UK Proposes Broadband Expansion, Plus a Music and Film Tax 262
Wowsers writes "First the tech illiterates in the UK government want to extend broadband internet connections to every home, whether it makes sense or not, then at the same time they propose a £20 per year (approx $29US) broadband tax which they claim will pay the record and film industries for their failed business models. Coincidence the two proposals are linked? And why should people be forced to pay for the failed film and music industries?"
Re:Remind me again (Score:2, Informative)
By the time they'd got to Leningrad, you didn't have too much choice.
If you didn't beat them there, they've been in Moscow and you'd be Sprechen die Deutsch.
Reiteration (Score:4, Informative)
This article is a bit mis-leading. Frighteningly, a more accurate account actually makes it sound even worse.
The government is planning to force ISPs to extend 2Mbps service to all locations with-in their domain.
The government also plans to force ISPs to "provide data about serial copyright-breakers to music and film companies..."
The government would create an agency to over-see this transfer of data about music/film copyright infringers, and the ISPs would flip the bill for the costs of operating this new agency.
The UK Government is... (Score:2, Informative)
You could argue, and you'd be right if you did, that connection prices in the UK, as say compared to Europe, are extremely high with a seriously sh*tty service for your money and that this constitutes a form of tax. Call it a "ha ha, you live on an Island, where are you going to go for a cheaper connection?" tax *(the same principle can be applied to most things on the particular bit of dirt we call the UK).
It says everything you need to know about Government, the ISP's and capitalism in general. Profit is privatised and loss is socialised.
WIth a bit of luck it will be a voluntary tax and we can all refuse to pay it and f*ck the lot of them.
UK context (Score:3, Informative)
First the tech illiterates in the UK government want to extend broadband internet connections to every home, whether it makes sense or not
This isn't quite so daft in context: the UK used to have a nationalised phone company. Although this was privatized and became BT many moons ago they've subsequently enjoyed a semi-monopoly. Most ADSL broadband services, whatever the brand, are re-badged BT services - Its only fairly recently that some ADSL providers started installing their own equipment at exchanges.
One of the quid-pro-quos for this commercial advantage is that BT are obliged to provide (voice) connections to every household. Updating this to include data connections in some way is eminently sensible - at lesat in principle.
A pox on the 20 quid tax to fund a copyright enforcement quango, though.
"T.V.tax" (Score:5, Informative)
It works like this. Everyone in the UK who owns a T.V. has to buy a licence for £131.50 ($187.2). The money raised all goes to fund the BBC, which is "non-commercial" ie no ads etc. This covers the cost of some 7 TV channels and numerous national and local radio channels, as well as the BBCi online services. The BBC also gains revenue from sales of it's programmes abroad, and from a commercial merchandising arm. None of the licence fee goes to any other broadcaster. ITV, Channel Four, Channel Five, B-Sky-B (Sky) and Vigin media are all commercial operations and depend on advertising revenue etc for their income.
Having said all that, I don't see that this is relevent to a "Broadband Tax" at all. This is just another misguided nonsense from this misguided and non-sensical govenrment that we Brits are currently enduring.
Anecdote (Score:3, Informative)
Of course, the artificially low price keeps out competitors, but because of that it's been losing quite a bit of money. Rather than raise the price of the broadband connection, the beneficent city leaders recently decided to add a surcharge to all resident's power bills. All residents, whether they utilize the connection or not. Power bills.
Anyway, our leaders here in the US are no more competent than your leaders over in the UK.
Re:Is this surprising? (Score:5, Informative)
No, the BBC is funded by taxing everyone in the UK who has a equipment that they use to watches or records TV signals as they are shown [tvlicensing.co.uk].
The difference is that the TV License has a benefit (it lets you have a TV, it funds an organisation that provides the only watchable TV channel, and it funds some decent UK shows that aren't complete drivel* and which are an hour long if they are scheduled for an hour, rather than being 40 minutes long in an hour long slot) while the broadband tax will be levied on people to cover the illegal actions of others even if the person being taxed isn't doing anything illegal themselves.
.
* Channel 4 has "Big Brother", BBC produces things like QI. If I had to specifically decide which my license fee went to and which producers had to be locked away for eternity for crimes against TV and sanity, the Big Brother people would definitely have to be the ones locked in the Big Brother house along with the mindless contestants of each series they've made so far.
tv license != tax (Score:5, Informative)
Taxes are collected and administered by the Government. TV license fees are not.
There's a good and important reason for that: To keep public television free of governmental/political interference.
Calling the TV license a tax, as well as referring to the BBC and other (west-)European public TV companies as 'government-owned' and similar gives the inaccurate picture that they're under some kind of direct government control, which they are not.
You fail at maths (Score:3, Informative)
50*52*1000000=£2.6 billion
Banks recieve £400 billion: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7658277.stm [bbc.co.uk]
And if you think that the money given to banks is going to their employees, your understanding of capitalism sucks even more than your arithmetic.
Re:It Will Encourage Piracy (Score:3, Informative)
A legal right to broadband in every home is *up to* 2Mb only. I know people who "technically" have broadband and *at best* up to 512Mb.
