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UN To Debate Taxing Internet Data
Wowsers writes "In an effort to get ever more taxes for doing absolutely nothing, the United Nations will consider a European proposal to tax the internet based on data that gets sent. The proposal is designed to get money from large bandwidth users like Google, Facebook, Apple, and Netflix. Smaller companies that have high bandwidth requirements could be forced off the internet due to the taxes. 'The sender-pays framework would likely prompt U.S.-based Internet services to reject connections from users in developing countries, who would become unaffordably expensive to communicate with, predicts Robert Pepper, Cisco's vice president for global technology policy.'"
Could politicians be more daft?
One would hope that all US political parties can come together against this idea....
Ever feel like you are driving the getaway car?
Taxes on services will just shut out the small guys. The internet isn't just for commerce (or just porn), it's for a ton of other things. The principle of Net Neutrality ensures equal bandwidth for all. This tax would just require profitability, when many sites barely run even.
"In an effort to get ever more taxes for doing absolutely nothing"
That is the most insightful summary...ever
no comment
The reason Google, Netflix, and the like don't already pay enormous amounts of taxes is because old tax laws have been riddled with loopholes. Legislators try to fix this by adding new taxes, because it's easier to make new laws than revise old ones.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
I pay for my connection. Facebook, et al pay for their connection. Shouldn't be anything besides this.
The UN don't get their money from (directly) taxing companies or people. The member states pay.
Fund your failed economy some other way.
Austerity and bailouts only prolong the suffering.
LOL! If only they could put aside all their differences!
the majority of the real economy is small and medium business.
taxes, regulations, and bureaucratic nonsense destroy small and medium business, while giving government and large corporations total advantage, in fact they are working together. in this way, the big dogs get to buy up, or remove all the small fish.
and what do democrats and republicans do? they keep doing the same thing.
regulate and tax the real economy to death.
while ensuring their own survival and their corporate owners.
and if you think voting Democrat is going to address this, you're a fucking moron.
if you think MORE regulation, and more taxes, is going to fix this, you're a fucking moron.
Would a knock-on effect be to cause great harm to web proxies used by people to circumvent state and corporate censorship, as well a download pirated stuff?
. . . and anchor it in Boston Harbor. Your Internet taxes can be loaded the next morning, after your tea has been delivered.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
I often find internet data taxing
While unlikely (hopefully) to pass, this sort if thing is exactly the reason the United States has been so reluctant to give up its nominal control of the Internet's architecture, nevermind why so many technologists are tacitly OK with the US's continued dominance.
The nations of the world, given equal weight, err toward censorship, and many regimes with UN votes have deeply vested interests in clamping down on the extraordinary free-for-all of information exchange that the current Internet provides. I for one want the United Nations to have no role at this level, and both hope and expect the US to refuse ratification should it actually come to pass.
GeekNights!
Late Night Radio for Geeks!
Let's assign everyone a unique ID number required for all internet activity. Let's also monitor everyone's entire browsing history, every social engineering website, every email & tweet & blog posting. Then finally, let's tax everyone for the bandwidth they consume, above and beyond ISP charges & state & local taxes. Don't worry that the people that your on-line freedoms are being destroyed by, and have contrived to destroy economies by way of carbon credit taxes, want another revenue stream based upon the bandwidth you consume.
Let's kill the internet. It's being used way too much by alternative media that speaks truth to power, and is used to organize resistance to the globalists' authoritarian agendas. And while we are busy killing the internet, let's bleed away the users' limited funds to the international banksters.
Still think that Cloud-based applications & Cloud-based data storage is such a great idea? Suckers!
Unfortunately, this *IS* what the UN are good at.
Beauty is in the eye of the beerholder.
Does anyone have a non US-biased source about this UN proposal? I couldn't find anything on a European Google News.
The sensationalistic headline of TFA, without any actual numbers regarding this potential tax leaves me puzzled.
Don't get me wrong, I am all for net neutrality, but jumping from an article with two "work in progress" leaked documents to companies running out of business is a big leap!
