France Considers 'Pirate Tax' For Online Ads 271
angry tapir writes "A report commissioned by the French Minister of Culture, Frédéric Mitterrand, urges the introduction of a tax on online advertising such as that carried by Google, which would be used to pay the creators of artistic and other works that lose out to online piracy."
Music/Movie Industries (Score:3, Interesting)
Sometimes I think the Movie and (espeically) the Music industries won't be content until the government outright introduces a "media tax" and gives it directly to the industry, regardless of whether anyone wants to actually buy what they produce.
I've got this crazy (and probably stupid) vision in my head of the RIAA and related organisations that no longer even pretends to produce something, and yet is shoveled money by the government as a way of "protecting artists" or something. Doubt it would ever get that far, but I'm sure some people in said organisations has had a similar, more sinister vision.
Hmmm. A government agency that doesn't actually do anything, yet continues to be fed billions in tax dollars that no one wants to pay. There's a joke in there somewhere.
Re:great idea (Score:3, Interesting)
Although a great recurring Slashdot meme, the "just fix your business model" viewpoint is utterly and completely retarded and ignorant.
It would not be validly applied in any other circumstance. E.g. let's say that businesses using Open Source are taxed heavily to compensate for lost VAT in commercial software. Consequently, a group of Open Source developers who rely on donations to do full-time development work experience a shortfall in donations and complain about that. Comments like "Yeah, learn to live with it", "You're behind the times", "Dinosaurs do one thing: Die out", "Rethink your development model", "Just find out how to do it" etc. are meaningless.
Even if the artists shouldn't change their business model, why is it in order to punish those who did change their business model?
This tax is going to target companies completely unrelated to artists (SaaS companies for instance). I'm pretty sure they aren't the ones pirating music. Also I'm also pretty sure that their customers (people who buy SaaS) generally don't pirate music.
Everything about this tax is misguided
Fix the original problem (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, that's good, but lets address the original problem - roads have been used for smuggling for many years so lets tax billboard advertisers for the losses incurred by overland smuggling. Petition your local lawmaker NOW!
The French Minister of Culture (Score:1, Interesting)
sucks dick... and charges for it.
Re:The old Motto: (Score:5, Interesting)
I run an ad company that might be minuscule compared to google/yahoo, but does serve text ads worldwide, with web front-ends in America and UK.
Our office, back-end and banking are in Asia. Why would I give France the time of day?
Sarkozy's reichwing partei (Score:4, Interesting)
When he's not stirring up racism to try to up their votes, he's busy gazing admiringly at China. But he's not alone. Bush's best friend, Bono (of soup-elevator music boy's band "U2" fame) has the same idea. "Great" minds "think" alike.
What you don't know is that the fucktard also wants to tax inkjet cartridges(*), because he heard books are being pirated, and he obviously thinks people print ebooks. After all, that's how he reads 'em fancy newfangled electronic males.
--
(*) I'm not kidding.
Is it for the artists? (Score:3, Interesting)
The key question is if this tax will in fact be used to help the artists or will it be yet another way for media conglomerates to suck on the government's tit while the artist itself, the creative mind responsible for creating a work of art, will continue to get the shaft and continue to be relegated as simple temporary worker, receiving nothing more than a symbolic compensation for a one-off job. This is particularly sickening due to the fact that media conglomerates, which are thriving, are using their power and influence to not only avoid compensating any artist but also to screw the entire world out of their culture and their rights to access works of art without being subjected to the whims of a totalitarian gatekeeper.
Re:The old Motto: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The old Motto: (Score:3, Interesting)
You're not concerned.
Contrary to what the summary said, it's not a tax for artist.
The problem is twofold :
- Google France declares to the french IRS 40 000 000 of revenues, while 800 000 000 coming from french companies are declared in Ireland to evade french taxes. Basically, if french money is good enough for Google to open some offices in France, they should pay taxes.
- Content providers (the like of Slashdot lemonde.fr whatever) have seen their ad revenue decrease. There is doubts on whether it comes from Google abusing it's more thant 65% market share on internet ad network.
Some info in french :
http://www.lemonde.fr/technologies/article/2010/01/08/nicolas-sarkozy-souhaite-que-google-paye-plus-d-impots-en-france_1289051_651865.html#ens_id=1280818 [lemonde.fr]
(Though, they're wrong on the practice being legal, it's just really hard to prove and estimate for the state)