According to this article, the Japanese government is to propose a tax on sales of iPods and other portable digital music players and digital hard disk recorders. The tax is a ‘copyright fee’ which will be distributed to record companies, songwriters and artists.
The best analogy I can think of for this quite loopy idea is charging a copyright fee to consumers who buy bookcases to house their books.
Why would any government want to penalise consumers for purchasing electronic devices that aid the distribution of content? The key to all creative industries is distribution. It’s the thing that lubricates the creative business model, especially for digital media. Writers, songwriters, and artists would be more, not less, restricted from making money from their copyright in systems where consumers are economically punished for owning the tools to access their products.
Kate Eltham is a writer and creative industries professional based in Brisbane, Australia. She is Chief Executive Officer of 
kate.eltham {at} gmail.com
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This might be my faulty memory of a long-ago copyright class, but didn’t Australia do something similar with cassette tapes a while back?
It’s basically a private copying levy and, yep, Australia legislated for it in 1989 but the law was ruled unconstituional in a High Court case: Australian Tape Manufacturers Association Ltd v Commonwealth (1993) 176 CLR 480
Personally, I’m not a fan of legal restrictions against private copying by individuals when there is no economic disadvantage for the copyright holder. For one thing, it punishes consumers for content they obtained legally and for another, it creates a disincentive to use media that might ultimately expand markets for individual creators.