France Considers 'Pirate Tax' For Online Ads

angry tapir writes "A report commissioned by the French Minister of Culture, Frédéric Mitterrand, urges the introduction of a tax on online advertising such as that carried by Google, which would be used to pay the creators of artistic and other works that lose out to online piracy."

Comments

The old Motto:

[rockclimber]

Tax whatever you cannot understand. The question is: would that legalize downloading / Sharing since the artists are supposed to get payed?

Re:The old Motto:

[nacturation]

Better idea: tax creators of artistic works and use it to pay online advertisers who lose money due to fraudulent clicks.

Oh, and the word is paid. </obgrammarnazi>

Re:The old Motto:

[Yvanhoe]

Of course not, as was demonstrated by our tax on blank CD/DVDs.
I think piracy is not the issue here. Sarkozy has tried to take control of most media in France. Now Internet he doesn't understand and he definitely doesn't like. Sounds like his mindset to attack the biggest visible gun in the "field" to try to gain some control : Google. But this bullet is a miss, like most French IT legislation this will be badly implemented and never used in court.

Re:The old Motto:

[Foobar of Borg]

What I don't understand is: What is the connection between online advertising and illegal downloading of media? Those are completely unrelated. Aren't they?

You see, they are both done on the Internet. The internet is this scary thing that people like Sarkozy don't understand and want to control.

So, no, they are not at all related. It only seems that way to the ignorant.

Re:The old Motto:

[Hognoxious]

This is exactly what I mean. You're thinking simply that because you are paying extra for subsidizing piracy, you somehow get the permission to pirate whatever. That is NOT the case.

I think one of you is talking legally and one is talking morally.

For me, if you've paid for something you're entitled to have it.

Re:The old Motto:

[TikiTDO]

If I pay for something, it is only logical that I have the right to do it. This has, is, and will be the basis of our economic system for quite a while yet. As such, since I have paid for this supposed piracy, I am owed a debt by those receiving this tax money. Note that this is quite different from paying normal taxes; in that case my money will go to improve society as a whole, which I consider to be my own repayment of the debt I owe for being a part of this society. By contrast, this money goes to a very small group of very well off people because they feel that they are losing out on something. In other words I am quite literally paying a fee because they said so.

You have stated that this is not the case, but as of yet have presented exactly zero valid arguments to support your point. Consider the fact that this piracy subsidy is based on a quite obviously flawed idea wherein every download equates to lost money. I will not even get into details about the intrinsic value of a pirate, such as the free advertising of good products potentially resulting in a sale that may not have happened otherwise. I have written a /. post on that before, if you are particularly interested. Regardless whether someone knows that piracy happens or not, this does not give them the right to charge me a fee that goes to provide no services for me, and no services to society as a whole. Once again, we return to the fact that I am owed a debt, and I will most surely collect.

Finally, your store example is incorrect. It is indeed the store that loses money. Pricing of products is a difficult game, and few consumers will accept an increase in price just because the store had a bad day with thieves. This is why you sometimes see stories of people losing their livelihood because they have been robbed. Granted, a store might potentially use a part of their profits to cover for stolen articles, but this is a whole different story from a government enforced tax on a product that only benefits one specific group of people that has nothing to do with the development, production, or sale of the product. So in other words, you are trying to compare a situation where a store might get 10% profit on an item, and use 2% to finance lost articles, and a situation where an unrelated third party gets 100% profit on an item, because they managed to lobby their way to such a subsidy.

Cause and Effect. Debt and Repayment. All things in the universe must be balanced. Asking people not to is like asking the sun not to shine. It is certainly entertaining to see you try, but sad at the same time.

Re:The old Motto:

[russotto]

Lots of pirates seem to think it's some kind of free pass for downloading whatever they like and it somehow makes it legal.

If you pay the penalty regardless, you may as well do the crime.

Re:The old Motto:

[brkello]

I agree with your point that if they are taxing you and that money goes to some company, that the company in turn actually owes you something.

But when you talk about the intrinsic value of a pirate, you come off as hypocritical. If a person takes from a company, then shouldn't he owe something as well? You can say he could create a sale, but you can't really prove that a pirate produces a sale or sales. It is the flip side of the same argument you are using.

Quite frankly, piracy is wrong. Taxing people for piracy is wrong as well.

