Slashdot Mirror
Quebec Plans To Require Website Blocking, Studies New Internet Access Tax
An anonymous reader writes: Michael Geist reports that the Government of Quebec released its budget (PDF) yesterday featuring two Internet-related measures that are sure to attract attention and possible litigation. First, it is moving forward with plans to study a new tax on residential Internet services in order to provide support for the cultural sector. Second, the government says it will be introducing a new law
requiring ISPs to block access to online gambling sites. The list of blocked sites will be developed by Loto-Quebec, a government agency. The government views this as a revenue enhancing measure because it wants to channel gamblers to its own Espacejeux, the government's own online gaming site.
Allez chier ma gang d'osti de calisse de lèche-cul de tabarnaks.
I hate it how everything I create, enjoy doing, or enjoy consuming isn't considered culture, and policies need to be put in place to defend so call culture. Just let the free market decide what we want self sustaining art to be.
Anytime you hear the word "culture" in Quebec, watch out. It has a much more ominous overtone there than in most of the rest of the world.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
So the tax is to "support the movie, music, and book publishing industries."
Shouldn't those "industries" be funded by investors, who get a return from sales?
Or is this about propping up movies, music, and books no one wants to buy?
This sets a dangerous precedent that it is perfectly okay for the government to block websites in order to generate more revenue. If this passes, expect states in the US to try the same thing, especially if they have casinos that aren't doing well.
As a resident of Quebec, let me laugh at that statement. Help culture? The Liberals don't give a toss about culture, they're just completely fixed on the notion of having a zero-deficit budget by any means necessary. They'll slash health and education funding, they'll add hidden taxes while claiming none are added, they'll do whatever it takes to reach this, because they're considered to be the "economically focused" party. To give context, when a journalist asked them if they could promise that the significant cuts in healthcare funding would not affect services, they straight up said that they can't say that because there might be "obstruction" or "slow uptake" of their new magical plan which makes more with less.
If culture sees a single cent of that tax, I'll be impressed. This is strictly a way of balancing their budget without raising the tax rates, which would've caused furor. This internet tax sailed past all major news organizations as far as I can tell.
If you don't know Quebec, it's what Bohemia would be like if it were actually populated by Bohemians.
is the Trans Canada , heading West...
Quebec is an island of francophone culture off a continent that is dominated by the U.S. Either you embrace protectionism or risk losing all that makes you unique.
That is a nonsense argument. If one needs to resort to protectionist measures to "preserve" your culture from a peaceful (to you) neighbor, then your people don't really support said measures even if they claim to. Actions speak louder than words. People claim to hate McDonalds and yet they sell millions of burgers every year to many of those same people. If the people of Quebec really want to speak French or engage in Francophile activities then they will do so. If they don't then they shouldn't be forced to. Cultural norms shift over time and there is nothing fundamentally bad about that.
I spend a fair bit of time in Canada. I was married in Alberta and regularly vacation in Ontario. Canada is a wonderful country. Most of Canada has little difficulty maintaining what makes them unique because what makes them truly unique isn't stuff the government needs to pass laws to protect.
This isn't as anti-gambling or even as anti-competition as it sounds. Quebec's gambling laws have always been very different from the rest of Canada, in a very interesting way.
For example, in Ontario, gambling is really for lotteries and contests and casinos and that's about it. Everything else is illegal -- just like you can't buy alcohol in a grocery store, you can't gamble in a bar.
In Quebec, however, there are slot machines (fun ones) in bars all the time. Gambling is available everywhere -- especially where alcohol is. It's governed and licensed and available.
Two very different ways of controlling gambling, in a country where gambling is seen as an addictive activity to be controlled. Quebec's not wrong in wanting to control on-line gambling -- it's totally consistent with their gaming laws.
And, most of all, I promise that no one in Quebec is at a loss for opportunities to gamble. They are everywhere.
Start by blocking loto-quebec.com because lotteries are gambling, right?
They'll change their tune damn fast...
Having heard too many stories of gambling addicts loosing everything in Casinos and even seeing it happen to my own father. I might have gotten behind the idea of blocking gambling websites if they blocked all of them period. But since Loto-Quebec will be making it so that people go to their online site instead it's not a move to help reduce the risk. Just making sure our own provincially hungry fox guards the hen house. People will still loose their shirts in the end and we'll still have these establishment who end up putting people in poverty which I find is only a short term boost to the provincial revenue for a long term lost.
I'm not even certain it's a good thing for Loto-Quebec since it would open the door to other provinces and countries blocking access to Quebec gambling sites. Who knows where this could end up? Once you start blocking one group of sites, you could start blocking other groups too.
In the end, I don't think it will be seen as legal. Someone will surely challenge this all the way to the supreme court.
"The government views this as a revenue enhancing measure because it wants to channel gamblers to its own Espacejeux, the government's own online gaming site."
Usually the blocking of sites is for morality issues, but Quebec is seeing this as a revenue measure. Much like the provisions against bringing in your own water bottle to a concert, so you can buy their more expensive one.
Communism is redistribution of wealth, or at least apportionment of resources (can be like old USSR, or like Star Trek if you've got machines to materialize anything you can want -- resources are no longer limited).
Fascism is a government that runs for the purpose of businesses and eventually, picks a winner (like 1940's Italy and Germany, and arguably Japan today, and America is getting close).