I actually read the linked article and also skimmed through the leaked documents. I really can't find the things that the article is claiming are in there. From what I can make out, the leaked documents talk about taxes when billing telecommunication across borders (e.g., to prevent taxing services twice), like mobile phone roaming. How the article claims that this is about taxing large companies like Google and stuff is really beyond me. Can anybody point me to the part where it says that?
The whole article just seems inflammatory and some kind of anti-UN, anti-European reflex. I suppose mission accomplished, the knee-jerk reactions are already pouring in...
I'm just amazed they found a situation where the conservative canard "If you want less of something, tax it" is actually accurate and relevant. The internet should be subsidized, not taxed. You'll get it all back from an improved economy.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
If the tax were at a very low rate (say a 1/10 penny per megabyte) it wouldn't affect most users much. Suppose though that you taxed email at 1 cent per addressee? That wouldn't affect normal users much but would cost junk emailers enough that many untargeted junk emails would be stopped. But administering a monitoring and collection system for internet usage taxes would be expensive. I don't think I wanted the government in the middle of every transaction.
you live 30 km from brussels but you have to read that shit here first, this looks like its evil beyond soapy anc acta, especially the part where , like, EVERYTHING gets throttled
Free speech was meant to be free for all... how can anyone grow up in a nanny state ?
The US is no longer the bastion of freedom it was.
This isn't the first time that a U.N. agency will consider the idea of Internet taxes. In 1999, a report from the United Nations Development Program proposed Internet e-mail taxes to help developing nations, suggesting that an appropriate amount would be the equivalent of one penny on every 100 e-mails that an individual might send. But the agency backed away from the idea a few days later.
They've tried once and failed, lets hope they fail again.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
If you tax someone, it should be the consumers of data. Google sends no data unless the consumer requests it. Of course, the consumers already pay for their bandwidth. (which is why I think charging for tethering is a complete ripoff. That is double charging for the bandwidth already paid for)
Actually with Spain now saying there needs to be tighter Eurozone integration, it looks like Germany will finally take over Europe.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The end result of this is that US websites would just block EU users entirely, and US ISPs would stop allowing their users to connect to EU sites (the ISP would have to pay the taxes)
This might be prove to be a form of censorship even more effective than the great firewall of china. Companies WANT to break through the Chinese firewall, but will do absolutely anything just to avoid taxes.
All one of them?
The UN is deeply flawed.
Even deeply flawed, the world is a better place for it.
If you don't understand that, you don't understand enough of international affairs to comment intelligently on the subject matter.
Really.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Is it April Fool's already?
While I understand that telcos are money-grubbing little fuckers who would sell their own family for a plug nickel, I am honestly baffled at how frequently this 'zOMG high-bandwidth sites are terrifying parasites who are getting a free ride!!!' comes up, and even seems to be treated as reasonable.
It's not hard: For Company A and Customer B to exchange data across the magic intertubes, Company A is paying(probably rather a lot, albeit at favorable per-megabyte rates) for upstream bandwidth and Customer B is paying (probably rather less; but at usurious per-megabyte rates) for downstream bandwidth. There isn't any magic free-riding going on. In fact, by offering attractive and data-heavy services, Company A is doing ISPs a favor; by making their otherwise rather unexciting product highly desirable to Customer B.
I can understand that there might be occasional spats about peering between the big backbone guys; but the claim that internet companies are somehow 'free-riding' on the poor, downtrodden ISPs is laughably absurd. They certainly don't get their upstream pipes for free, and their customers definitely pay for the connection that they use to download. I have to wonder what color the sky is in the world of ISPs who have the temerity to attack their greatest benefactors, the people who provide stuff that the public wants so much that they'll buy bandwidth to get it....
upside
An upside? You submit yourself to going along with this like cattle when there is no reason. All that it takes is for you to disagree. That is all. But you sit here, nod your head, and say, "Well, maybe it's not so bad," as you have your anus pummeled by politicians in every facet of life. YOU are the reason that stuff like this is ever passed.
Think twice...if you're even capable of that.
