France To Tax the Internet To Pay For Music 209
bs0d3 writes "A new tax in France is aimed at ISPs. The new government tax on ISPs is to help pay for the CNM (Centre National de la Musique). Already in France there is a tax on TV, to pay for public access channels. It's similar to the tax in the United kingdom which pays for the BBC. This ISP tax will be the musical equivalent to that. President Sarkozy comments, 'Globalization is now, and the giants of the internet earn lot of money on the French market. Good for them, but they do not pay a penny in tax to France.' This all began after the music industry accused French ISPs of making billions of dollars on their backs. Now the music industry must also get their hands in their pockets."
Re:Oh good (Score:5, Interesting)
The tax isn't to compensate the music industry for downloads, it's to compensate the french government (seriously) for taxes the music industry isn't paying.
Re:Correction. (Score:3, Interesting)
We do have National Public Radio (NPR) that has multiple fund raising drives throughout the year. Many of the politicians are trying to get rid of it. They consider it a bastion of liberalism when it is in fact likely the most balanced news source available. I'm sure they consider their piss more valuable to society.
Re:What? (Score:2, Interesting)
Because the music industry wouldn't pay a penny. They are the "freeloaders" they accuse their clients of being.
Note: You pay the tax even if you are deaf, and never listen to music. Or if you use the Internet and don't even use speakers with your computer and never download any music. This is a corrupt democracy's view of an ideal world.
Re:A serious, honest question... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Correction. (Score:4, Interesting)
That's horrifying.
And yet, this horrific setup is what brings us the BBC and the like, you know, commercially and politically independent television.
You can't be that naive. The Beeb is pretty much the in-house press organ for the Labour Party in the UK.
That's funny, people in Labour say that it works for the Conservatives. Funny how that works huh?
Re:Recoup the lobby dollars (Score:4, Interesting)
No kidding. People say America is a corporatist country, but even we don't do bullshit like this.
Supporting French Music Only? (Score:4, Interesting)
The vast majority of music isn't produced in France or in French. Even music consumed in France. The French government have a history of trying to distort this in honor of gallic pride. In 1993, the French passed a law [nytimes.com] requiring French radio stations to play at least 40% French language music even though listeners didn't want it.
Information on this latest levy is pretty sketchy but it appears to be a tax to fund Centre National de la Musique whose goal appears to be to fund French music production [google.com].
So the French are collecting a tax based on the assumption of music piracy - where the majority of piracy is of British or American music - and then, by the looks of things, giving it entirely to the French music industry, not to the artists and labels whose music is actually pirated by French listeners and internet users anyway. Tres Francais.