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Hungary To Tax Internet Traffic
An anonymous reader writes: The Hungarian government has announced a new tax on internet traffic: 150 HUF ($0.62 USD) per gigabyte. In Hungary, a monthly internet subscription costs around 4,000-10,000 HUF ($17-$41), so it could really put a constraint on different service providers, especially for streaming media. This kind of tax could set back the country's technological development by some 20 years — to the pre-internet age. As a side note, the Hungarian government's budget is running at a serious deficit. The internet tax is officially expected to bring in about 20 billion HUF in income, though a quick look at the BIX (Budapest Internet Exchange) and a bit of math suggests a better estimate of the income would probably be an order of magnitude higher.
Errr... so I am sympathetic to the argument in general, but this case is about Hungary, not the US.
Hungarian dude here.
1. That will be delegated to the ISPs. The plan is, that the ISPs should pay these taxes from their profits, and are expected NOT to increase the internet subscription fees, however, they will anyhow.
2. It is a tax on everything. not just streaming.
3. They won't leave anything untaxed.
Hey, it was! This is just a draft proposal. Nothing implemented yet.
This summary is a bit hysterical, in the excessively panicked sense. TFA indicates there is a cap on taxes for both individuals and service providers, and this DRAFT bill is likely to contain the same sort of provisions. Of course, whether such a tax is a good idea is up for debate, but statements like "could set back the country's technological development by some 20 years" are ridiculous. Excise taxes already exist on other goods and services without complete disaster.
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
Orban's regime borders on fascism, I wouldn't call it a democracy. His policies are a lot closer to those of Putin rather than classical fascism, though.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
Orban's regime borders on fascism, I wouldn't call it a democracy. His policies are a lot closer to those of Putin rather than classical fascism, though.
The term is neo-fascism...
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
Lrn2network before you get haughty with others on the subject. Keepalives, pings, dhcp requests... there are a shit-ton of ways to generate traffic where the header is the majority of the payload. No, it's not common for that to make up a significant portion of internet traffic per node, but it's certainly possible, and not at all "nonsense."