France's 'Culture Tax' Could Hit YouTube and Facebook

PolygamousRanchKid writes with this excerpt from BusinessWeek: "Should YouTube subsidize le cinéma français? France's audiovisual r.egulator thinks so. In a report this week, the Superior Audiovisual Council (CSA) says that video-sharing websites should be subject to a tax that helps finance the production of French films and TV shows. ... Although the CSA report says that videos posted online by private individuals should not be subject to taxation, it contends that video-sharing sites increasingly have become 'professional' content providers. ... Separately, France is considering a tax on smartphones, tablets, and other devices as another source of revenue for cultural subsidies. The proposed tax would raise an estimated €86 million annually that would be used to finance the 'cultural industries' digital transition,' France's Culture Ministry said at the time."

Comments

Kickback time

[MrDoh!]

"That's a nice video streaming business you have there, you should speak to my cousin, he runs a french language film production company, sure he can help you..."

Re:Kickback time

[mysidia]

I don't see a problem with the YouTube tax

I do... Youtube's not a French company. The idea that any country in the world can levy a tax on you if you're an internet company, would be crippling.

How about a "Mohamed" tax from muslim countries, on any depiction of Mohamed in a video? The tax amount? $1 Million dollars, per viewer of each such video.

Not Culture

[mfwitten]

If you have to subsidize it, then it ain't culture; it's history.

Re:Not Culture

[SuricouRaven]

But everyone does it. The UK has a system of subsidies for movie production (Lottery money, mostly). Uwe Boll's financial success came from exploiting the German system of subsidies to make films that were subsidised for more than their production cost, making it impossible for them to do anything but profit. The US approach is less open subsidies than tax breaks, both official and a policy of openly tolerating accounting practices that would be considered illegal in any other industry.

Re:Not Culture

[SuricouRaven]

Actually I was arguing that if everyone does it, all must do it. As with any other area of protectionism. It's your basic game theory:

- If no-one does it, all achieve modest success (ie, cultural influence)
- If some do it and some don't, those who do achieve great success at the expense of those who do not.
- Therefore if some start doing it, everyone else has to join in to achieve an even playing field again.

Re:Not Culture

[Runaway1956]

So, Alexgieg - you are merely defending America's capitalistic approach to "culture", am I correct? Basically, if it doesn't make a heap of money for Hollywood executives and investors, then it's not really culture, right?

Sadly, America has lost a lot of culture in the past century, because of Hollywood. There was a time when an American citizen could be entertained by Russians, Slavs, Africans, Asians, Mexicans, or any other culture they might choose. Today? We've lost almost all of that. The only entertainment that has survived is that which corporate executives approve of. Entertainment which they have harnessed toward the goal of milking Americans of their money.

As a young boy, and as a young man, I remember being fascinated by the diversity that was obvious in my own hometown, and in the surrounding region. Today - cultural diversity seems to be about dead. Everyone, no matter their background, flocks to the cinema for their entertainment. They all listen to music for which they have paid - music approved by RIAA represented companies. What has happened to our folk music, and our folk lore?

Culture?

I really don't know much about French movies, or French music, or French culture in general. I'm not a student of any of the arts. If I were a student, maybe my opinion of French art would be lower than Hindi, or Chinese, or Russian. Maybe. I really don't know.

What I do know, without a doubt, is that the shit that Hollyweird puts out is truly that - shit. Bang-bang shootemups, often times with less plot than little children could offer. "Action thriller" is just about synonymous with "brain dead".

If California experienced an earthquake that swallowed Hollyweird and all of it's execs, along with all of it's major actors - mankind would have lost nothing.

I would much prefer to sample a little culture from places like France, than to be forced to watch another idiot action movie out of Hollyweird, thank you very much. Not that I intend to start studying any of the arts, mind you. But, I do enjoy a little entertainment now and then. There is nothing on the airwaves in the US that entertains me.

Re:Not Culture

[alexgieg]

the French have an uphill struggle making a movie profitable even if it were the world's best movie, because they are in French.

