Netherlands iPod tax

A Netherlands proposed tax on MP3 players could , such as Apple's iPod. The tax is set to become law in the Netherlands in a few short months unless the European Commission finds a reason to intervene. "The idea of all levy based legislation is that some form of copyright collections agency collects tax by imposing a surcharge at the point of sale for any storage devices that could possibly be used to store pirated works," reports The Register. "Because of the fact that the great bulk of iPods are used to store legitimate iTunes files which are Digital Rights Management (DRM) protected, this means that copyright is being purchased twice over for these devices if a levy is also paid." If this legislation comes into play, the surcharge will be as much as €3.28 ($4.3) per gigabyte. This might put €180 ($235) to the price of a top end iPod.

by MacNN Staff