Culture Minister Catherine Tasca of France has said the country is considering to collect taxes on the sale of digital electronic goods that can record music as a way of compensating the artists.

"A tax on set-top boxes, advanced video recorders and computers, in other words, any device that allows such works to be recorded...should be looked into. Nothing is yet decided," Tasca stated in an interview.

"The emergence of new technologies has led to a real problem in terms of authors' rights. They have create the myth of free access on both ends of the production chain," she said.

The government hasn't yet come up with how much the proposed tax will be or when it will be put into action, but it could levy as much as 1 billion French francs ($144 million) a year from the measure.

Tasca also announced that at the beginning of the month there will be a new levy placed on digital recording devices (blank CDs and DVDs, MP3 players) which will go into action on January 22. The recording levy is based a sliding scale depending on the time or memory capacity of the device.