Probably not. The agreement says "If you're a big brick and mortar store and you open an online presence that is branded as a branch of your b&m store, such as Target and Target.com, you're online presence should collect state sales tax wherever you have a b&m store."
The states have simply closed a loophole.
It doesn't affect true online retailers, those not connected to a b&m. It also doesn't affect specialty stores with only one or two b&m stores whose online presence is an extension of their mail-order catalogue.
I think there's a key difference between the sales tax on what you buy and the shipping fee the vendor charges you.
The tax is imposed by the state on what you buy.
The fee is set voluntarily by the vendor to cover their overheard, including shipping materials, shipping fees, warehouse space, etc... There is a small portion of that fee going to the shipper. Of the fee the shipper charges, there's an even smaller portion set aside for paying the taxes that are part of his tax liability.
It's no more double taxation than the bit of profit built into what you bought to cover the vendor's tax overhead (property taxes, employee taxes, licenses), and built into the wholesaler to cover his bit of tax overhead.
One decent thing about the sales tax. If you are a vendor, what you buy from a wholesaler or even another vendor, when it's bought for the purpose of resale, there is no sales tax. Sales tax is only collected at the point of sale, from vendor to enduser.
It's a cost of doing business. Like _all_ costs of doing business, it's built into the price of an good or service.
From the article:In the past week, however, Wal-Mart, Marshall Fields, Target, Toys R Us and Mervyn's each posted new sales tax notices on their Web sites, saying that the companies will charge taxes for buyers living in the states where sales taxes are on the books.
No slippery slope.
Now, why should UPS and FedEx get out of paying profit, gas, and employee taxes? Are they taxed more because they're shippers?
The companies involved have a physical presence in most states. Their dotcom is subsidiary with only a few physical locations. The dotcom thus gets out of collecting sales tax, but only technically.
The agreement should only affect stores with a physical presence in your state. Amazon.com, being little more than a set of warehouses, shouldn't have to collect sales tax unless one of their warehouses is in your state. This agreement doesn't affect them because in the case of having a warehouse in your state, they would've always been collecting sales tax.
Like others have said, sales tax isn't the only reason. Try living in even a semi-rural area. I have to drive 40 miles to get to a large book store. It's easier and cheaper for me to order most books through Amazon unless I know I'm headed over the mountain and can stop by Barnes & Noble. (I'm not living in the country, just a town of 50,000 with the nearest city 40 miles away.)
Sure the local independent could order them, but it's still cheaper to buy certain books (O'Reilly) online. Nevermind that Amazon can get a book to me in two days whereas the indie book store might take two weeks.
E-commerce won't die till mail-order dies. Mail order isn't going to die till everyone with a hobby has a local store carrying exactly what they want. I doubt there'll be a high quality kite shop w/in an hour of where I live anytime soon.
Re:I'm more amazed....
on
Baked Apple
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· Score: 2
Perhaps she works for the guy who runs a small local eatery in my town. He (supposedly) puts his laptop in the oven every night because he things the gov't is spying on him.
t is like you giving someone a plastic overlay with that has the bad words covered up. It does NOT change the original.
No, it's more like an ebook with the objectionable parts clipped out as seamlessly as possible. They'd still be in the file, but a reader wouldn't necessarily know something's been editied out. With an overlay doing the redaction, the reader can see something is covered up.
What Clearply tries to do is make it as seamless as possible. It would be possible to watch the movie and not notice there were scenes missing or altered. The version you perceive would not have been okayed by the copyright holder.
To the people replying to this post saying "If I do this, and I do that." The DGA isn't saying you can't fast forward through their movies. They're saying someone else can't edit their movies. It's a subtle difference, but a difference none the less.
You can rip the pages out of a book. You can carve an giant X in a Monet. You can cover your David.
What the DGA doesn't want is a company, neither associated with nor approved by the director, clipping these parts out for people. It's no longer the director's creation, it's not longer the director's Speech, but it still has the director's name on it.
How pissed would you be if someone edited out a few "objectionable" parts of your Speech? How about editing Lucy Parsons' words from "What I want is for every greasy grimy tramp to arm himself with a knife or a gun, and stationing himself at the doorways of the rich, shoot or stab them when they come out" to an easy to digest "I want every one of you to tell these people they're bad."
