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.'"

Comments

My God

[killmenow]

Could politicians be more daft?

Re:My God

[lordholm]

The proposal is not written by european politicians, but rather by a an interest organization for european telecom operators.

Net Neutrality

[Bananatree3]

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.

Mod summary as insightful

[howardd21]

"In an effort to get ever more taxes for doing absolutely nothing"

That is the most insightful summary...ever

Re:Mod summary as insightful

[JaredOfEuropa]

The UN do a lot, and some of it is actually useful. My beef with the UN, and with pretty much every government ever, is that they are always seeking to extend their span of control beyond what can be considered reasonable, in terms of power, influence, money and taxation. But in democratic nations, government is held in check at least to some degree by its constituents. The problem with the UN (and the EU for that matter) is that there is pretty much no control over what they do. UN-crats and Eurocrats are not held in check by the mandate of their voters, nor by voters in the countries they represent, but only by their colleagues. If a majority of them agrees to something that is opposed by all of the people they are supposed to represent, it will still pass. And what politician will say no to a chance to extend their influence, or an opportunity to take a big wet bite out of some fat cat overseas company's profits?

I really fail to see why the UN or Europe (or anyone else) should be entitled to part of Google's profits. Because they use our infrastructure to make money? For "the privilege of serving non-U.S. users"? That privilege works both ways, and I as a European am (and should be) grateful for the privilege of having so many useful US-based services at my fingertips. I might also add that this infrastructure has already been paid for, by my monthly subscription fees and plenty of public money.

Of course, saying that there is no good reason to tax Google is naïve... they will tax Google because they can, and come up with a good reason. Something along the lines of: "revenues from this internet tax will be applied towards building infrastructure in underdeveloped regions". Enter the Telcos, who are eager to get a nice cut of the job of building that infrastructure. Probably why their lobbyists came up with this proposal in the first place.

And people wonder why the US holds it so tightly

[Schezar]

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.

Article Doesn't Add Up

[rssc]

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...

Re:And people wonder why the US holds it so tightl

[webheaded]

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.