Canada’s Supreme Court Thursday rejected attempts to levy a special tax on iPods and other digital music devices.
The court refused any further arguments on the matter. There will be no such levy applied in Canada.
A local royalty collection body, the Canadian Private Copying Collective (CPCC), had fought to reinstate the tax, which was quashed by Canadian Federal Courts last year following action by retailers and manufacturers including Apple.
A nonprofit agency CPCC had been collecting the tax on behalf of musicians. When implemented, the tax was designed to compensate artists for illegal downloads of their music.
The rates were: CDN$2 (US$1.62) for non-removable memory capacity up to 1GB, $15 for 1-10GGB, $25 for over 10GB.
CPCC had collected $4 million for artists.
That money must now be returned to the “importers and manufacturers of the products”, the organization said.