Indeed, the Government remains "firmly opposed" to the tax, according to a Department of Trade and Industry spokesman, cited by the Financial Times.

Last week, the European parliament passed the European Union's proposed directive on copyright. The directive seeks to unify European countries' existing media tax regimes and apply the result across the continent.

After successful lobbying from the music and movies industries, the tax is intended to compensate musicians and music producers for unauthorised copying of their works using recordable media.

The DTI said it will comply with some aspects of the directive, primarily to tweak UK copyright law. However, applying a levy on blank tapes, MiniDiscs, CD-Rs and the like, and to the hardware that writes data to them, will be resisted the spokesman said.