Repositories for Stolen Music

Steven Levy has a post that clearly summarizes the points I've been thinking about regarding the Zune's tax to Universal Music Group (you pay a $1 tax to Universal when you purchase a Zune) and the comments made by Universal CEO Doug Morris:

"These devices are just repositories for stolen music, and they all know it. So it's time to get paid for it."

One of Levy's points is that the iPod phenomenon has increased interest in music and led to music sales outside of the iTunes channel: lots of people still prefer to buy CDs and transfer the songs to their iPods, and for many such people the iPod has renewed their interest in buying CDs. I'm one of those people. CDs have essentially become an automatic backup copy of the music I buy, and the ability to easily access every single recording I own, whether I'm at work, in the car, or on the go, leads me to buy more CDs than I did a few years ago.

Levy also points out that at $1 per device, such a tax on iPods would pale in comparison to the record companies' revenue from sales through the iTunes Music Store. And why stop at MP3 players? All of that music is downloaded to PCs and Macs as the repository before being transferred to the player, using features of Windows and Mac OS X. Should Apple, Dell, Microsoft, Sony, HP, Lenovo, et al, pay fees to music companies for the right to build computers and operating systems? The idea is ridiculous, yet that's what Zune is doing with Universal.

(I wonder how much of the $1 goes to music artists and composers. I suspect that this tax is outside the artist royalty system and goes only to UMG the corporation.)