The absolute best example to counter this line of reasoning is Japan. Their pop culture is so powerful that the almost unsurmountable fact of "it's in Japanese!" offers no obstacle for its spread all around. If French cultural production was culturally powerful people would be flocking to it, learning French for the sake of watching the original, organizing fansub efforts to illegally subtitle French movies, shows and comics into dozens of languages, create sites to host thousands of fanfics, fanarts etc. about their most beloved French shows, and so on and so forth. Nothing of this happens for the simple reason that French cultural production fails miserably at touching the hearts and minds of anyone but a small minority among even the French.

Also, while today almost no one is interested in learning the French language, until before WW2 it was the international language. Everyone everywhere learned French and talked with people from other countries in French. By capitalizing all that goodwill France had the opportunity to become not only the center of high culture and science it already was, but also of becoming the undisputed superpower in matter of global popular culture. It didn't want to, it still doesn't want to, and as such its cultural producers are reduced to begging the government for money.

As long as they continue accusing externalities such as the (utterly irrelevant) worldwide number of French speakers for their lack of success, they'll continue failing. No, they have no one other than themselves to blame. That's all there is to it.

Re:Not Culture

[alexgieg]

the corporations spend millions upon millions to brainwash the masses into believing that the corporate offerings are all there is

You're still talking like we're in the 1990's, and overthinking it at that. Anyone who ever browsed Youtube knows that's false and that the corporate offerings are a small part of what's out there. No, they still watch blockbuster movies because they like them. Then they get home (or open their mobile phones) and watch from dozens to hundreds of independently produced stuff per month.

the corporations actually have sent take down notices to block original content

An anecdote doesn't science makes. Yes, this happens. No, it isn't prevalent. If it were you wouldn't be citing one example to make your point, you'd be giving a statistic. If there's one it'll probably show such invalid takedowns amount to a small fraction of a percent.

What doesn't mean media corporations wouldn't love to be able to do it to everything they dislike. They just cannot. Whatever their power is, and it is certainly huge, it isn't that huge. And they're shrinking. Unless they change drastically to cope with the reality of an Internet that cannot be domesticated, in a few decades they'll have all but disappeared. And there'll be much rejoicing, for I'm with you in my dislike for them as corporations. As for the stuff they produce however, nope, those are neither "the" nor "a" problem. Both things are unrelated and shouldn't be mixed.

Re:Not Culture

[khallow]

Uwe Boll's financial success

That settles it right there. If France doesn't subsidize culture, then they'll face the dreaded Uwe Boll gap. Can't let Germans win the culture war!

Re: Frogs

[lord_rob the only on]

There are many names you can cite
Proof is when a good french movie ls released you americans make exactly the same movie but with american actors

Nice try.

[nospam007]

Just like last time when they tried to save the french film industry from the pirates, they created a new agency to stop piracy.

After a couple of years and a for a budget of 13,7 million dollars a year, they actually had exactly 2 users convicted, 1 user slapped on the wrist and 1 user who got a fine of 150 Euros.

This will work exactly the same, not at all.

http://www.billboard.com/biz/articles/news/1483616/frances-hadopi-2-convictions-1-fine-125-million-warnings-since-2009

Re:Frogs

[SerpentMage]

Actually French films are rather good. But as another poster said, Americans tend to remake French films. With an example being the original French film, "Anything for Her", being played by Russell Crowe or one you should know... "True Lies". Or did you know about "The Tourist"? I am not going to espouse that French films are superior, they tend to drivel quite a bit at times. However, to say that they have no talent shows that you are ignorant on movies.

Re:Behind the times.

[rusty0101]

You're making the assumption that french culture is independent of the french govornment. While this may be true for those artists that are earning a living on the art they produce, the govornment of france feels that they are responsible for maintaining french culture, and as a govornment agency have mandated studies that have determined that this is the cost of making this transition, and as a result have instigated other studies that have recommended that taxes on these artifacts of the digital transition should cover that cost. The fact that the cost has already been bourn by the artists and art viewers as they have made the transition independent of the studies of the state does not eliminate the requirement that the state collect those fees, to make the transition.

When all is done, every artist in France is likely to be given a 2 Euro digital camera that does not capture more than 6 images at VGA quality or lower, at a time, and does not support any of the various flash media storage formats that are in circulation, To allow them to transition to 'digital'. any remaining incidental funds recovered by the temorary taxation will be used to cover the costs of distributing those cameras.

