Slashdot Mirror
Bid to Tax Satellites Rejected
Kierthos writes: "This article updates an earlier Slashdot story about the Los Angeles County Assessor's office trying to tax satellites in orbit around the Earth. Short version: no go, the satellites don't get taxed."
These are the levies of the tax office Los Angelas, it's five year mission to seek out and tax new revenue sources, to boldly tax where no-one has taxed before!
I thought the courts would allow tax on space, considering Microsoft isn't a monopoly.
Hell - not only would the laws of physics fuck up in a black hole, the laws of tax would two.
Of course, by those rules the U.S. would own part of the Sun every day...
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
Maybe they will try to tax Australian residents for using the area beneath LA County, or even the satellites who use the space beneath them for that matter.
Hehe I'd like to see LA PROVE that a satellite passed over head. They can't even catch half the people who run through the EZ Pass lanes in NJ!
OddManIn: A Game of guns and game theory.
I was worried I'd have to start paying taxes on all my sats, you know how it is, first you buy a car, then a house, then a multi-million dollar satellite, and the government wants to stick it's grubby hands in your pockets every chance they get. Isn't it bad enough already that I'm paying social security and I could get 10 times the return by putting that money in a 2% savings account instead?
Seriously, I think the federal government should be able to tax these sats because NASA and others are very important in the regulation of space and the coordination of all the objects out there (so these satellites don't go crashing into the international space center.) It should be just enough to pay for the work the federal govt. does, but it's ridiculous for some county to say "hey, we want some money, gimmie some money" just because they can. They have nothing to do with space travel so they should keep their grubby hands out of it.
~ now you know
"no go, the satellites don't get taxed"
...but they do get their own DVD zone. Can't have astronauts "pirating" DVDs (would that make them Space Pirates?).
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
So, if the satellite catches fire, will they send Johnny Gage, Roy DeSoto, and LACoFD Engine 51 after it? Are they going to send Sheriff Baca after some bastard who steals the satellite? What gives?
Taken from a msgeek article:
:P NASA is technically in violation of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act!
"Call the MPAA thought police!
According to this site, NASA paid a region-hacking company in the UK for two hacked Sony FX-1 DVD players. This is technically illegal under the terms of the DMCA, as it thwarts a content-restriction scheme.
It could be argued that the ISS is an international zone beyond the reach of US law and therefore DMCA doesn't apply. But NASA is a United States government agency and is bound by the DMCA.
I look forward to what may happen if the MPAA decides to play hardball with NASA. This sounds like a terrific case to test the (un)constitutionality of the DMCA...bwahahaha!!! "
-- We don't understand software, and sometimes we don't understand hardware, but we can *see* the blinking lights