This is just wrong. The proposal is that ISPs be obliged to be capable of providing at least 2 megabit connections to every home in the UK.
Intrestingly the European Human Rights act guarantees an individual's right to privacy - as far as I know the U.K. have not officailly signed-up to it yet.
There is no such thing as the European Human Rights act. There is, however, the European Convention on Human Rights. This is a treaty to which all EU members are signatories, and have been for a long time (the UK has been since 1965 I think).
However, because the UK's legal system is dualist (international law does not take effect until it is enshrined in UK legislation), in order for the ECHR to be enforceable in domestic courts, domestic laws have to be passed giving effect to it.
And they were: the Human Rights Act (1998) does exactly this. Article 8 of the ECHR to which you allude ("the right to respect for private and family life") exists under UK law in the HRA. Also note that courts can declare current legislation incompatible with convention rights (although this doesn't invalidate legislation, it puts a lot of pressure on the government) and ministers introducing new bills have to declare that they are compatible with convention rights before they proceed.
Also, note s 3 of HRA which requires that courts read existing law in a way which is compatible with Convention rights.
If a £20 "tax" were introduced, the piracy rate would increase because people will want to justify the increased cost
Yes this is a good point. If the government were to use the money to compensate the industry, then it would effectively allow filesharing of copyrighted works because they would be paid for, and so it wouldn't be piracy.
Unfortunately, as is typical, it was decided instead to wrap everything in a layer of bureaucracy that isn't going to benefit anyone: consumers have to pay out without getting anything in return, the industry has to fight endless court battles with defendants who don't have the funds to provide much, if any, substantial compensation and the government has to spend time and money overseeing the whole thing.
It's also interesting to consider the sums involved. At £20 per year, with 13.8 million broadband subscribers in the UK, the tax will generate £276 million (~$393 million).
Re:Failed? (Score:1, Informative)
What do you mean still? They keep growing every year.
Re:Not a bad thing (Score:4, Informative)
So let me get this straight.
1. You tax the people. 2. You give the tax to the record companies. 3. The record companies use this tax to sue the very people who were taxed.
Isn't that just a roundabout way of forcing the defendant to pay all the legal bills regardless of the outcome?
No its worse than that - it gets paid twice. Once by all the innocent people and then by the guy that they use the money to catch.
Re:But that isn't the case. (Score:3, Informative)
"There remained major concerns how consumer protection would be properly addressed, while developing the self-regulatory aspect through a code of practice raised significant questions on how to accommodate other rights holders, the smaller ISPs and consumer bodies."
That's a breif mention of that very problem. Basically it remains unaddressed, they simply have absolutely no idea how to deal with smaller rights holders and smaller ISPs that can't afford the massive costs of user surveillance, but they're going to do it anyway.
The report is at:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/29_01_09digital_britain_interimreport.pdf [bbc.co.uk]
Copyright stuff starts at page 36 of the document (page 41 in Acrobat's PDF page numbering) and the above stuff is on page 49 in Acrobat's PDF page numbering.
Re:UK is more communist than China! (Score:1, Informative)
This is pure communist!
No, no it is not. It is capitalism.
Please, UK readers, write to your MP (Score:3, Informative)
As most people here can probably see, this is a technological and financial disaster waiting to happen. Even without the media company tax, free broadband, by 2012 no less, is going to be an absolute nightmare for all concerned and will most likely help to degrade broadband performance. If they really cared they'd be leaning on the likes of BT to upgrade the current infrastructure so ISP speeds and costs can slowly come down.
Re:UK is more communist than China! (Score:2, Informative)
This isn't the USA so thanks to the fact we pay a bit more in tax, jobless doesn't mean penniless. In the UK, you're guaranteed £60 a week if you're single, £95 if you're a couple plus another £45 a week for each child. On top of that, council tax is then free. If you rent then you get help with that to a certain level and if you've a mortgage then once you've been unemployed 13 weeks, your mortgage interest is paid at Bank of Englsnd base rate plus 1.58%.
And also because it's the UK, you don't have to shit yourself about not being able to meet HMO insurance bills. When you're unemployed, even the flat fee for prescriptions is waived.
In the UK and most of Europe, you get looked after when you're out of work. In the USA, you get fucked over when you're out of work.
Re:"T.V.tax" (Score:3, Informative)
Everyone in the UK who owns a T.V. has to buy a licence for ã131.50 ($187.2).
Not everyone. You get 50% off if you're blind.
Re:"T.V.tax" (Score:1, Informative)
None of the licence fee goes to any other broadcaster. ITV, Channel Four, Channel Five, B-Sky-B (Sky) and Vigin media are all commercial operations and depend on advertising revenue etc for their income.
Some of channel 4's programs are public service and they do receive a portion of it. S4C (Welsh Channel 4) is also subsidised by the licence payer although it still carries advertising.
I think some of the fee also covers some of the transmitter infrastructure which is used by all terrestrial broadcasters. It might even include the new freesat service?
Re:Uhm.. (Score:3, Informative)
To Thieve is to deprive of property without permission.
Deprivation requires loss.
Copying a file does not cause the loss of the original.
Downloading the copy does not cause the loss of the original, or the copy.
Never mind Law, your comment failed to get past English Language.