Re:The old Motto:

[tragedy]

It's a bit more like if the government tried and convicted everyone for murder 20 years when they turned 18 just in case they someday murdered someone. They might then feel that they did, in fact, have a right to go out and kill someone. There's a concept in law called double jeopardy, where you're not supposed to be able to be tried twice for the same crime. It should be applicable to summary judgments without due process as well. I suppose you could make the argument that, since it's an illegal punishment in the first place, being an automatic summary judgment without trial or the possibility of defending yourself, that normal legal rules shouldn't apply. So let's just throw the law out the window! Punishment all around. Everyone's probably done something to deserve it!
There was actually a movie titled _Double Jeopardy_ about exactly that. A man frames his wife for murder and she goes to prison for murder. When she gets out, she discovers that he is still alive. The premise is that, since she's already been convicted of his murder, it would be double jeopardy to be tried for it if she were to actually do it. This premise is a little shaky in the real world since the justice system is far from just and tends to shrug off unjust punishment. It's probably because it was "god's will" or some other bit of religious "all's for the best in this, the best of all possible worlds" remnant that no amount of constitutional amendments and the like can scour from the system. In any case, the legal system usually has little problem with allowing prosecutors to charge a person with multiple crimes and multiple times for the same actions. There's little chance that the second murder of her husband, in another location, under different circumstances, and at another time would be considered the same crime for purposes of a double jeopardy defense. It's even pretty unlikely that she'd get time served or any time off her sentence.
However unlikely the movie is, the idea in it appeals to most people's natural sense of justice. This is why indiscriminate or incautious punishment is a bad idea. People end up resenting an authority that is obviously doing such a bad job of administering justice and end up feeling that they might as well commit offenses if they're going to be punished either way.
I don't know, maybe if the idea that the tax goes to compensate actual creators wasn't purely theoretical people wouldn't be so cynical about it. Maybe if the money were collected by the government and fairly distributed through some sort of grant program it wouldn't be so bad. As it stands, just giving the money to an oligopolistic cartel rubs people the wrong way.

I want a tax too

[EyyySvenne]

I want a tax on every refrigerator that is sold since i can't sell ice anymore...

Re:I want a tax too

[LordAndrewSama]

You know what to do. Form the IIAA(Ice Industry Association of America) and lobby politicians for FMIA(Fridge Millenium Icing Act) and start sending letters to everyone suspected of having fridges but not paying you, then use the money most of them pony up to avoid a court case to sue the ones that don't pony up, so that everyone sees that you mean business. don't forget ridiculous sums($50,000 for each ice cube you could fit in the defendants fridge). start displaying "FRIDGES ARE A CRIME AND WE WILL FIND YOU" signs all over shops that sell them, much like the movies.

You could also set up fake shops, giving away fridges, then when people accept the fridge, you take them to court.

Use the money you gain to open similar Associations in other countries and start the whole process again. Don't let those bastard fridgemaking communists cut into your revenue, fight back!

Then you can get your new puppets to start secret treaties with your puppets in other nations...

A car analogy.

[Anonymous Coward]

In related news, France has decided to tax car dealerships to help cover the losses insurance companies suffer as a result of car theft.

A report commissioned by the French Minister of Culture Frédéric Mitterrand urges the introduction of a tax on online advertising such as that carried by Google, which would be used to pay the creators of artistic and other works who lose out to online piracy ... The report was written by Patrick Zelnik, Guillaume Cerutti and Jacques Toubon. Zelnik is president of Impala, a network of independent record companies

Yeah, no conflict of interest there.

In their report, the authors also called on the French antitrust regulator, the Authorité de la Concurrence, to look at whether Google has a monopoly on search engine and search advertising services in France, and whether the problems faced by online publishers could in any way be related to Google's business methods.

IOW, the report explored various ways of screwing a foreign company for being too successful in a local market, having previously failed to create a successful competitor even though it had funding from the government to help it along.

Re:A car analogy.

[Anonymous Coward]

The report was written by Patrick Zelnik, Guillaume Cerutti and Jacques Toubon. Zelnik is president of Impala, a network of independent record companies

He's also the founder of Carla Bruni-Sarkozy's - the president's wife - record label. The others appear to be part of the "club" too, based on Google results...

IOW, the report explored various ways of screwing a foreign company for being too successful in a local market, having previously failed to create a successful competitor even though it had funding from the government to help it along.

What a bunch of losers - even with help from their corrupt buddies in Govt they can't make a successful business.

Re:great idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh but they do understand how to make money. They just bribe politicians to give it to them. It's a business model, too.

LMAO

[Rivalz]

"The report was written by Patrick Zelnik, Guillaume Cerutti and Jacques Toubon. Zelnik is president of Impala, a network of independent record companies." They didn't even bother to get a 3rd party to write this toilet paper of a report. Isn't this basically like making the average tax payer insure a business against the possible theft of an intangible object?