Keep your friends close. Keep your enemies closer.
Life is not for the lazy.
And while we're at it, why stop with just data... sure it's tough to see it, but it can be measured so it can be taxed. Let's tax the air that we breathe too... I mean, that guy who lives next to me weighs about 350 pounds, I know he's using more air than the average person does... so he should pay.
By the way, all you "tax the internet vendors for fairness" people are all wrong.
For fairness, get rid of local sales taxes to help the brick and mortar guys and the rest of us. Quit looking for ways to jack up taxes.
Peace is easy to achieve, just surrender. Liberty is much harder get/keep.
And yet it's still the best option. No seriously though...I'm not saying this as "I AM AN AMURICAN" but moreso as...look at the shit the rest of your countries do with it. We have certainly fallen a long way, but the freedom of speech is still the most sacred right here and that affects things in a way that is very beneficial to the internet...even if we do fuck up sometimes. The thing is...our fuck ups seem small in comparison to the things that the nations of the UN would want to do. As the GP said...they tend to err toward censorship and the one thing I can still be proud of my country for is that they have an almost mindlessly addicted devotion to free speech.
"Those who would sacrifice essential liberties for a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - BenF
The UN is no longer the bastion of freedom it never was anyhow.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
Is that six degrees from Godwinning the thread?
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
This is kind of a dumb comment, but servers could easily group players by ping time if they wanted to.
Speaking of censorship, have you tried watching US television lately? That particular point does not stand well. Not only do they censor the 'bad' stuff, they will flat out butcher movies just so they can advertise even more, cutting parts they have no business touching. Nothing is sacred to them.
IP and in Intellectual Property.
If the REcord companies claim that song is worth trillions in a law suit, ASK them where the Back taxes are on those Trillions. Software,Music,Movies,Books. Tax the stated "value" of them.
This fixes two things. 1 - Added revenue for the EU. 2 - stops ridiculousness in claims for Copyright Infringement. The company cant dare to claim $6500.00 per share of a song if they will be taxed at the new rate for it. Suddenly it fixes a legal and a financial problem overnight. They can stop paying Taxes on a piece of I.P. as soon as they release it as public domain. So old abandonware games, Old music music and old movies, will get released and not horded for no reason.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
The UN is looking for a source of funding other than the US Government, because if the US Government pulled out of the UN it would go bankrupt and implode financially.
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
where is it written in the 2 leaked document sourcing TFA that they're planning to ask for taxes on data ?? couldn't find it...
This is a great idea. It isn't fair that the Internet companies remain successful, employing millions of people and continuing to hire more in this bad economy. A pointless tax on a infrastructure usage is just what we need to bring them down to size.
The Internet King? I wonder if he could provide faster nudity.
Americans are "used to" the UN and don't realise that it's merely a corrupt money sink which does nothing good.
So... you've never met any Americans I take it?
William of Ockham had no beard. The most likely explanation is that it was chewed off by squirrels every morning.
This assumes an unlikely scenario in which subsidies don't come with government controls that more than undo every economic gain you hoped to make.
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
As covered here a week ago, opposition to UN control of the Internet is one of the few areas where American politicians agree, and I expect that without them it's DOA.
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
Indeed. They'll come together under the common banner that the UN isn't doing enough. Some more mind trickery, in the form of the IRS's double-thinking on drug stamps (it's both taxed and illegal!).
I am John Hurt.
Indeed. The internet should be neither taxed nor subsidized.
Of course, if they do try and implement this bullsh*t, I imagine the IT network guys will be back in demand. Private networks = no taxation (unless they're dumb enough to think they'll make it inside my house to install a meter on my LAN), and you can extend private networks fairly far...
I am John Hurt.
Hmm. I thought the UN existed primarily to prevent wars. However, if it has put on conqueror boots, it may be time to review its financial arrangements.
I am John Hurt.