Now, for what scares me - why are people such spineless wimps? I understand not wanting to sit down with your kids and watch a movie with sex, violence, and cussing. Let's assume it's a movie that really is a piece of art - Fight Club? If you're kids aren't old enough to watch sex, violence, and cussing (SV&C), they shouldn't watch the movie. If they aren't old enough to see a little bit of nudity, they shouldn't watch the movie. You can't handle seeing a woman's breast, maybe you shouldn't be watching the movie. (Nevermind that with this DVD player, you're still *supporting* the director who put that breast in the movie.)
It's only a breast. The great majority of women have two. Your daughter has them. Any children you have who are attracted to women, will hopefully get the see them. There's nothing obscene about them. And let's not forget that everyone has a butt.
Cussing? if you have a job, were in the military, walk by a construction site, you're going to hear it. You're child probably will listen to music with cussing. You're child's friends say the words.
Violence? Watch the evening news.
Are there movies with needless SV&C? Yes, undoubtly.
Are they usually worth watching? No.
Goodfellas with the V&C? Probably stinks.
When altered, many movies loose their power. Just look at Lawrence of Arabia in formatted vs widescreen. The story is still there. The acting is there. The movie is still worth watching. But it looses the power of the scenery, it looses it's emenseness.
Think about 'Die Hard.' Let's assume you could edit out the violence and still have a watchable movie. Now let's cut, 'Yippee Kai Yay, Motherfuckers!' down to 'Yippee Kai Yay.' It severely takes away from the character and the situation. The character was established as a gritty New York Cop. He's going to cuss. The line has a tension to it. A censored line makes him sound goody two shoes.
Perhaps instead of renting or buying the movie, you should write the studio and say, "Sorry, I'm not going to rent or buy this movie because it has sex/violence/cussing." But no, you want to have your cake and eat it, too.
What's next, editing objectionable social commentary out of punk rock and traditional folk ballads?
Yah, yah, I know. I was just sick of this whole "Doesn't 'No Taxation Without Representation' sound familiar?" response.
Personally, I wouldn't mind paying a little more taxes to my state government but then my state faces a multi-billion dollar deficit. There are bridges needing repairs, teachers needing pay raises, streams to clean. But then that's just me.
Just curious, couldn't your argument be used to in the case of traveling out of state?
If I drive to N. Carolina, I'm not represented, but there'd be no way someone would let me get out of paying sales tax just because I live out of state.
Yes, I did read the article - had to to make sure it backed up my point. That it's a misdeamor to leave your keys in the car doesn't change the fact that stealing the car is theft.
At least in the US, there are cases where someone has picked up cash on the ground and been convicted of theft. See Joey Coyle. The money was in the street. He kept it. It was against the law.
Could you reference a few cases where someone has left keys in their car, had it stolen, and the thief has gotten off scot free or better yet had the case dismissed? How old are you to believe that you can take anything out in the open?
Even if the car is running and parked out front of your home, if it isn't yours and you take it, you are stealing it. See this article from the Minneapolis PD.
What's the difference between Flash and your cracker tool? Your intention. The credit data is a locked box, and you're taking bolt cutters to it.
Okay, the analogy was a little off. Say a company representating national coffee interests vs Wal-Mart.
No monopoly in the camcorder business. Microsoft does have a monopoly on computer OSs, and people are turning to their PCs for more and more editing. It would be too easy for MS to deny to license the WMA9 codec to Apple or a Linus developer. Or, as they did with IE, they use proprietary hooks in their OS... blah... blah... leverage the monopoly to gain entry.... blah blah blah. See the standard MS abuse of monopoly arguments.
It will fight piracy by being cheaper. Ideally Nintendo has already recouped development costs on the systems and the games. That means they can reproduce an older system, and all that needs to be covered are manufacturing, business, and shipping expenses - all relatively low and constant. Manufacturing methods have probably also progressed so that the hardware is cheaper (look at the $20 10-in-1 Atari & Activision games). Nintendo can offer the system and games at competitive rates to pirates. So given the choice between a real $15 cartridge and a shady $10, most people will do the right thing and buy the $15. (Numbers are made up.)
I assumed it would understood, but in case it isn't.
The camcorder manufacturer and DVD manufacturer pay the license fee. The difference in the fees is significant once you're looking at buying 1,000,000 licenses.
