States Seek Extension of Ecommerce Tariff Moratorium at WTO

An anonymous reader shares a report: A group of states is seeking to extend a World Trade Organization agreement to refrain from placing customs duties on digital transmissions, a World Trade Organization document showed on Thursday. The proposal submitted by Barbados on behalf of a group of African, Caribbean and Pacific states proposed to extend the current moratorium -- a key pillar of internet development for decades -- beyond March 2026, when it was set to expire.

"digital transmissions"

[Venova]

what exactly does that even mean here? does it apply to microtransactions of gacha games? just transmission of data itself? in any case it seems bad to start tariffing such literally ephemeral things?

Re:

[dimeglio]

Does it block tariffs on outsourced labour such as code written in India or elsewhere?

Re:

[CaptQuark]

The list of digital items that the WTO covers can include many electronic items. The summary mentions e-books and video games, but other folks have mentioned other electronic items that might also be subject to custom duties.

e-books
video games
music
digital data
electronic blueprints
3D printer STL files
How-To guides

Things get murkier if you start to include other downloaded software
Office 365?
Music subscriptions?
Adobe su

States

[rossdee]

I thnk they are referring to Countries rather than the 50 that make up the United States

Re:

[arglebargle_xiv]

Also:

The proposal submitted by Barbados on behalf of a group of African, Caribbean and Pacific states

Given that list of readily-purchased entities, was it the states themselves or were their votes bought by Amazon, Fecebook, and Google?

The WTO is dead

[martin-boundary]

What is the point of this? The WTO has been effectively dead for about 5 years.

It's not sleeping.

It's plumage is drab.

It's fallen off its perch.

From here [wikipedia.org]:

Since 2019, when the Donald Trump administration began blocking appointments to the body, the Appellate Body has been unable to enforce WTO rules and punish violators of WTO rules [...]

It's funny how the world goes to shit when the bad guys deliberately block the enforcement of rules.

/FoodForThought.