Re:Taxes.

[Luckyo]

No, it's important to make everyone pay by the rules. Anarchist bullshit you're spewing sounds nice if you have a strong anarchist bend, but otherwise, it sounds quite insane. Reality is that taxation is about preventing the suffering, rather than creating it. It creates safety nets, pays for medicine, police, fire protection and so on. It guarantees some income even if you lose your job, or get hurt. It lets you go to work when you have young children and gives you a place to put them in daycare. It provides centralized and functional education system. And countless other things.
Tax dodging is what generates suffering, heavy suffering at that. Much of the current budget problems in France are because traditional tax revenues are dying up - because of increasing paths of tax evasion being available to traditionally large contributors, such as large companies.

Companies that dodge this need to be taxed like others, both to prevent suffering and to allow competition to survive and adapt. They should not be allowed to effectively steal their contribution from taxation pool as they do now while destroying their competition though these unfair means.

Re:There are more french film than you would think

[JustOK]

It lost something when they created the TV series.

Re:Taxes.

[phayes]

Some people visibly like having having a dick up their ass and will use any means to do so like conflating refusing an unjust tax with the refusal of the members of the EEC to harmonise their tax codes so that they could eliminate/control the double Irish. It isn't anarchy to denounce this manoeuvre by French socialists to finance their buddies by taxing everyone on the Internet. For the amount of money I already pay for my blank DVD, Internet access, Hard drives, USB keys, etc, I as a french citizen have received precisely nothing.

Google finds on your mil/art funding question

[AHuxley]

"The Pentagon’s strengthening grip on Hollywood"
http://www.salon.com/2011/08/29/sirota_military_movies/
"The U.S. military's Hollywood connection"
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/aug/21/entertainment/la-ca-military-movies-20110821
http://movieline.com/2013/02/06/military-entertainment-complex-hollywood-pentagon-relationship-battleship-zero-dark-thirty/
Operation Hollywood
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2004/09/operation-hollywood
A script often self corrected until the use of mil equipment works out.
The UK, Australia, Germany, France all have their funding mixes for their own culture. The US mil movie/script 'corrections' aspect is well known, has been reported for years.

Re:Classic France

[jareth-0205]

Actually, the only real way France will learn is to simple ignore them. By ignore them, I mean completely pull out of the France. No french versions of websites. No, french youtube, no French google or bing.

I'm trying to think of a more subtle way of saying 'fuck you', but I can't. You realise how outstandingly arrogant you sound? That you would have foreign corporations put such massive pressure on a government to act in a way that they want?

I don't particularly think this tax is a great idea, and it's likely to limit what gets offered to France, but guess what, it's up to *France* to make their decision on the tradeoff and then *Google* etc to decide whether it's worth it to do business in that country. And you can bet your life that they still will. Just because you have an anarchist / libertarian / bully hardon for making governments do your bidding, doesn't mean the real world works like that.

Maybe it's the language

[msobkow]

Maybe it's the language that causes brain damage, because here in Canada, we have the Quebecois with that same perverse "protectionist" mentality about their language and culture.

Or maybe they just can't accept the fact that the days of empire are over, and that they no longer matter all that much on the world stage compared to when they were in their glory days.

What I do know is that protectionism and isolationism don't save anything; they just create isolated backwaters that aren't connected with the global culture and the rest of the world.

Stupidest example I can think of: In Quebec, you're supposed to yell "Quatre" on the golf course. The problem with that is "Fore" is short for "Forewarned", not "Four."

Global companies and tax

[sjbe]

Youtube's not a French company.

Yes they are. I guarantee you that Google (who owns YouTube) is incorporated in France and can be taxed there. The fact that the parent company is in the US is not important here. France absolutely can tax the French subsidiary of Google. There probably are taxation angles via the EU as well.

The idea that any country in the world can levy a tax on you if you're an internet company, would be crippling.

It would be if they could collect the revenue. If you don't actually do any business in France they cannot tax you even if they pass laws which try. They simply cannot collect the money.