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Illustration by Barry Blitt

Copycat Crimes

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If the music industry can profit from a sneaky, hidden, ridiculous tax, why can’t publishers profit from a tax on paper?

by George Emerson

Illustration by Barry Blitt

Published in the March 2005 issue.  » BUY ISSUE     

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Note from the editor: The following confidential
memorandum is being distributed
to select publishing executives and has
ended up at
The Walrus offices.

CONFIDENTIAL
To: The Board of Directors,
Association of Canadian Publishers;
Canadian Writers Union, and
Writers Union of Canada

From: Felix McMasterson,
Director of Government Relations

Re: Tax on blank paper


Executive summary

This memo outlines how the American publishing industry, working with Canadian writers and publishers, will manufacture a “literacy crisis” to get the Canadian government to impose an excise tax on blank paper with the revenues funnelled to us. This private, hidden tax on blank paper is just like the music industry’s private, hidden tax on blank CDs and will net hundreds of millions of dollars in a short time, as it has for them.

background to the proposal

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