Controversial 'iPod Tax' Struck Down
A Canadian court of appeal last week branded an additional proposed tax on media
recording and storage devices, designed to compensate recording artists for piracy
of their work, as illegal.
Had this tax been implemented, devices such as Apple's iPod would have been
subjected to a tariff which would have seen unit prices rocket by between C$5
and C$75 dollars, depending on the capacity of the media player. The tax, proposed by the Copyright Board of Canada, would have hit 30 to 80
gigabyte storage devices the hardest, according to reports, increasing some
of the prices by up to 29%. Judge Karen Sharlow wrote, according to Bloomberg, that the Copyright Board
had "no legal authority to certify a tariff on digital audio recorders
or on the memory permanently embedded in digital audio recorders". Retail Council of Canada president, Diane Brisebois announced in a statement
over the weekend that: "This has been a very long battle, but a necessary one. Retailers have
fought against these levies since their creation in 1997 because it taxes a
product based on what a consumer possibly could use it for." .
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