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Dutch Gov. Wants To Tax Online Media To Fund Print

Posted by kdawson on from the reverse-robin-hood dept.

Godefricus writes "Outrage ensued among Dutch techie and media websites, after a government report advised that the dwindling print media industry should be financially supported by the online industry (Google translation; Dutch original here). The idea is to help the old media fund 'innovative initiatives.' The suggested implementation of the plan is by taxing a percentage of each ISP subscription, and give the money to the papers. The report, which was solicited by the Dutch parliament and written by a committee of its members, specifically states that 'news and the gathering of news stories is not free, and the public must be made aware of that.' The report is not conclusive, but from here it's just one step toward a legislative proposal. Both industries are largely privately owned in The Netherlands, and the current government is center-left wing. Who needs an RIAA if you can build one into your government? And hey, why invest in the future if you can invest in the past?"

24 of 187 comments (clear)

  1. Slashdot is, as usual, behind the times by SigILL · · Score: 4, Informative

    The responsible minister already said "no" (Dutch language article and I'm too lazy to translate; learn Dutch you slackers :)).

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    Error: password can't contain reverse spelling of ancient Chinese emperor
    1. Re:Slashdot is, as usual, behind the times by El_Muerte_TDS · · Score: 4, Funny

      Could be worse.
      The news papers will only report about this tomorrow.

    2. Re:Slashdot is, as usual, behind the times by SigILL · · Score: 4, Funny

      Nederlands is lelijk hoor. [Dutch is ugly]

      Come one, you gotta like a language in which "angstschreeuw" and "slechtstschrijvend" are perfectly valid words. It's like Perl (only less regular)! :)

      --
      Error: password can't contain reverse spelling of ancient Chinese emperor
    3. Re:Slashdot is, as usual, behind the times by Traa · · Score: 3, Informative

      Come one, you gotta like a language in which "angstschreeuw" and "slechtstschrijvend" are perfectly valid words. It's like Perl (only less regular)! :)

      angstscreeuw = fear scream (one word in Dutch) = 8 consonants in a row
      slechtstscrijvend = worst written (one word in Dutch) = 9 consonants in a row

      some more fun examples from the Dutch language:
      koeieuier = Cow's udder = 7 vowels in a row
      Jazzzinger = Jazz Singer = 3 z's in a row

    4. Re:Slashdot is, as usual, behind the times by xonen · · Score: 3, Informative

      "koeieuier"

      According to new (1996) spelling this is supposed to be 'koeienuier'.

      --
      A glitch a day keeps the bugs away.
    5. Re:Slashdot is, as usual, behind the times by mcvos · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The news papers will only report about this tomorrow.

      Funny? Insighful! Every time I read a newspaper, I'm surprised I'm reading yesterday's news. I love reading from paper, but as a medium for reporting the latest news, it's obsolete. They should focus more on background and analysis for the factoids you've already read online. (Which is exactly the business model of my current newspaper, which is one of the few Dutch newspapers that's growing.)

  2. Lobbyists by MathFox · · Score: 4, Informative

    Actually it is a report from the newspaper lobby and the responsible minister has already spoken out against the proposal.

    --
    extern warranty;
    main()
    {
    (void)warranty;
    }
    1. Re:Lobbyists by Godefricus · · Score: 3, Informative

      No it is not. It is a report from a formal and powerful committee from within the parliament (Commissie Brinkman.) The minister did make an informal comment - thankfully - against this proposal shortly after receiving the report, but we have yet to await his final decisions -- and that of his civil servants et al. This could well be a matter of months.

  3. Why link it to online? by Fuseboy · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Taxing ISPs specifically, seems ass-backwards. If you're going to subsidize an outdated industry (which, hey, is done all over the place) why not fund it out of tax revenue generally, rather than putting a brake specifically on the internet? How about a new tax on cigarettes? :-)

    1. Re:Why link it to online? by Znork · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Taxing ISPs specifically, seems ass-backwards.

      Well, they want to blame someone, and the ISP's are probably as much 'internet' as you get.

      why not fund it out of tax revenue generally

      Because then it becomes part of the general budget and people start asking why we're spending that much on subsidies. Common strategy in the IP industries; if politicians actually had to justify the costs they'd be downsized in a heartbeat. Of course, calling it 'media production fee' and slapping it on the broadband, or calling it 'copyright' and letting private interests decide the rate doesn't really change the essence or the cost to the economy.

      Still, when it comes to the news business, few seem to be willing to face the actual problem; news is vastly overproduced. There is simply so much material to read every day that nobody can read anywhere near even a fraction of very narrow fields of interest. The fact that it costs money to produce news simply isn't the problem; todays more concentrated world has made the readers time the scarce product, a problem that no subsidies will solve.

    2. Re:Why link it to online? by johannesg · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Taxing ISPs specifically, seems ass-backwards. If you're going to subsidize an outdated industry (which, hey, is done all over the place) why not fund it out of tax revenue generally, rather than putting a brake specifically on the internet? How about a new tax on cigarettes? :-)

      I have two more questions:

      1. Every day, 3 or 4 completely free newspapers are being spread in every trainstation (and many other places) here in the Netherlands. If "news cannot be free", as the commission claims, does this mean we need to raise an extra public transportation tax to compensate for this free news as well?

