The fight over a levy on iPods and other digital music devices ended Thursday when the Supreme Court of Canada refused to hear any further arguments on the matter.
That means there will be no levy applied to digital audio recorders such as Apple's popular iPod and iPod Shuffle as well as other MP3 players like iRiver.
"Obviously we're disappointed. We felt it was self-evident that those products are sold for the purpose of copying music," said David Basskin, of the Canadian Private Copying Collective, the non-profit agency that collects tariffs on behalf of musicians and record companies.
The group had wanted the high court to overturn last year's Federal Court of Appeal decision, which quashed the levy on the popular gadgets.
The non-profit agency had been collecting the tariff - $2 for non-removable memory capacity of up to one gigabyte, $15 for one to 10 GBs, $25 for more than 10 GB - since December, 2003, through a levy built into the price of the devices.
It stopped in December, 2004, when the Federal Court overturned the policy at the urging of retailers and manufacturers such as Future Shop, Apple Canada and Dell Computer Corp. of Canada.
The CPCC argued that since the new technology opened yet another avenue to make illegal copies of songs, a levy should be collected on behalf of music creators.
The group said Thursday that approximately $4-million was collected between 2003 and 2004.
The money is sitting in an account and will be returned to the importers and manufacturers of the products, Mr. Basskin said.
The CPCC also said it would consider alternative options for reinstating a levy on the memory permanently embedded in digital audio recorders.
The CPCC is an non-profit agency which collects and distributes tariffs on behalf of performers, songwriters, music producers and record companies. It also collects a levy on blank audio such as CDs and mini-discs.