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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.
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.)
There is no such tax at all at the moment. President Sarkozy told to the press that this kind of tax could exist in the future. This means the government has to propose a law which it hadn't, that the parliament vote for it (there are at least two turns between the two houses if every PM agrees which is highly unlikely, and otherwise many turns until an agreement is reached) and finally that the government fund the law which means the chance that such a law would be implemented in very low.
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?
One should hope. While some people laugh at France's [1] conviction that art should be sponsored by the government, to me it does look like a more ethical alternative to copyright. Provided, of course, that there is no such thing as "non-commercial infringement". I would much rather pay a flat art tax and not be censored on the Internet than endure any more copyright legislation.
[1] Russia's too. Some countries are just like that.
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!
Why would the french ISP's pay taxes on behalf of the music industry?
It does mean that Canadians are allowed to make personal copies of audio recordings if they want. So if you borrow a CD from the library, or from a friend, or just buy it, you are allowed to make a copy for yourself. If you bought the CD, you may then sell it. What you are not allowed to do, is make a copy for someone else. So to clarify. If you make a copy and give the copy to your friend, you are breaking the law. If your friend borrows your CD and makes a copy, that is ok.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
That depends on whether you prefer commercial crap or commercially independent art.
Translation:
"Commercial crap" - stuff people like enough to willingly pay for.
"Commercially independent art" - stuff no-one likes enough to willingly pay for.
The UK used to have a system where the government would fund movies, but only movies that weren't 'commercial'. The end result was that money was taken from people who didn't want to watch those movies to fund them and then people seemed surprised when they flopped because.... well, duh... no-one wanted to watch them.
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.
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.