Japan yesterday abandoned a planned revision to copyright laws -- dubbed the "iPod tax" -- that would have imposed a royalty payment on purchases of digital music players, after a government panel failed to agree on how to police violations.
The Cultural Agency committee's decision followed a yearlong debate over how to update the nation's system for levying extra copyright fees on gadgets, given dramatic changes in recent years in the digital content business, government official Hiroyuki Suzuki said.
Under the current system, the charge -- generally 3 percent of the product's wholesale price -- is included in the price of recording devices and other gadgets that can be used to duplicate copyrighted material, and most shoppers aren't even aware they're paying it.
Since last year, recording companies and other lobbyists have said the same system should be applied to recording devices with hard drives, including music players like Apple Computer Inc's iPod, as well as flash-memory players.
The panel's members, including academics and consumer-rights activists, have been so divided on where to draw the line on what constitutes copyright infringement that many had speculated they would not be able to agree by the December deadline.
Although the media here calls the system the ``iPod tax,'' the money goes to recording firms, composers and artists so it's technically not a tax. Similar systems exist in some European nations.
Opponents say the current system is an obsolete way of monitoring digital music purchases, while others contend that consumers would be doubly charged under the proposed change because they often already pay royalties on digital purchases.
Apple in Japan had no comment yesterday on the decision.
Apple's iPod, controls about 70 percent of the global market, with its market share in Japan growing to 60 percent recently.
AIR SUPPORT: The Ministry of National Defense thanked the US for the delivery, adding that it was an indicator of the White House’s commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) and Representative to the US Alexander Yui on Friday attended a delivery ceremony for the first of Taiwan’s long-awaited 66 F-16C/D Block 70 jets at a Lockheed Martin Corp factory in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are so proud to be the global home of the F-16 and to support Taiwan’s air defense capabilities,” US Representative William Timmons wrote on X, alongside a photograph of Taiwanese and US officials at the event. The F-16C/D Block 70 jets Taiwan ordered have the same capabilities as aircraft that had been upgraded to F-16Vs. The batch of Lockheed Martin
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
China's military today said it began joint army, navy and rocket force exercises around Taiwan to "serve as a stern warning and powerful deterrent against Taiwanese independence," calling President William Lai (賴清德) a "parasite." The exercises come after Lai called Beijing a "foreign hostile force" last month. More than 10 Chinese military ships approached close to Taiwan's 24 nautical mile (44.4km) contiguous zone this morning and Taiwan sent its own warships to respond, two senior Taiwanese officials said. Taiwan has not yet detected any live fire by the Chinese military so far, one of the officials said. The drills took place after US Secretary
THUGGISH BEHAVIOR: Encouraging people to report independence supporters is another intimidation tactic that threatens cross-strait peace, the state department said China setting up an online system for reporting “Taiwanese independence” advocates is an “irresponsible and reprehensible” act, a US government spokesperson said on Friday. “China’s call for private individuals to report on alleged ‘persecution or suppression’ by supposed ‘Taiwan independence henchmen and accomplices’ is irresponsible and reprehensible,” an unnamed US Department of State spokesperson told the Central News Agency in an e-mail. The move is part of Beijing’s “intimidation campaign” against Taiwan and its supporters, and is “threatening free speech around the world, destabilizing the Indo-Pacific region, and deliberately eroding the cross-strait status quo,” the spokesperson said. The Chinese Communist Party’s “threats