Japanese music industry calls for an ‘iPod tax’:
The industry has asked the Japanese government to charge a royalty, to be added to the retail price of portable digital music players like Apple’s iPod, which has been explosively popular here. Money earned from the fee, likely to be 2 percent to 5 percent of the retail price, would go to recording companies, songwriters and artists as compensation for lost revenue from home copying.
Compensation? Lost revenue? Apparently the music industry now believes that copying my CDs onto another device – say, my iPod – constitutes lost revenue? In which alternate universe does this even make sense? When I buy a CD, I own it and can listen to it in any format I want to.
“Recording industries on both sides of the Pacific are trying to find all kinds of schemes to make more money,” said Tim Bajarin of Creative Strategies, a consulting firm in Campbell, California. “They have this alternative commercial channel, and they’re just trying to block it or tax it.”
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Ah but Mush, we must not stand in the way of ‘progress’! The wheels of capitalism must plow through such occasional quagmires of indecency we inevitably meet along the road of unbridled greed. Just remember, it’s not the destination that matters, it’s how much gold, and mother of pearl inlay, and flashy disco lights you have in your Bentley’s jacuzzi that really counts.
I happen to live in “that” country and the whole concept of digital music is so insane. You see, we haven’t had Apple iTune Store until recently because the Japanese music industry didn’t like the idea to Okay that. Toshiba EMI which is a major label company here even sells a piece of music on their website that can be only retrieved by their specific player.
and I live in this country…