Turtlerock Forum

I just received my October statement from iTunes and one of my clients had some sales from Australia. Interesting to note that after Apple took their bite, 5% of the net was held back to pay Australian Copyright Tariff. Japan has a similar tax but I din't know Australia did too.

Anyone know anything about this?

the question interests me so I set about trying to find an answer...without any direct luck.

I've never heard of a tariff being placed on the sale of music, in the traditional sense of a government levy. I'm not aware of any government imposed charge in relation to the sale of music by Australiana rtists/copyright holders. Some googling didn't advance my knowledge much either, but the term "Copyright Tariff" drew a complete blank in google Australia, which suggests it isn't a term used in practice (except, it seems, by itunes). I asked one of the other solicitors here, who does a lot of intellectual property work, but he looked at me like I was making stuff up (again).

My first reaction was it was another term for the payment of royalties collected by APRA, but this could be wrong.

I checked out the itunes website, but typical of such sites it was long on marketing spin and short on useful hard facts.

Sorry I can't be of much more help than that. I'd be curious to know where this money was ending up!

It's only 3.5 cents us but still....where is it going, and why would APRA collect a royalty when I am collecting full net payment anyway?

That's why I thought it couldn't be APRA...maybe it is a tariff imposed by the US? They seem to like taxing the import of anything going into their country...