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France To Tax the Internet To Pay For Music
bs0d3 writes "A new tax in France is aimed at ISPs. The new government tax on ISPs is to help pay for the CNM (Centre National de la Musique). Already in France there is a tax on TV, to pay for public access channels. It's similar to the tax in the United kingdom which pays for the BBC. This ISP tax will be the musical equivalent to that. President Sarkozy comments, 'Globalization is now, and the giants of the internet earn lot of money on the French market. Good for them, but they do not pay a penny in tax to France.' This all began after the music industry accused French ISPs of making billions of dollars on their backs. Now the music industry must also get their hands in their pockets."
Sounds like a corporation's wet dream, tax the peasants for private profits. Then they can use this money to try and convince other governments to do the same.
God spoke to me
This means that people will not be prosecuted or punished for downloading their music at no cost, right?
Palm trees and 8
After all, you've paid for it via your ISP, right?
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
It is not a tax to see public channels it's a license fee to own and use a TV receiver.
This also exists in other European countries like Sweden.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
I have no problem with a very small tax for having an internet connection which pays for the arts. Someone has to pay for the arts, might as well be people who consume it via the internet. In my mind I'd rather have artists getting a small stipend from the government, when the alternative is sucking at the teat of the corporations.
-- Let us endeavor so to live that when we pass even the undertaker shall be sorry. -- M. Twain
...I don't get it.
"Giants of the Internet" don't pay taxes in France.
Ergo we tax ISPs (French companies, who already pay at least VAT, I'm sure) and give that money to the French RIAA!?
Johnny Halliday stands to make a tidy penny here.
Do you listen to music in other languages? No? Then get out from under your rock. There is more to music than the American Top 40 on Saturday mornings.
--
BMO
The BBC Licence fee is wholly separate from the UK tax system. It is used to fund the BBC only and does not enter into the governments coffers
Watch those corners
Is it truly the case that ISPs and such, with all their hardware, facilities, staff, and sales in France, somehow manage to avoid paying roughly the same taxes that other businesses operating there do? Or is our favorite undersized gallic weasel just lying...
Also, if the intertubes are being taxed to pay for the production of french culture or something, ISP subscribers can download it without legal worry, right?
Ever heard of a little group called Daft Punk? They're only platinum sellers, so I can see how you might have missed them.
(See also Phoenix, David Guetta, Alcest, etc.)
Does France have any popular musicians? Does anyone outside of France listen to them?
Yes and yes, obviously.
I listen to relatively unpopular music, and if it's not obvious I'm often unaware of the nationality of bands. But I have a few tracks by Daft Punk, one by Justice, an album by Vitalic, and I know they're all French. (That's relatively popular, as far as I'm concerned. Anyone heard of Die Form? They're French.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:French_musical_groups
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to a gig/afterparty. Bands seem to be American, British and German.
Levying taxes is like plucking a live goose for feathers: you want to get a maximum number of feathers, with the least amount of fuss. There is no point in taxing poor folks . . . they have no money. If you tax everyone directly, you end up with a lot of fussy geese on your streets, like in Greece.
Everyone knows that the Internet is awash in gazillions of money. So tax the ISPs. The geese don't see the tax directly, but the ISP passes the costs on to them indirectly.
Everyone likes to see a tax on other folks than themselves. They hear "Rich Internet Companies" are paying the tax, and feel that the ISPs are just paying their fair share.
Except for a few folks on Slashdot . . .
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
The real question is: will anyone but the most popular musicians see a penny of this?
While the example does provide support for the existence of French music, it is arguably the case that the more prominent and lucrative French artists one can name, the less well justified some sort of special taxation mechanism to nurture and protect the delicate artists is... The arguments for such things usually involve, at least in part, the idea that local culture must be subsidized in the face of hegemonic-and-profitable foreign trash.
Given that a large fraction of traffic on the Internet is music and movie torrents, shouldn't the government be taxing the media companies to subsidise the ISPs?
America isn't considered "third world," so that top 40 stuff is just garbage.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Touché :)
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
The problem with all these hidden taxes is the government infrastructure it takes to run it. A few simple straight forward taxes that everyone pays their fair share is really all we need.
You could argue some small taxes are necessary to cover specific purposes that are not used by the general population; for example aircraft fuel tax pays for airport upkeep and the FAA. Too bad here in the US they want to turn that simple tax into lots of little taxes, creating a whole new tax bureaucracy in the process.
Why would the french ISP's pay taxes on behalf of the music industry?
the governments? You can use the TOS and say you were interferring with operation of the network and business, so we cut you off.
Or all ISP's shut down the networks for a day. See the chaos the world fall into.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
They are dumb!
After all, you've paid for it via your ISP, right?
Since Canadians pay a levy on all CDs and DVDs to compensate for the piracy of music and videos, does this mean the average citizen cannot be fined $200/song since we are already being taxed on piracy? The wiki articles is unclear on this. Thanks!
It has a snowball's chance in hell of happening this way, but in principle this could be implemented well.
You'd put a small tax on telecommunications and use it to support artists and musicians. That way you wouldn't need the copyright garbage, music and art would be financed through taxes, and it could be freely distributed across the entire world.
Of course, in reality corruption will see it end up lining the pockets of a handful of people, the oppressive copyright laws would remain, and the government will use the funding as a means to bully "content providers" into doing their bidding.
Is CNM a private-ish collections agency for the music industry that'll rip off artists?
OR
Is CNM a public organization that sponsors artists creating new music? Ala BBC, PBS, etc.
Big fucking difference!
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
The vast majority of music isn't produced in France or in French. Even music consumed in France. The French government have a history of trying to distort this in honor of gallic pride. In 1993, the French passed a law requiring French radio stations to play at least 40% French language music even though listeners didn't want it.
Information on this latest levy is pretty sketchy but it appears to be a tax to fund Centre National de la Musique whose goal appears to be to fund French music production.
So the French are collecting a tax based on the assumption of music piracy - where the majority of piracy is of British or American music - and then, by the looks of things, giving it entirely to the French music industry, not to the artists and labels whose music is actually pirated by French listeners and internet users anyway. Tres Francais.
I would call the marriage of Sarkozy and Bruni a very successful lobbying operation.
They'll tell you "but we already paid the tax!"
Tax the internet, raise costs on everyone, and put that money straight into the music industry lobbyist groups.
I'll bet you a million bucks (or however much it costs to defend yourself in a DMCA lawsuit) that they will take this free government money and use it redouble efforts in their litigation campaign, and to further lobby the government to change the laws to their favor.