Cities Sue Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, Claim They Owe Cable 'Franchise Fees' (arstechnica.com) 111
Four cities in Indiana are suing Netflix and other video companies, claiming that online video providers and satellite-TV operators should have to pay the same franchise fees that cable companies pay for using local rights of way. Ars Technica reports: The lawsuit was filed against Netflix, Disney, Hulu, DirecTV, and Dish Network on August 4 in Indiana Commercial Court in Marion County. The cities of Indianapolis, Evansville, Valparaiso, and Fishers want the companies to pay the cable-franchise fees established in Indiana's Video Service Franchises (VSF) Act, which requires payments of 5 percent of gross revenue in each city.
The lawsuit is based on an unusual legal argument and doesn't seem likely to succeed. Essentially, the cities are claiming that Netflix and similar providers use the public rights of way simply by offering video streaming services over the Internet: "Defendants transmit video programming to Indiana subscribers using Internet protocol and other technologies. When doing so, Defendants transmit their programming through facilities located at least in part in public rights of way within the geographic boundaries of Indiana Units, including public rights of way located within Plaintiffs' geographic boundaries. Therefore, Defendants are required by the VSF Act to pay the Plaintiffs -- and all other Indiana Units in which Defendants transmit video programming through facilities located at least in part in a public right-of-way -- "franchise fees."
But streaming companies don't have to build physical infrastructure in each city to offer online video, so they aren't deploying their own wires on public rights of way. US law defines a cable system as "a facility, consisting of a set of closed transmission paths and associated signal generation, reception, and control equipment that is designed to provide cable service." Local franchising rules and fees are based on cities' authority to manage their local rights of way. Netflix, Hulu, and Disney+ are Internet-only services. Dish and DirecTV are primarily satellite operators but also offer online access. The cities' lawsuit never mentions the word "satellite" and doesn't fully explain how DirecTV and Dish use the public rights of way.
The lawsuit is based on an unusual legal argument and doesn't seem likely to succeed. Essentially, the cities are claiming that Netflix and similar providers use the public rights of way simply by offering video streaming services over the Internet: "Defendants transmit video programming to Indiana subscribers using Internet protocol and other technologies. When doing so, Defendants transmit their programming through facilities located at least in part in public rights of way within the geographic boundaries of Indiana Units, including public rights of way located within Plaintiffs' geographic boundaries. Therefore, Defendants are required by the VSF Act to pay the Plaintiffs -- and all other Indiana Units in which Defendants transmit video programming through facilities located at least in part in a public right-of-way -- "franchise fees."
But streaming companies don't have to build physical infrastructure in each city to offer online video, so they aren't deploying their own wires on public rights of way. US law defines a cable system as "a facility, consisting of a set of closed transmission paths and associated signal generation, reception, and control equipment that is designed to provide cable service." Local franchising rules and fees are based on cities' authority to manage their local rights of way. Netflix, Hulu, and Disney+ are Internet-only services. Dish and DirecTV are primarily satellite operators but also offer online access. The cities' lawsuit never mentions the word "satellite" and doesn't fully explain how DirecTV and Dish use the public rights of way.
Popcorn! (Score:5, Funny)
Get yer popcorn here!
I bet they do (Score:2)
Cities are just legalized mobsters (Score:5, Interesting)
Just goes to show how city governments will literally tax anything and everything to death. Revenues are in decline and they are reaching out and shaking down anything with a pulse.
If this somehow makes it to court, Netflix and everyone else would be wise to simply geo-block those cities from their services immediately, and let the resulting civil uprising take care of the rest.
I hope these idiots get curb-stomped in court.
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Government is capitalism wherein the monopolist owns a militia.
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Try totalitarian dictatorship... not capitalism..
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How is government not a monopolist capitalist? They produce a bunch of services and then take money from you to provide it to you (what a capitalist does), since you aren't allowed to choose anyone else, and they can set whatever price (tax) they like .. they are a monopolist.
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Current governments are a monopoly. That doesn't make them capitalist, and in fact, monopolies have very little to do with capitalism, being mostly formed by government enforcement. The trade deals you make with a capitalist are voluntary. Current governments are decidedly not.
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Actually, the monopoly in question is the city streets. Cities used to grant monopolies to cable companies to allow them to dig up the streets and install cables - provided they wired up everybody. That was a good deal for everyone - except, of course for the monopoly pricing on cable service. In any case, cities were fairly compensated for the street access. These days, if your city is big enough, there are multiple cable systems accommodated this way.
