“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,” Yuri Kageyama reports for The Associated Press. “The decision Thursday from the Cultural Agency committee followed yearlong debate over how outdated the nation’s system for levying an extra copyright fee on gadgets had grown, given the dramatic social changes in recent years in the digital content business, said government official Hiroyuki Suzuki.”
“Since last year, recording companies and other lobbies here have been grumbling that the same system should be applied to recording devices with hard-drives, including MP3 players like Apple Computer Inc.’s iPods as well as flash-memory players,” Kageyama reports. “Although the media here is calling the system the ‘iPod tax,’ the money goes to recording companies, composers and artists and so it’s technically not a tax. Similar systems exist in European nations… Apple in Japan had no comment on the government decision. The iPod, which controls about 70 percent of the global market, has been a big hit in Japan, the home turf of rivals like Sony Corp. and Toshiba Corp., which make their own music players. Recently, iPod’s market share in Japan has grown to 60 percent.”
Full article here.
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Japan music labels look to impose ‘iPod Tax’ while Sony, Warner still not signing with Apple iTunes – October 10, 2005
Supreme Court of Canada: No levy on Apple iPods – July 28, 2005
It would have been called the “Sony ATRAC” tax, but nobody has ever downloaded any music from Sony’s music store, nor can anyone remember the name of Sony’s DAP….
Hey, Nippon, you might want to call the French and see how well THEIR iPod tax went!!
If a government taxes you on your gadget and gives the money to the recording companies, that means your conscience is free to allow you to copy all the music you want. You paid your fee.
Treu dat other steve!
Hey, Japan, how DID the French iPod tax go?
French people buy their iPod elsewhere, not in France!
hs …… you asked how the French ipod tax went.
Well it went from €50 to €8 very recently. That shows you just how good an idea it turned out to be. But instead of scrapping it altogether, which would have been entirely sensible, they’ve reduced it to a nominal amount.
http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/index.cfm?NewsID=13213&Page=3&pagePos=14
>>> Hey, Japan, how DID the French iPod tax go?
The decision to lower the tax has been approved by the appointed commission. The levy will go from 43 to 8 euros (before taxes) for the flash players up to 5 gig.
BUT, in order to become law, this decree has to be published on the official papers (the “Gazette officielle”). This hasn’t happened yet. Supposedly, it’s going to be published within the next few days.
This is just one more instance of the problems the country has and I feel sorry for the French people. France is run by the worlds most arrogant, incompetent, self serving elite that ever existed…
Fraternité – Egalité – Liberté ?! Absolutely not with the management it has today…
France is a pretty country but their people are gigantic a-holes!
Auggie:
Yeah, wh got the same problem here in the good ol’ U S of A
Yank, surely not you and me!
Canada has a blank media tax on CD-Rs.
Unless they got rid of it.
The Canada “media tax” works quite well, and people I talk to about it are happy to pay it, even those that download music.
They were going to add the iPod to that tax but they did not.