Japanese record industry wants to tax the iPod and other DAPs
The record industry has been pushing for some sort of revenue share here in the States, but in Japan they've decided to pursue a strategy that has already failed in Canada and are petitioning the government there to institute a 2 to 5 percent tax on all portable digital audio players (including, and especially, the iPod) to compensate them for revenues lost from file sharing and home copying (there is already a 2% tax on CD and MiniDisc recorders). Not sure why it's the manufacturers' responsibility to compensate the music industry for its failed business model, especially since MP3 players don't automatically equal piracy (plenty of people only put legally purchased music on their players), but the prospect of a tax that applies to "portable digital players that store data on internal hard-disk drives and flash memory computer chips" raises some thorny issues over where you draw the line between what would be covered by the levy and what would not. Would a cellphone that played MP3s be subject to the tax? What about a laptop with iTunes or WinAmp or Windows Media Player on it? Would a portable video player count? And if the tax does go into effect, would users have carte blanche to copy as much music as they'd like?