In an effort to get ever more taxes for doing absolutely nothing
This is an ignorant remark. Compared with most governments and their institutes, the United Nations receive relatively little money compared with what they actually do. Read a few pages from http://www.dhf.uu.se/publications/development-dialogue/erskine-barton-childers-for-a-democratic-united-nations-and-the-rule-of-law/
But about the actual article: Of course it is a very bad idea to tax the Internet, certainly taxes on trafic since this can only affect net neutrality.
Subsidizing something means you are taxing A and giving the money to B.
Now it's easy to pick candidates for that, but in the long run governments generally do a bad job at picking targets to tax, and targets to subsidize.
Part of the problem is that once a subsidy is put in place a constituency is created making it difficult to remove. In the US for example we subsidize tobacco growers. The very idea is of course abhorrent, but the political system is just not efficient.
I don't think Germany wants it (any more). They are still dealing with rebuilding East Germany.
"isnt it time the europeans started another war with each other?" -> It appears that someone is trying to start a war, and bankrupting the whole of Europe is how they plan to do it. Economic wars being a variant of warfare, of course. The sad part being, its their own that are pissing away their money, but it's not them who will pay the price if / when a real war breaks out.
I am John Hurt.
Don't think Germany really wants that. It will probably happen, but again, probably wasn't on their todo list.
I mean, who wants half a continent with an enraged populace and millions of mouths to feed?
I am John Hurt.
Kofi Annan can Kiss My Bits!
Pity that a physical way of displaying our displeasure with the idea of internet taxation doesn't immediately come to mind.
If we throw electrons overboard, I don't think they'd care. It just doesn't have the same oomph.
I am John Hurt.
"In an effort to get ever more taxes for doing absolutely nothing, the United Nations will"
Could you possibly be more biased.
The United Nations is not a government and does not have the ability to levy taxes even if they wanted to. The debate about taxes happened in a U.N. forum, but the U.N. itself would have no role in collecting taxes. It would be the U.S. and European countries that would collect and keep the money.
every stain tells a story
on business that send ads through the internet?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
If an article begins: "In an effort to get ever more taxes for doing absolutely nothing..." don't bother reading any further. It's just a screed.
Just remember there are 192 countries represented in the UN. "Free" countries (G20, G30) would never win these open votes because they are not close to a majority of governments.
What's your point?
Were you going somewhere with this.......?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Like Google, etc.?
Google uses no bandwidth*. Google's users use the bandwidth whenever they click on 'Search'. Get them to pay the taxes.
* Ignoring the amount Google's web crawlers use for the purpose of this argument.
Have gnu, will travel.
They will, but not for the right reason. They'll be much more concerned with the UN's perceived power-grab than about the affects of the tax.
"Worrisome" doesn't even begin to cover this so far as I'm concerned. Not only is this a blatant attempt to essentially extort money out of the U.S. and other relatively rich countries, it's also an attack on net neutrality on a global scale. Crap like this needs to be immediately terminated with extreme prejudice.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
This is just stupid IMHO. The price of an internet connection is high as it is, and its not even all that fast, i pay 49$ for my basic 15D/2U connection, plus an extra 15$ to bump it to 60D/10U because i run a high traffic home hosted server. Im not about to shut down my websites and all my services just because i might have to start paying a tax because i want to run a server...
"The internet should be neither taxed nor subsidized." Just out of curiosity, how do you think the internet gets paid for? Does it just happen spontaneously?
Well, we could throw their photons in the sea by cutting the undersea cables. It would get their (and everyone else's) attention.
I'd imagine you'd get labelled a terrorist and shipped off somewhere nasty if you tried it, though.
Those who can't do, teach. Those who can't teach either, do tech support.
How about we throw electrons at the morons who came up with this idea? At, say, ten thousand volts.
This is where you run into problems. The very idea of "The Internet" is a combination of many networks, some privately financed, and others publicly financed. In some countries, their national network is funded by taxes, while in others, it is ALL done by private businesses. This is where those who want to tax "The Internet" will run into trouble, because there isn't a central "Internet" that can be taxed at this point.