You have it flipped around. This isn't like Intel complaining that AMD is 50% cheaper. It's more like AMD (the "little guy") complaining that Intel (the "800lbs gorilla") is selling a competing project at half the price. Even better, it's a regional chain coffee shop complaining that Wal-Mart was installing coffee shops in all their stores and selling at 50% the going rate.
Microsoft has a monopoly. This move can be seen by some people as an abuse of monopoly position.
And consumers aren't going to care about what license costs what. The per license rate is very small. They don't care if their $1000 camcorder uses the 50 cent MPEG-4 or the 25 cent WMA9 codec. They care that their camcorder can put it's content on their computer to edit, that their computer can put the edited movie on a DVD, and their DVD reads the movie. I think THAT's the problem many people are having.
With MPEG-4, the codec is controlled by a group of companies with different interests. WMA9 is controlled by one, a convicted monopoly. And if that one company undercuts the MPEG-LA, they could wind up controlling the codec used on camcorders, computers, home entertainment systems, mobile phones, etc...
It should make sense if you've read VL. It's been a few years since I read ATP (I'm currently half way through rereading that trilogy), but my recollection is that VL has some of the same characters and takes place on the Bridge. The interconnectedness is about the same as that of the first trilogy -- similar themes, some recurring characters, but no show stoppers if you didn't finish Idoru.
Personally, I remember laughing out loud at a few moments, particularly if you read Gibson's article in Wired about his obsession with watches.
Wow, do you talk like that to your kids, too? What a wonderful parent you must be.
What is it about you ACs that can't read? I was calling the other AC poster a prick. And both of you missed where it said the suggestions came from parents. Since you ask, the children's ages range from 6 mo to 8 years.
Should read "A little creative problem solving is needed" and later "Plenty of parents are NOT rich or even wealthy..."
And to the prick who said obviously I'm not a parent. Right, I'm not but read the line you quoted. It says all the creative solutions came from friends and family who all have kids.
Slashdot Mirror
Thank You! After a day at work, my eyes were tired and for the life of me couldn't find the freakin' link.
Probably not. The agreement says "If you're a big brick and mortar store and you open an online presence that is branded as a branch of your b&m store, such as Target and Target.com, you're online presence should collect state sales tax wherever you have a b&m store."
The states have simply closed a loophole.
It doesn't affect true online retailers, those not connected to a b&m. It also doesn't affect specialty stores with only one or two b&m stores whose online presence is an extension of their mail-order catalogue.
I think there's a key difference between the sales tax on what you buy and the shipping fee the vendor charges you.
The tax is imposed by the state on what you buy.
The fee is set voluntarily by the vendor to cover their overheard, including shipping materials, shipping fees, warehouse space, etc... There is a small portion of that fee going to the shipper. Of the fee the shipper charges, there's an even smaller portion set aside for paying the taxes that are part of his tax liability.
It's no more double taxation than the bit of profit built into what you bought to cover the vendor's tax overhead (property taxes, employee taxes, licenses), and built into the wholesaler to cover his bit of tax overhead.
One decent thing about the sales tax. If you are a vendor, what you buy from a wholesaler or even another vendor, when it's bought for the purpose of resale, there is no sales tax. Sales tax is only collected at the point of sale, from vendor to enduser.
It's a cost of doing business. Like _all_ costs of doing business, it's built into the price of an good or service.
I'm curious. When I buy something online from Apple, they collect tax because they have an Apple Store in my state. Is that technically a use tax?
I always thought a use tax was the tax I would figure out and report to the state (if I were honest about my mail order purchases).
From the article:In the past week, however, Wal-Mart, Marshall Fields, Target, Toys R Us and Mervyn's each posted new sales tax notices on their Web sites, saying that the companies will charge taxes for buyers living in the states where sales taxes are on the books.
No slippery slope.
Now, why should UPS and FedEx get out of paying profit, gas, and employee taxes? Are they taxed more because they're shippers?
The companies involved have a physical presence in most states. Their dotcom is subsidiary with only a few physical locations. The dotcom thus gets out of collecting sales tax, but only technically.
The agreement should only affect stores with a physical presence in your state. Amazon.com, being little more than a set of warehouses, shouldn't have to collect sales tax unless one of their warehouses is in your state. This agreement doesn't affect them because in the case of having a warehouse in your state, they would've always been collecting sales tax.
The companies have agreed to collect your state's sales tax.
