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UK Government Announces Broadband Tax
Barence writes "The UK Government is planning a 50p-per-month levy on fixed-line connections to pay for next-generation broadband. The Government claims that market forces alone will bring fiber connections to only two thirds of the country, so it plans to use the 'broadband tax' to pay for the final third by 2017. The plans form part of the Government's Digital Britain report, which also see the UK guarantee connections of 2Mbits/sec for every citizen by 2012." The report also threatens legal action and bandwidth restriction for repeat file sharers.
BT still owns the all the backbone connectivity and makes obscene profits on it. Taxing users in order to make more connections to that backbone monopoly is totally wrong.
1000s Warcraft Gold while you sleep
Problem is BT estimates that it will cost upwards of £5Bn to do FttC.At 50p a month even if every household paid this. It would still take 37.9 years to raise that amount. Its totally pointless, further more the problem in the UK is that all the politicans and BPI seem to have gotten it in their heads that all file-sharing is illegal regardless of whether it is family videos or the latest cinema release.
Other major points in the report (from this BBC article):
'If Christ had tweeted the sermon on the mount, it might have lasted until nightfall.' - John Perry Barlow
Post that here, got modded +1 Insightful. Post that in South Korea, get modded +1 Funny.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.