It emerged this week that plans by the Japanese government to extend the copyright fee currently imposed on the sale of digital recording devices to iPods and other portable music players have been put on hold.

A subcommittee under the Copyright Subdivision of the Education Ministry's Council for Cultural Affairs was considering a proposal from the country's powerful music industry lobby to impose an additional royalty fee on the sale of portable digital music players to compensate for declining fee revenue from the sale of compact discs, which, the industry argues, is a direct result of the rise in music downloading.

The proceeds of the levy, which would likely have been charged at a rate between 2% and 5%, would have gone to record companies, songwriters and artists to compensate for the loss of income caused by home copying of music.

However, according to a report released by the subcommittee on Friday, agreement could not be reached on plans to to start collecting such fees next April. The subcommittee therefore recommended that the fee system be reviewed in its entirety in 2007.