Anyone who connects to the Internet becomes a part of it, and if you see a market, there is nothing stopping YOU from providing Internet access in that market. It may have been started as a government sponsored network, but it has evolved so far beyond that point, it can't be recognized as such anymore.
Wouldn't it be more efficient to tax a few things instead of everything? Why do governments find the need to create huge bureaucracies in multiple industries to raise money. Why not keep it simple, tax income and tax real estate. It gives you better control over who is paying your tax (progressive tax is then possible), unlike a tax attached to individual purchases, and then they wouldn't have to chase down retailers to make sure the tax is being enforced.
At the end of the day it is about the amount of revenue the government takes in, and it needs to be enough for the cost of the services they provide. If a government is short, adding a new kind of tax is not as efficient as simply raising an existing tax. Sure they can hide their real tax rate from the populous, but we all are already aware that we're being double taxed and aren't happy about it.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
If you pay attention, it's only Republicans who use that line as a talking point. Try searching the phrase. First hit is a Republican from Utah with a signed picture of Reagan. Second hit is the National Review.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Dick Morris has a book out called Screwed where he details a ton of these kind of proposals. For example, a new Law of the Sea conference would have the UN collecting a royalty on oil or anything else extracted from the sea that would be redistributed to every third-world and fourth-world dictatorship in the world. There's also been proposals for a world-wide 1% income tax that would go directly to the UN that would raise trillions. And of course a world-wide carbon "guilt" tax that would send money from industrialized nations to undeveloped nations. There's even island nations wanting to be paid for the seas rising, of course, blaming it on the US and Europe. All you need is for one of these loony propositions to pass, under the guise of some do-gooder cause, and we'll be paying off the rest of the world until the end of time.
Fortunately, I doubt they have much difference on this issue. And the US holds all the keys needed to make proposals like this a reality, and has massive economic motivation for preventing this to go through.
Besides, you should always keep in mind that the differences between the politicians you vote for are going to be massively magnified in your head. For a European, the difference between democrats and republicans is a difference between extreme-right-wing-corrupt-imperialists (democrats) and extreme-right-wing-ceo-as-a-sidejob-imperialists (republicans). They'll probably be in favor of democrats, believing them to be ever so slightly more left wing, but won't actually be able to name a single policy difference between them.
Just like you won't understand European political issues. Half of them center around language. You cannot imagine the fights that have taken place in Euro parliaments about which dialect of which language is to be spoken by government employees in tiny regions, often barely exceeding the size of a football field. Yet this has been the critical issue for tens of million of voters for decades. Other issues that are beyond obvious to Americans create massive divides, like the role of the king/queen of a country, issues that obviously never pop up in America.
I think it's pretty obvious that the internet is paid for mostly by profits of nationalized telcos.
No, actually. If you read my original post I'm conceding that the conservative position on at least this issue is correct. Take the olive branch for once.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
This is a good place and time for the debate. Thank you U.N.!
Simply having the debate is not a problem and given the UN will not get anywhere with such a proposal if they did seriously try it. I'd prefer they do it than somebody who can actually implement it... Some kind of similar measure probably will happen in the future but it'll be the WTO or international banks who pull it off... and probably get people on their side-- "free internet? that sounds like communism!"
Such a debate may end up stifling future debates in countries because it can lay the groundwork. This could end up influencing resolutions and treaties in the future PROTECTING people from such taxes. Sometimes topics are brought up for debate by the opposition for strategic reasons (besides just political posturing; but often that is what it is.)
I wouldn't mind if the threat of taxes on one of the few products of America could get them to back off from sabotaging all the climate negotiations.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
What a beautiful way to oppress more people. I already block a lot of countries from my web sites because they are the source of too much spam. If the politicians, add taxes and I'll block their countries too. This will result in lost opportunity to their citizens, depress their knowledge base and crush their economies. Brilliant.
Who would Germany purchase Nuclear power from if they took over France? Germany needs a baseline power to work with their renewable energy.
I read "UN To Tax Internet Debate", which may actually work well toward containing the flame war epidemic...