Like others have said, sales tax isn't the only reason. Try living in even a semi-rural area. I have to drive 40 miles to get to a large book store. It's easier and cheaper for me to order most books through Amazon unless I know I'm headed over the mountain and can stop by Barnes & Noble. (I'm not living in the country, just a town of 50,000 with the nearest city 40 miles away.)
Sure the local independent could order them, but it's still cheaper to buy certain books (O'Reilly) online. Nevermind that Amazon can get a book to me in two days whereas the indie book store might take two weeks.
E-commerce won't die till mail-order dies. Mail order isn't going to die till everyone with a hobby has a local store carrying exactly what they want. I doubt there'll be a high quality kite shop w/in an hour of where I live anytime soon.
Perhaps she works for the guy who runs a small local eatery in my town. He (supposedly) puts his laptop in the oven every night because he things the gov't is spying on him.
t is like you giving someone a plastic overlay with that has the bad words covered up. It does NOT change the original.
No, it's more like an ebook with the objectionable parts clipped out as seamlessly as possible. They'd still be in the file, but a reader wouldn't necessarily know something's been editied out. With an overlay doing the redaction, the reader can see something is covered up.
What Clearply tries to do is make it as seamless as possible. It would be possible to watch the movie and not notice there were scenes missing or altered. The version you perceive would not have been okayed by the copyright holder.
To the people replying to this post saying "If I do this, and I do that." The DGA isn't saying you can't fast forward through their movies. They're saying someone else can't edit their movies. It's a subtle difference, but a difference none the less.
You can rip the pages out of a book. You can carve an giant X in a Monet. You can cover your David.
What the DGA doesn't want is a company, neither associated with nor approved by the director, clipping these parts out for people. It's no longer the director's creation, it's not longer the director's Speech, but it still has the director's name on it.
How pissed would you be if someone edited out a few "objectionable" parts of your Speech? How about editing Lucy Parsons' words from "What I want is for every greasy grimy tramp to arm himself with a knife or a gun, and stationing himself at the doorways of the rich, shoot or stab them when they come out" to an easy to digest "I want every one of you to tell these people they're bad."
Now, for what scares me - why are people such spineless wimps? I understand not wanting to sit down with your kids and watch a movie with sex, violence, and cussing. Let's assume it's a movie that really is a piece of art - Fight Club? If you're kids aren't old enough to watch sex, violence, and cussing (SV&C), they shouldn't watch the movie. If they aren't old enough to see a little bit of nudity, they shouldn't watch the movie. You can't handle seeing a woman's breast, maybe you shouldn't be watching the movie. (Nevermind that with this DVD player, you're still *supporting* the director who put that breast in the movie.)
It's only a breast. The great majority of women have two. Your daughter has them. Any children you have who are attracted to women, will hopefully get the see them. There's nothing obscene about them. And let's not forget that everyone has a butt.
Cussing? if you have a job, were in the military, walk by a construction site, you're going to hear it. You're child probably will listen to music with cussing. You're child's friends say the words.
Violence? Watch the evening news.
Are there movies with needless SV&C? Yes, undoubtly.
Are they usually worth watching? No.
Goodfellas with the V&C? Probably stinks.
When altered, many movies loose their power. Just look at Lawrence of Arabia in formatted vs widescreen. The story is still there. The acting is there. The movie is still worth watching. But it looses the power of the scenery, it looses it's emenseness.
Think about 'Die Hard.' Let's assume you could edit out the violence and still have a watchable movie. Now let's cut, 'Yippee Kai Yay, Motherfuckers!' down to 'Yippee Kai Yay.' It severely takes away from the character and the situation. The character was established as a gritty New York Cop. He's going to cuss. The line has a tension to it. A censored line makes him sound goody two shoes.
Perhaps instead of renting or buying the movie, you should write the studio and say, "Sorry, I'm not going to rent or buy this movie because it has sex/violence/cussing." But no, you want to have your cake and eat it, too.
What's next, editing objectionable social commentary out of punk rock and traditional folk ballads?
You say: "Segway is such publicity-whore vaporware..."
Amazon says: "Available now for delivery starting March 2003."
Dude, you ripped that background from the BN site.
If you really know him, write up your own background.
Yah, yah, I know. I was just sick of this whole "Doesn't 'No Taxation Without Representation' sound familiar?" response.
