Japanese music industry calls for an 'iPod tax'

[Foxy Brown]

In the United States, recording labels want a bigger slice of Apple's success in digital music by seeking higher prices on downloaded songs. Japan's music industry has a different idea: putting fees on iPods.

[ctz]

Fortunately we don't have these kinds of problems in Finland. We just made iPods illegal!

[Hamasaki_Yoshizawa]

LOL! OMG to ctz's post
Anyway, I don't really mind. Tax here, tax there, as long as I get an iPod

[Foxy Brown]

Japan is forgoing a copyright law revision to charge royalties on digital music players -- a proposal dubbed the "iPod tax" -- after discussions in a government panel produced no consensus on ways to police violations.

[Asmodai]

Yeah, we have that in Canada too.

The trouble is that I don't really have Canadian artists on my iPod, so I pay extra for nothing.

Basically it's a way for the music industry, which is already fabulously wealthy, to get more free corporate welfare from the government.  


EDIT: We also pay the tax on blank CDs, so everytime I back up my hard drive I have to pay a few bucks to Shania Twain.  

[Cidolfas]

I would be cool with such a tax if that meant that file-sharing violations were in turn not enforced.  I mean, we're paying for what pirate, right?  I wonder how much of such an iPod tax would go to the artists who are supposedly being harmed...

[ctz]

In Finland it's kinda stupid situation now, when it's illegal to copy anything, but we still have to pay extra for cds, dvds, DTV receivers, hard drives, mp3 players... Everything. And taxis and barbers have to pay too, if they have radio on.

[frblckstr1]

Same here in holland (although it is legal to download, just not upload or share as burned media)

But yes taxes everywhere on blank CD's DVD's, except they just blocked doing it for MP3 players, so they are starting to think...