Japan's music industry is calling for a tax on MP3 players.
The industry has asked the Japanese government to charge a royalty, to be added to the retail price of portable digital music players. Money earned from the 2 to 5 percent fee, would go to recording companies, songwriters and artists as compensation for lost revenue from home copying.
The Japanese recording industry says that the sudden rise of the portable digital players is robbing it of revenue that used to come from the fees on digital recorders. "Now everyone who used to be using CDs and MDs is using iPods," said Koichi Numamura, head of the recording rights department at the Japanese Society for Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers. "We can't just sit by silently while we lose money."
Japan's music industry is calling for a tax on MP3 players. 