As far as I've been able to make out, there's no actual proposal for taxation. The source documents the article links to mention tax, but doesn't propose a tax, only that governments can tax if they want but shouldn't allow double taxation. Instead, the article appears to liken a proposed change from current peering arrangements to a telephone-style 'sender pays' arrangement to a tax, and then refers to it as a tax from then on.
The tentacles of the global commercial conglomerates are at it again...the aim is to continue to define what we have the right to observe...the ethics of seeing...especially as it pertains to Others. The Internet is undoubtedly a democratizing technology and our current hope for providing a platform for a credible system of journalism. With the emergence of the blogosphere and self reporters, particularly in Arab world and Sub-Saharan Africa, the Internet and digital technologies has been critical for eroding the control of the lenses by which we see Others and interact with them. The traditional mass media is owned by large corporations and this appears to me to be the development of monopolistic arrangements making it easier to charge for content online and once again take control over what we can and should know.
> The US government has quite a knack for giving money to B without taxing A, hence the huge deficits.
No, you just don't understand the implications of running a deficit.
When you run a deficit and accumulate a debt as a government one of two things happens:
1. You pay back the debt some time in the future with tax revenues. To do this you must collect taxes.
2. You print more money to pay back the debt. This causes the value of the rest of the money to go down, which is effectively a tax on everyone holding your money.
The fundamental fact to keep in mind is that in aggregate your taxes are what government spends. What you pay as taxes is just an illusion which is manipulated for politcal purposes.
World Government, you may tax the Internet after you implement this. Which I know you will never do.
If YouTube is taxed for being evil by responding to the helpless European telco customers' requests, what should happen?
1) YouTube deducts the tax from what they pay their network partners for their bandwidth, angering those telcos
2) YouTube compensates the tax by charging for the telco customers' access, angering them
3) YouTube starts blocking the loss-inducing European visitors en masse, making it less interesting to have a private internet subscription at all, thus decimating the number of customers.
Pick any option. Or don't make such a stupid tax.
I'll keep this comment short.
You can, obviously, keep trolling your own "news" blog by publishing bullshit like this:
But you'll have one less reader, in short order.
Hmm. A particle accelerator...you know what, that might work.
Cancer for everyone!
I am John Hurt.
The internet is made up of Tier 1 providers linked together (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tier_1_network). All it is is a bunch of networks, the vast majority private, meshed together. Tier 1 providers handle the big pipe stuff, and have agreements with each other, that allow them to send and receive data on each others' networks for free. They, in turn, sell access to the lower Tiers, and so on, and so on, until you get to the consumer. Tier 1 providers usually have names that no one has heard of before; yes, you have 'regional Tier 1s' like Verizon or AT&T, but they are small fish in comparison to others. And they are all insanely profitable while constantly dropping prices / increasing network speed / upgrading equipment, assuming the company's finances aren't being mishandled (a common hazard these days).
Which part do you not understand? The lack of taxation as a business model, or that with the exception of Arpanet & the internet's very beginnings as a DoD project, there really hasn't been anything that qualifies as subsidization?
I am John Hurt.
Tier 1 providers (aka the Internet, so far as anyone is concerned), typically are not nationalized telecos. I am reading on Wikipedia about 'regional Tier 1s', of which a number are made up of local telecoms, but they are, as I have stated elsewhere, the smaller of fish in the pond.
I am John Hurt.
Exactly. They seem painfully unaware of the obtuseness of their ideas. Or how trivial it is to create a new network that, as it grows, can become a new Internet; completely private, and completely untouchable.
But I digress, since they probably think the Internet is some kind of fad, held together by magic, and is somewhat unique, they think they can control things. Things they do not understand.
I am John Hurt.
This story just does not look like it could be true. The writer appears to not have a clue what he is talking about, or else he is running a scare campaign for some political reason. The UN has no taxation powers, and it has no mandate to ever become involved in such matters. At best it could consider proposals by member nations that recommend technical telecommunications standards that allow for such taxation in those countries that want it. Even then it would have to go through the torturous ITU processes.
Heavy is the head that wears the tinfoil hat.