Re:Music/Movie Industries

[Andorin]

The RIAA and MPAA will be satisfied when:

-You can't sing in the shower without paying royalties
-Digital formats move to a pay-per-view or pay-per-listen model, where your TV or computer can count the number of heads in the room and charge you for each
-Your Internet connection is fully monitored by your ISP (doubling your subscriber rate, but it's to stop piracy!)
-Content restriction software becomes mandatory on every computer (this will outlaw Linux as nobody will take the time to produce a version of this software for Linux) (alternately we could just make Trusted Computing mandatory)
-All your devices will connect to an authorization server and check a whitelist of "approved" content each time you try to play a song or whatever, and will not play any file that is not explicitly authorized (has the added effect of forcing you to buy RIAA music instead of competing indie music)
-Fair use is abolished (has sort of happened in the US with the DMCA) and infringement is a criminal offense
-Copyright terms are perpetual... maybe with "minus a day" put in to technically adhere to the Constitution
-Portable storage devices such as flash drives must connect with an authorization server if you try to copy a file from them (goodbye sneakernet)
-Use of a VPN, use of encryption, and use of Tor or any similar network is illegal
-Having Freenet, a BitTorrent client, a client for any other p2p program, an IRC client, an email client or an IM client is illegal, since you can use any of them for piracy

Etc etc.

Re:still not enough

[Hurricane78]

Oh, and how did one guy say: And you can put everyone in prison who has a penis. Because he has the necessary tools to commit rape.

In fact just put the road construction office and companies into jail, because murder, rape and many other bad things happened on the streets.

Or just put everyone into jail, because he has a brain... which means he has the tool to think about a crime, which means he can commit it, which means he will commit it. No? ;)

Profit!!!!

[benwiggy]

1. Write a few cheesy pop tunes on my own label.

2. Complain to the French Govt. that no-one is buying them -- no doubt because of all the pirates.

3. Wait for cheque.

I look forward to this as a fantastic money-making opportunity.

Re:Robin's Hood is back

[Spad]

But what about the watchmakers? After all, I get loads of spam through my Google Mail account offering counterfeit designer watches for sale, so surely some of this tax should go to them. Then there are all the other designer goods; clothes, handbags, perfume - and pirated software, that needs to be accounted for as well. Not to mention the banks, they have suffered losses due to phishing sites that are often made available through paid Google adverts, so they need a cut as well...

You see where I'm going with this - piracy and the death of the creative arts may be a current hot topic, but (as much as I hate to use the phrase) it's a slippery slope if you allow the government to levy punative taxes on successful companies in order to "compensate" those who haven't found a way to stay profitable (or, in actuality, are extremely profitable, but not as profitable as they *want* to be, which is certainly the case with the big music and movie labels).

Re:Music/Movie Industries

[backwardMechanic]

Sometimes I think the Movie and (espeically) the Music industries won't be content until the government outright introduces a "media tax"

The funny thing is we already have something like this in the UK with the TV license, used to fund the BBC. The thing is, it actually works rather well. When the BBC remember who they are, and stop trying to compete with low-grade commercial TV, they make some very good stuff - everything from News and current affairs (including a very strong web presence) through drama and comedy. And without commercials. Just so long as we give the cash to a bunch of people interested in making good media, rather than the money-grabbing lowlife who are currently destroying music and cinema, it could work well.

Re:still not enough

[oliderid]

Being a Belgian, I confirm! :-) But I prefer to go to the UK nowadays...The sterling is still quite low. Well if the Eurostar works of course.

Piracy happens for a reason.

[Descartes123]

I get tired of the focus on music and video. Piracy takes place in all industries and is something everyone else just has to deal with.

Consider any company that has invested millions of dollars in building a brand or educating the consumer on their product (let alone the R&D) and along comes someone who decides to market a knock-off. The knock-off is pirating the marketing of the original company. The MP3 is a knock-off of the original media. Sometimes the knock-off designer purse or golf club is exactly the same material and quality as the original. It's the same issue.

I have spent millions marketing products before and have had to deal with 'copy' products. No one has offered to implement a tax and reimburse me for my losses.

I hate it when it happens. I could make considerably more money if it didn't happen. In reality though the fact that it happens is actually in the consumer's best interests. If I spend lavishly on marketing, that doesn't improve the quality of the product the end user buys, it merely means more people will pay more money for the same product. The piracy factor puts a cap on the marketing dollars I spend on a product and it puts a cap on the premium I can charge. If I spend lavishly on marketing or make my profit margin too high, the piracy gets worse. The piracy forces me to cap my marketing costs and profit margin and keeps in check the end price paid by the consumer. I'm forced to provide a product of 'value' where the margins between manufactured cost and sell price aren't too high to invite pirates and that pressure actually works in the consumers best interest.

Want to end music piracy? Drop the price of a download from $0.99 to $0.25 or $0.10 even. The increase in volume will make up for the reduced margins. 50 Million sales at $0.25 is still some good revenuce for a single track. Rampant piracy is symptomatic of consumer gouging. If these forces make all other industries respect consumer value, why should the music industry be any different?