A Canadian appeals court has temporarily blocked last year’s ruling that overturned that country’s “iPod tax,” a fee collected on the sales of MP3 players that was distributed to copyright holders.
Last December, a court ruled that the fee, which is applied to all blank recording media in Canada, should not be applied to digital media players like the iPod. On Thursday, copyright regulators said the appeals court had stayed that ruling pending the Supreme Court’s decision of whether to hear the case. The stay means that copyright regulators will not immediately have to return about $4.1 million collected though the program since late 2003.