Canadian rightsholders have convinced Parliament to consider (sometimes punishing) levies on all media on the grounds that it may end up being used to store copyrighted material. I wonder if this means that they're going to give up infringement claims against people who share files? After all, they're getting compensated.
If approved, the new tax would levy an additional fee of 59 cents (Canadian) on blank CDs. Memory cards, such as those used in handheld computers or digital cameras, would be taxed at 0.8 cents per megabyte of storage space. Manufacturers of blank DVD discs would pay an extra $2.27 per disk.
Hardware manufacturers would also be affected. Makers of MP3 players would pay $21 in fees for each gigabyte of memory available on their devices, raising the cost of devices like Apple's iPod by more than $100.
(Thanks, Zed!)
