Like its American counterpart, the Japanese recording industry wants a share of Apple’s iPod pie. The New York Times reported Monday on efforts by recording trade groups to have a fee assessed to iPods and other digital media devices as recompense for theoretical piracy, and even just as extra money for the privilege of having the song on your music player.
The Times said that the fee the industry is wanting would be from two to five percent, and is similar to fees already in place in Japan on older music devices like CD and minidisk players. The fee would go to recording companies, songwriters and artists as compensation for revenue lost from home copying.
Canadian copyright holders pursued, and gained, such a fee on iPods and other digital media devices in 2003. That fee was later overturned by a Canadian federal court.
In addition to what amounts to compulsory licensing fees assessed to all iPod and other device customers, whether or not they are stealing music, the Japanese recording industry’s position is that royalties from buying music on a CD or online only cover transmission to the listener’s personal computer, not for copying from there to a player like an iPod.
In other words, the industry thinks that listeners should have to pay extra for listening to music on a portable player.
We have suggested in the past that the US recording industry would love nothing so much as using DRM to lock music to one particular device so that customers would have to pay for a copy to listen in the car, and another for your computer, and another for your home stereo. The Japanese labels seem to be outwardly pursuing this idea.
The Times reported, however, that what makes this unusual in Japan is not that an industry is pursuing such a policy, but that it hasn’t already achieved its aims. After all, such fees were readily and quickly assessed in the past.
In this case, the news media has attacked the proposed fees, calling it an “iPod tax,” and the proposal has been locked up in Japan’s business-friendly bureaucracy for many months.
There is more information in the full article at the NY Times.