Personally, I wouldn't mind paying a little more taxes to my state government but then my state faces a multi-billion dollar deficit. There are bridges needing repairs, teachers needing pay raises, streams to clean. But then that's just me.
Just curious, couldn't your argument be used to in the case of traveling out of state?
If I drive to N. Carolina, I'm not represented, but there'd be no way someone would let me get out of paying sales tax just because I live out of state.
Yes, I did read the article - had to to make sure it backed up my point. That it's a misdeamor to leave your keys in the car doesn't change the fact that stealing the car is theft.
At least in the US, there are cases where someone has picked up cash on the ground and been convicted of theft. See Joey Coyle. The money was in the street. He kept it. It was against the law.
Could you reference a few cases where someone has left keys in their car, had it stolen, and the thief has gotten off scot free or better yet had the case dismissed? How old are you to believe that you can take anything out in the open?
Even if the car is running and parked out front of your home, if it isn't yours and you take it, you are stealing it. See this article from the Minneapolis PD.
What's the difference between Flash and your cracker tool? Your intention. The credit data is a locked box, and you're taking bolt cutters to it.
Okay, the analogy was a little off. Say a company representating national coffee interests vs Wal-Mart.
... blah ... blah ... leverage the monopoly to gain entry .... blah blah blah. See the standard MS abuse of monopoly arguments.
No monopoly in the camcorder business. Microsoft does have a monopoly on computer OSs, and people are turning to their PCs for more and more editing. It would be too easy for MS to deny to license the WMA9 codec to Apple or a Linus developer. Or, as they did with IE, they use proprietary hooks in their OS
It will fight piracy by being cheaper. Ideally Nintendo has already recouped development costs on the systems and the games. That means they can reproduce an older system, and all that needs to be covered are manufacturing, business, and shipping expenses - all relatively low and constant. Manufacturing methods have probably also progressed so that the hardware is cheaper (look at the $20 10-in-1 Atari & Activision games). Nintendo can offer the system and games at competitive rates to pirates. So given the choice between a real $15 cartridge and a shady $10, most people will do the right thing and buy the $15. (Numbers are made up.)
I assumed it would understood, but in case it isn't.
The camcorder manufacturer and DVD manufacturer pay the license fee. The difference in the fees is significant once you're looking at buying 1,000,000 licenses.
You have it flipped around. This isn't like Intel complaining that AMD is 50% cheaper. It's more like AMD (the "little guy") complaining that Intel (the "800lbs gorilla") is selling a competing project at half the price. Even better, it's a regional chain coffee shop complaining that Wal-Mart was installing coffee shops in all their stores and selling at 50% the going rate.
Microsoft has a monopoly. This move can be seen by some people as an abuse of monopoly position.
And consumers aren't going to care about what license costs what. The per license rate is very small. They don't care if their $1000 camcorder uses the 50 cent MPEG-4 or the 25 cent WMA9 codec. They care that their camcorder can put it's content on their computer to edit, that their computer can put the edited movie on a DVD, and their DVD reads the movie. I think THAT's the problem many people are having.
With MPEG-4, the codec is controlled by a group of companies with different interests. WMA9 is controlled by one, a convicted monopoly. And if that one company undercuts the MPEG-LA, they could wind up controlling the codec used on camcorders, computers, home entertainment systems, mobile phones, etc...
It should make sense if you've read VL. It's been a few years since I read ATP (I'm currently half way through rereading that trilogy), but my recollection is that VL has some of the same characters and takes place on the Bridge. The interconnectedness is about the same as that of the first trilogy -- similar themes, some recurring characters, but no show stoppers if you didn't finish Idoru.
Personally, I remember laughing out loud at a few moments, particularly if you read Gibson's article in Wired about his obsession with watches.
The day after Jobs' keynote, the Apple mafia will be knocking on your door. Pay up or they're going to trash your current copy of iTunes and iPhoto!
Wow, do you talk like that to your kids, too? What a wonderful parent you must be.
What is it about you ACs that can't read? I was calling the other AC poster a prick. And both of you missed where it said the suggestions came from parents. Since you ask, the children's ages range from 6 mo to 8 years.
Damn Slashdot's lack of an comment editing!
Should read "A little creative problem solving is needed" and later "Plenty of parents are NOT rich or even wealthy..."
And to the prick who said obviously I'm not a parent. Right, I'm not but read the line you quoted. It says all the creative solutions came from friends and family who all have kids.