"The internet", I am not sure what you mean by that. Google is making money in France, we are a sovereign country, we should be able to tax it. Now if you think that taxes equal to extortion, it is your problem, but don't blame the French for that. I don't see any reason why we shouldn't be able to tax a company just because it operates on the web.
We are a sovereign country. Why do we care of what we do in our country? If Google doesn't make any money in France, I am sure they will pull themselves out of France.
YOU should clearly check your logic. He used a reductio ad absurdum. By arguing that everyone does it, the logical deduction is that there is no culture and that there is only history when it comes to movies, which is just stupid.
I am French and I have really enjoyed reading almost all comments. I am not a big advocate of free-market, but I agree that in theory it can optimize the distribution and reduce the cost of books in that case. However, at the same time I (and probably many French people) want to keep physical libraries that add some value (guidance, human touch, tourism, whatever...). To me these two things are partly contradictory. In short, I think that generalist libraries are not viable and that bigger enterprises could do the same job better in the end.
Back to reality, I agree with many people who pointed out that Amazon was distorting the market. Free-market advocates here probably don't know that Amazon uses tons of tricks to pay less taxes for instance. That's why I agree with the decision of the MPs, we have to do what is necessary to keep our libraries afloat right now. Librarians are valuable and we can't just lose few generations of librarians because of a company trying to build a monopoly. ideally, librarians should specialize more and find a way to monetize their skill that is: metadata. French librarians have lost the battle of mass distribution, but the battle of metadata is not over yet and I think French librarians have right now quite an edge on Amazon (or any other mass supplier).
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"The internet", I am not sure what you mean by that. Google is making money in France, we are a sovereign country, we should be able to tax it. Now if you think that taxes equal to extortion, it is your problem, but don't blame the French for that. I don't see any reason why we shouldn't be able to tax a company just because it operates on the web.
Economic growth is picking up nearly everywhere in the EU? I have missed that, can you provide us some sources? France isn't doing well, but calling it the sickman of Europe is rather blunt to me (http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/11/09/more-notes-on-france-bashing/, http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/12/les-not-so-miserables/, http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/13/more-on-not-so-miserable-france/). Also I don't see the link between the state of our economy and us wanting health/safety... To me the euro currency is to blame.
We are a sovereign country. Why do we care of what we do in our country? If Google doesn't make any money in France, I am sure they will pull themselves out of France.
Comparing Hadopi to a tax... The failure of Hadopi is no argument to presume the failure of such tax. I don't see any logical deduction here.
YOU should clearly check your logic. He used a reductio ad absurdum. By arguing that everyone does it, the logical deduction is that there is no culture and that there is only history when it comes to movies, which is just stupid.
I am French and I have really enjoyed reading almost all comments. I am not a big advocate of free-market, but I agree that in theory it can optimize the distribution and reduce the cost of books in that case. However, at the same time I (and probably many French people) want to keep physical libraries that add some value (guidance, human touch, tourism, whatever...). To me these two things are partly contradictory. In short, I think that generalist libraries are not viable and that bigger enterprises could do the same job better in the end. Back to reality, I agree with many people who pointed out that Amazon was distorting the market. Free-market advocates here probably don't know that Amazon uses tons of tricks to pay less taxes for instance. That's why I agree with the decision of the MPs, we have to do what is necessary to keep our libraries afloat right now. Librarians are valuable and we can't just lose few generations of librarians because of a company trying to build a monopoly. ideally, librarians should specialize more and find a way to monetize their skill that is: metadata. French librarians have lost the battle of mass distribution, but the battle of metadata is not over yet and I think French librarians have right now quite an edge on Amazon (or any other mass supplier).