Canada slaps levy on iPods, other music players

The Copyright Board of Canada said on Friday that it will place a levy of CDN$2 on digital music players with a capacity of up to 1GB, $15 for players with a capacity of 1GB to 10GB, and $25 for those over 10GB. As expected, Apple’s iPod will be affected by this decision. However, it could have been worse. “Under the music industry’s original proposal, an MP3 player with a 20GB hard drive would have been subject to a levy that would have boosted the price by about $125,” reports The Globe and Mail. “Manufacturers filed objections to the Copyright Board over that plan, arguing that the levies would price their products out of the market.”