      2. If the newspapers are being hurt so badly by free news available on the internet, why do they put their own content on the internet? And given that this pain is apparently self-inflicted, why would everybody need to pay for it?

      The claim that "news cannot be free" is bogus: news on the internet is paid for by advertising. It is hard to believe that a website such as nu.nl would exist for so long without any revenue. The existence of free newspapers furthermore proves that paid subscriptions are not a necessity for running a newspaper.

      Also, the claim that quality journalism is a necessity for democracy is laughable. Well, actually it isn't - it's just that I see too many cut'n'paste jobs of ANP news in too many newspapers every day. This quality investigative journalism of which they speak seems to be a mythological ideal, rather than reality.

  4. Dutch Govt to tax cars to feed horses too? by erroneus · · Score: 3, Interesting

    What other newer technologies support older ones I have to wonder? I won't say that print media is "out" because I think it is still a very important thing to maintain. After all, once a newspaper commits to print, it can't effectively be changed. It was said and published, for better or for worse, whatever it was it will always be. With digital, there is a risk that few people take into account -- archives and editing. Anything stored digitally can be altered, often without a trace. History of events can be changed to suit whatever interests are pushing their agenda. The best you can do with print is burn it and hope that no one questions why it's missing.

    But to tax one medium to support another? There is something wrong with that.

  5. Explosion in the irony factory... by mooingyak · · Score: 5, Funny

    The report, which was solicited by the Dutch parliament and written by a committee of its members, specifically states that 'news and the gathering of news stories is not free, and the public must be made aware of that.'

    It's a shame those newspapers don't have any means of getting this kind of information out to the public.

    --
    William of Ockham had no beard. The most likely explanation is that it was chewed off by squirrels every morning.
    1. Re:Explosion in the irony factory... by clarkkent09 · · Score: 4, Funny

      It's a shame those newspapers don't have any means of getting this kind of information out to the public.

      Well that's kind of the point, nobody's reading them.

      --
      Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
  6. Bad idea. by SatanicPuppy · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Beginning Disclaimer: I work for a print newspaper.

    This sounds like about the worst idea I've ever heard. We've been living on the gravy train for decades, and as a consequence, we piss away money like it's water. Now things have gotten tight, and we're cutting and cutting deep, and a lot of outlets may go under, but so be it.

    This whole "the print media industry needs government help!" crap is making me nuts. First off, there are very few independent papers left, so you're really talking about bailing out another industry with overpaid CEOs who can't make a decent business decision to save their lives. The same people who really really thought the solution to their industrys internet problem was to give away their product for free. Right. Second, the news media has only one real legitmate function: to inform you about the actions the government is taking in your name. Having the government bail them out is a little bit problematic for that reason.

    The industry is changing. It's evolving. It will become something else. Trying to persist the current model is bound to fail, and propping them up with public cash does nothing but compromise their mission and prevent them from figuring out how to accurately make their transition. Jesus, just look at GM if you want to know what public money does to a private company.

    --
    ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
    1. Re:Bad idea. by SatanicPuppy · · Score: 3, Insightful

      In half the 2 paper towns these days, both papers are owned by the same goddamn company!

      I think multiple competing news sources are a good thing, but I also think, in this country, that the ability to sort and judge good information from bad information is a skill that we are intentionally not teaching our children. On top of that, we are rewarding news sources (Faux News, I'm looking at you) for providing biased and substandard coverage.

      That being the case, I'd really prefer to see one decent source rather than a half dozen crap sources.

      --
      ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
    2. Re:Bad idea. by chebucto · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Newspapers living on the gravy train? Pissing away money? That's news to me; I know some journalists and they get paid at the low end of the professional wage spectrum.

      Few independent newspapers left? Overpaid CEOs? This is probably accurate, but it doesn't follow that a newspaper bailout is just about the industry; the individual papers remain, and still serve a purpose, whether or not they're part of a empire at the moment.

      Oh, and the CEOs didn't come up with the idea that free content was the solution; they were forced into that. Most newspapers started out charging for their content, and many still do - if not for their current stuff, at least for their archives. The NYT's decision to make all current content free was itself news only a year or two ago.

      The only legitimate purpose of a paper is to keep watch on the government? That's absurd.

      The industry may be changing, evolving, or even growing a sixth finger, but it doesn't follow that the ads-classifides-susbcriber-box business model will fail. I don't know anyone who _prefers_ to read from an LCD over dead-tree. More than that, news simply does not have to be up-to-the-minute; 99% of the stuff in a paper is fine when its 12 hours old, and some things - like columns - are better after bit of reflection.

      --
      The English word fart is one of the oldest words in the English vocabulary.
    3. Re:Bad idea. by SatanicPuppy · · Score: 3, Interesting

      When we started looking for cost cutting measures, we discovered we'd been paying 250,000 a year for phones at a distribution center we'd closed 5 years prior. Nobody'd noticed, because that was pocket change. That's a whole buncha reporters they could have been paying, and that sort of waste was endemic just a few decades ago.

