S. in November 2023. The 2022 settlement agreement between the National Music Publishers Assn. and streaming services includes a carveout for bundles (such as Amazon Prime and Apple Music + Apple News), which the new audiobook offering falls under. Such plans lower the mechanical licensing rates the company pays in the U.S. Spotify’s lower royalty rates are retroactive to March 1, 2024.
However, NMPA president-CEO David Israelite had strong words for the move when contacted for comment by Variety. “It appears Spotify has returned to attacking the very songwriters who make its business possible,” he wrote. “Spotify’s attempt to radically reduce songwriter payments by reclassifying their music service as an audiobook bundle is a cynical, and potentially unlawful, move that ends our period of relative peace. We will not stand for their perversion of the settlement we agreed upon in 2022 and are looking at all options.” The NMPA and streaming services resolved a years-long standoff over royalty rates with a Copyright Royalty Board ruling in 2022, and agreed upon a new rate of 15.35% for the 2023-2027 period.
Meanwhile, his classified documents case being handled by a judge he appointed to the court is somehow not a conflict.
This week they were even against energy efficient applicances.
Customers who go through self-checkout must use the device to scan their receipt’s barcode — confirming that they paid something — which opens a metal gate, letting them leave.
How is that supposed to help at all in stopping theft? “Oh, you paid for something, you definitely aren’t leaving with anything you didn’t pay for.” I can’t see a way “organized crime” could possibly work around that. /s
At this point there are people in their forties who had access to online porn as minors. Have any actual studies been done to show that a significant portion of the many, many people who’ve grown up in the last 20-30 years have been harmed by having access to online porn while they were younger, or are these laws just something that’s trendy at the moment?
I think CBC’s article on the layoffs yesterday included the real problem:
“The source of this is a dividend policy that has really become out of whack,” added Horan.
BCE will now pay a quarterly dividend of 99.75 cents per common share, up from 96.75 cents per share, the company said Thursday. Dividends are a portion of earnings that companies pay out to their shareholders, usually every quarter.
"Typically, the companies pay about 50 per cent of their earnings in dividends, and they’re up to about 130 per cent right now of their earnings. So I think that’s pressuring the company to produce more free cash flow."
It’s technically a Canadian Press article, but the CTV copy linked here yesterday didn’t have that part.
I got the same thing, and I suspect this is their “malicious compliance” way of dealing with some new rule about needing to let people opt out of marketing. There are 33 separate settings.
At least now I can probably leave their app’s notifications enabled for 2FA without also getting marketing notifications.
According to Engadget’s coverage of the first model with the touchscreen case, the case mostly just lets you use functionality from the app that goes with the earbuds without actually going into the app. I don’t use the apps for my earbuds or headphones, so I can’t say how useful quicker access to their functionality would be.
https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/news-publishing-fall-economic-update
The government’s fall economic statement announced an increase to the Canadian Journalism Tax Credit, a refundable tax credit allowing qualifying news outlets to claim up to 35 per cent of up to $85,000 in salary for a qualified employee.
That’s an increase from the credit’s initial allowance of 25 per cent of up to $55,000 in salary per employee.
Of course, as a news article from a news organization, it has quotes from someone in the business saying the change is good.
But he’s not completely removing the Like button, just adding an extra step to get to it. That will only keep you from getting ratio’d by lazy people.
He’ll get it when he’s Prime Minister, because then he’ll be done complaining about the Prime Minister.
Jeez, my Razer mouse only launches the installer for their crap, it doesn’t automatically do the installation.
Not sure there’s much reason for Meta to cave: Meta’s Canada news ban fails to dent Facebook usage
Daily active users of Facebook and time spent on the app in Canada have stayed roughly unchanged since parent company Meta started blocking news there at the start of August, according to data shared by Similarweb, a digital analytics company that tracks traffic on websites and apps, at Reuters’ request.
Another analytics firm, Data.ai, likewise told Reuters that its data was not showing any meaningful change to usage of the platform in Canada in August.
Doesn’t seem like news was providing Meta much value.
If you’re playing on Windows, the saves are under your user profile so you shouldn’t need to do anything.
I guess buying that online news law hasn’t been a great investment for Murdoch.
This seems relevant: My Distaste For Your Solution Does Not Mean Disregard For The Problem
Anyway, I don’t think this law would reduce Meta’s power if the company cooperated, because if Meta only falls under the law if it has power then news organizations have an incentive to make sure it keeps enough power to keep the law applicable and keep getting them paid.
“Meta’s practices are clearly designed to discipline Canadian news companies, prevent them from participating in and accessing the advertising market, and significantly reduce their visibility to Canadians on social media channels,” the CBC said in a joint statement with the Canadian Association of Broadcasters and News Media Canada, a trade organization that represents newspapers.
Isn’t the argument for C-18 that the advertising market isn’t doing the news organizations much good anyway?
And as far as their visibility on social media channels, the news organization created this problem for themselves in the first place by encouraging people to share their work on social media; if they’d focused on making sure people know where to find them instead of posting all their work maybe their sites would be getting more traffic. They tried a business strategy, it didn’t work out, and now instead of coming up with a better strategy they’re trying to force Meta and Google to give them money and make the bad strategy work.
Canadians expect tech giants to follow the law in our country.
The law says Meta and Google have to pay to carry news; it doesn’t say they have to carry news. Maybe the law should have been written without that gaping hole?
“There are so many other loopholes, we should focus on the ones poor people use”