But what is it when the government BECOMES the company? Don't government's know they can just PRINT MONEY? SEE; Real World economics explained below.
Instead of a lottery/gambling;
Form your own bank, create bonds for local infrastructure, and pay 10% per diem with tax breaks to investors and meanwhile you can put people to work creating things that will enhance business and the community. You get more money back from the wages.
Gambling is a pernicious social problem, and these scratch-card financed governments can only capture revenue from other locations and their own citizens, who will be less productive and lose a work ethic for their "get rich quick" gambling ethic. It's a way to raise taxes on the people who usually have the least education, judgement and income. In short; it's robbing Peter to pay Paul, but doing it with Pay-Day loans and Paul is going to be a useless wife-beater wearing fool who insists everyone around him write their Le Menu in French.
*In the USA we have a fractional reserve banking system. Bonds are created to be offset by dollars created and the bonds are investments the government can sell. So money is created by debt. The Money just gets shipped to banks. Why doesn't the government be the bank, you may ask, since it's both the real lender and the one taking the risk (holding and paying off the bond) - and wow, Iceland just did it and it seems to have worked fine in the past in the USA. Great question, which will get you kicked out of economics class if you ask it again. but that's because it was necessary to pay off the rich people in charge at the time during the Civil War -- I'm sure people have learned interesting and convoluted economical explanations for why our Federal Reserve banking system is yadda yadda, but they can't explain how the system doesn't collapse if you pay off all the debts that created money in the first place (because of factoring, banks can loan $10 or more dollars for each on deposit - but leverage works both ways see; Nov. 2008) -- oh, and let's not notice that the #1 Investor is offshore banks. Anyone know if we don't just manufacture money to buy our own money? But I digress, all is well and go back to whatever and just know; governments don't need to tax -- EXCEPT to engage the citizens, and to redistribute wealth (some other fools think it's because they can't pay for things otherwise and stuff about who DESERVES what they earned -- as if most wages weren't decisions made by those who valued themselves higher), and it's a way to value their currency -- you have to back a currency with the ability to pay it back if you don't have nuclear weapons (OK, someone really needs to explain to the average person how currencies are valued; military power, and/or arbitrary decision of World Banker and his last bootie call -- you are welcome).
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
And this is why Quebec is in such an amazing financial state.
And for those who don't know much about Quebec, I am being sarcastic. Quebec needs to stop putting itself into deficit year after year before it gets to a point where we get imposed stuff like they are doing in Greece because I promise you, there isn't a politician alive here with the backbone to refuse to pay the creditors and put it's population 1st.
Disclaimer: I live here too.
I guess Quebec bashing from the rest of the country is to be expected in news like those.
Well like it or now, Quebec bring a shit lot of stuff and specialization for Canada that isn't to look down (aerospace, hydroelectricity and videogame to name a few). Furthermore, I don't know in what world you live but I don't see how speaking a different language is in any way related in actual capabilities or skill.
Humm, let's see. Hydro Quebec gets 80% of it's current revenu from Quebecers and constantly demanding increases of 4 to 5% per years while making record profits. So while it makes a lot of money, it's not doing it from what it sells to the US because it has to sell there at a lost and subsidize to companies who threaten to leave the province.
Aerospace? Bombardier is cuttings a lot of jobs of late because of poor decisions and I got a friend working there who is currently quite nervous of loosing his post.
Videogames? You mean that sector being subsidized by the provincial government who decided to cut the amount to smaller studios who in some cases are looking to move to Ontario because the tax credits there are better? The same Ontario where most of the big studios who have offices in Montreal also have them in Toronto? Without those tax credits I promise you the video game industry would leave in a heart beat because it's not hard to move that sort of company around.
I don't think most people would disagree with you, but I think it'd be an enormous loss if every country ended up being just like every other country.
Never going to happen. Heck there are pretty substantial regional differences even within single countries. Go visit the Louisiana Bayou and then go to NYC and tell me America is homogenous.
But if you get to some other location and it's the same language, same restaurants, same shops, same recreational activities, what a waste.
"Waste"? Not at all. Shared cultural experiences have huge benefits, not the least of which are increased commerce and reduced conflict. It's hard to think of someone as the Other if they look, talk and act like you. Many people very much like familiarity even when in a foreign place. And it doesn't take a lot to feel displaced. Even something like moving from the US to Canada (or vice-versa) results in some pretty significant cultural adjustments even though the two countries are very similar in a lot of ways.
I'm not at all arguing that everyplace should be the same (quite the opposite in fact) but there is nothing wrong with having some, or even a lot of similarity.
In the end, I think a lot of places that want to be Americanized (or whatever you want to call it) will end up so, and then they'll soon come to regret it.
I could say the exact reverse and it has the same potential of being true. There is nothing wrong with adopting bits of a different culture if they appeal to you. The US has adopted cultural practices and language from around the globe. There is no reason why it should be bad for other cultures to take bits of American culture and language they like (or not if they don't). Different merely for the sake of being different is every bit as bad as everyone being the same.
In Montréal, they have to say ARRÊT.
Not "ARRÊTEZ"? Isn't that a bit rude? The give way signs in France are "Cédez le passage" not "Céde le passage".