      And forced? I don't think so. They ignored the internet, and tried to charge regular subscription prices for online content, and took it in the ass. Then they went too far the other way. They're still lunging around without a real direction, outsourcing ads cutting their own throats by putting up projects that take months to produce, online before the print product is even on the stands.

      They try to sell these "online editions" which are basically pdf versions of the paper, and much less useful than the website itself. What a joke.

      Classifieds? Classifieds are gone. The revenue is down to 10% of what it used to be, and it's never coming back. Free online classifieds are superior to 15 columns of unsearchable text so small you need a fricking magnifying glass.

      No one gives a damn if the crappy newspaper comics page is going to go out of business. No one cares if the extremely scanty gig guide or the cooking/gardening crap that's all available online is gone. Editorial content, somewhat, but that's on the fringe of the regular news content.

      Frankly, you sound like you're about 60, and more power to you, you're our core demographic. But trust me when I tell you, that we can't survive if we can't get some subscribers under 30, and they're rare as rare.

      --
      ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
    4. Re:Bad idea. by Nefarious+Wheel · · Score: 3, Informative

      On the other hand I would REALLY like for someone to figure out a way for journalism to be a viable career...

      Ok, blowing all my mods to address this one.

      In the company I work for, we use trained journalists, and we use them for one purpose - and it's not writing internal newsletters. We use them because they know how to write. We have a constant need for people to write about stuff we sell and do in order to inform our potential customers. That text needs to be engaging, with correct syntax, punctuation and spelling. Do you know how rare it is in even a large technology company to find people who know how to construct a paragraph correctly, to say nothing of making it readable?

      Mind you, they need to know a little about technology. Not a huge amount, but enough to ask sensible questions in an interview.

      You might end up being called a "market analyst" rather than a "reporter", but work is definitely there, and it's the same sort of investigative reporting you were trained for. But the pay is probably better and interviews are easier to come by. It may not be the discovery of Watergate, but there's hope for you that isn't spelled Wendy's.

      --
      Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
  7. Newspapers. Blogs. Forgetting something? by nausea_malvarma · · Score: 4, Funny

    Yet again, the Dutch government entirely ignores the welfare of town criers. This is an insult to town criers everywhere! I demand that the dutch government fund the struggling town crier industry by taxing newspaper sales.

    The news ain't free, you know.

  8. This is bullshit by eln · · Score: 4, Funny
    This is bullshit!

    Or, for our Dutch friends, a Google translation:

    Dit is onzin!

    And then back to English:

    This is nonsense!

    And, just for fun, to Filipino:

    ito ay kalokohan!

    And back to English:

    This is poppycock!

    I think I've made my point.

  9. Re:Stupid by SatanicPuppy · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Bad analogy, because the death of reel to reel wasn't the death of (for example) symphonic music. It was just a transition from one format to another.

    The problem with the possible death of the print media industry, is that they're the only ones who do real, in-depth, reliable, reporting these days...They're the only ones who can afford to, because it's fricking expensive to do it right. So far, it's too expensive to support with online ad revenue as well, hence the problem.

    TV doesn't give a damn: they can fill the same amount of time by giving air time for some fringe moron to sit and spout his own uninformed opinions. And they hardly ever own up to errors of fact in their broadcasts. Can't rely on them for anything but pretty pictures.

    Bloggers don't have any real money, and they are completely compromised by a 100% dependence on ad revenue. Newspapers have always cared about ad revenue, but subscriber revenue and numbers were important enough to allow larger papers to effectively ignore the complaints of their advertisers...What were they going to do? Print pamphlets?

    Some people think the loss of that in depth reporting is a bad thing. It's going to be worst in local markets: when was the last time you saw your local TV station cover a city council meeting? If someone is zoning the land across the street from your house for heavy industry, you'd probably like to know, but chances are you won't find out about it without newspaper coverage.

    --
    ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
  10. Uh, no. by dwiget001 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Screw that.

    If print media cannot survive on it's own, with it's own resources, etc. then too fricken bad.

    It would be like, in the days of the first automobiles, taxing them to keep horse buggy manufacturers going. Actually, it's even worse than that.

  11. How about a tax on the word "fuck" . . . ? by PolygamousRanchKid+ · · Score: 4, Funny

    I Water is taxed about 6 times if you count 'em all (at least the rate is 6% after drinking water, what a fucking great silver lining that is).

    Well, fuck me over flying fucking backwards. The fucking Netherlands has fucking taxes on fucking water? I fucking thought that if the fucking country didn't have all those fucking brilliant fucking dikes, then the whole fucking country would be under fucking water, and they would be fucking totally fucking fucked over, with no fucking clue what to do with all the fucking water.

    Except fucking tax it.

    But what the fuck do I know?

    And fuck, that fucking story about that fucking Dutch boy, who saved the fucking country, by sticking his fucking finger in the fucking dike to stop the fucking leak?

    Well, the little fucking bastard was just fucking trying to finger fuck the fucking dike.

    Please mention me in your prayers, before you go to sleep tonight . . . I don't want to go to work tomorrow, and start talking like my rant, above.

    --
    Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!