A penny for your thoughts? It could cost you $1,200

by Jesse Kline
National Post
September 12, 2012

The Canadian penny may be going the way of the Dodo bird, but that hasn’t stopped the Royal Canadian Mint from trying to make a mint off the design.

The Mint recently issued a warning to Halifax-based folk music singer Dave Gunning — whose upcoming album depicts pennies on both the front and back cover — that he has violated the government’s copyright on the currency. Most of us have probably never thought of inspecting our money in great detail, but Canadian bills do indeed contain a copyright notice in the lower right corner, and coins are covered under the same provisions.

The album, entitled No More Pennies, includes lyrics about the coin and features a man sitting in a coffee shop with a bunch of pennies strewn across the counter on its front cover. On the back is a picture of a giant penny falling below the horizon like a sunset.

The Mint says it will not charge Mr. Gunning a fee for the first 2,000 albums he produces, but will levy a charge of $1,200 for the next 2,000 copies — a cost this struggling artist says he cannot afford. According to one government bureaucrat, however, the Mint is helping “this guy out by giving him a break.” How nice of them, especially considering Ottawa is in the process of withdrawing the penny from circulation, which means it will soon disappear in any case.

It’s one thing to try and protect the currency from counterfeiting, but that is not what we’re talking about here. No one is going to cut the pennies off the album cover and trying to pass them off as the real thing. The government is simply trying to get a cut of the action by demanding royalties — a process that is generally referred to as taxation.

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[hat tip: Stefan Wesche]