In any case, I'm guessing that the problem is that
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In any case, I'm guessing that the problem is that the fees were tied to TV service - and now that lots of people are using the same cables for internet-only service, the revenue stream is drying up. If so, cities should be tying their access fees to the cables, not the service. Then again, maybe they're just getting greedy and trying to get extra revenues from streaming services - on top of the street access for the physical networks...
Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, they can't.
The FCC ruled in 2018 that local franchise authority's have no authority over non-video (i.e. Internet) services. That would seem to include the authority to impose franchise fees.
About the rule [nexttv.com]
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Your idea of what capitalism is and what it does is horribly skewed. You sound like a freshman college student who just had their first economics course taught by a professor who is sympathetic to socialism and now you've got it all figured out.
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Moreover, providing public services is a core function of government. It doesn't matter what political-economic system is involved, government still provides servi
Re: Cities are just legalized mobsters (Score:1)
Just because commies are wrong about the solution doesn't make them wrong about the problem.
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To be fair, they never mentioned commies.
Totalitarianism is a system of government, Communism is an *economic* system. One which has never actually been attempted at nation scale, despite the protestations of many totalitarian governments. Communism, like socialism, requires that the workers own the means of production - that's never been attempted at scale. Instead we have authoritarian governments claiming to be communist when *they* own the means of production - but the government is not the people.
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Calling it whatever name you like, does nothing to solving the problems.
How things are implemented are usually far more important than the ideal to be implemented.
Venezuela Socialism was implemented poorly. Mostly due to poor democracy, civic involvement and too much power to the leader where the citizens work for the leader.
Finland Socialism was implemented much better. There is strong sense of democracy, large civic involvement, and the leader needs to work for the citizens.
Capitalism can both be a forc
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Government is capitalism wherein the monopolist owns a militia.
You are making a case for limited government. Badly, but still a case.
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Of course. Ties in perfectly with Covid-19. Pandemic and unemployed means little taxes coming in. People staying at home using streaming in record numbers. Ah, hah! Sources of revenue. Kind of like, ah hah people are shopping online in record numbers. Tax that. Pandemic just makes the situation bigger.
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Not sure how cities work in the US, but in Canada, they derive almost all their money from property taxes, which need to be paid regardless of whether or not people are making money or if the houses/businesses are even occupied. I don't see how the tax situation changes amid a pandemic.
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Their revenue mostly comes from property taxes, user fees, provincial/federal subsidies. I think the only shortfall they have right now that is affected by the pandemic is less people using the TTC. Pretty much everything else is the same. The pandemic has caused some extra costs for the city, but most of their revenue streams haven't been impacted to a large amount.
You're right (Score:2)
Jokes aside you know what would stop this? Maybe a coordinated response to a national emergency. If only we had a large, powerful, central organization that was set up to coordinate a response to things too big for individual states to respond to.
Yep, sure would be nice. Too bad we don't have one of those...
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Fortunately we live in a republic, where power is vested closer to the people, mostly in state and local government.
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Hang on now, who's going to pay for those pension commitments they made? The rule is the private sector takes all the casualties in an economic downturn, and the public sector gets to tax any survivors.
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Re:Cities are just legalized mobsters (Score:5, Insightful)
While I agree with your premise that many cities are trying anything and everything to raise more revenue, sometimes to cover incompetence, there are larger forces at play here. America's second gilded age is peaking, and the strain on some of these communities is starting to reach a breaking point.
Think about the costs associated with running a small town/city. Education, policing, local infrastructure, etc. Now think about the strains we're seeing on those services. Real wages for the working class, the kinds of people likely living in small and medium density cities, has been declining for decades. That's a smaller per-capita tax base. With that has come an increase in poverty, as the median wage shifts lower. Poverty is well known to increase the need for policing and other social services to handle things like drug epidemics, a la the opioid crisis. Education has become more expensive as we've tried to expand its reach (we no longer simply give up on children with mental disabilities for example), and the public education system now bears disproportionate weight from those disadvantaged students as private education grows and kicks those students back into the public pool. Lack of reform in public pensions certainly isn't helping either... we have workers expecting to retire in their late 50's and early 60's when the majority of them will have 15 mostly productive years left, and 25 years of life left. Pensions and social security were imagined at a time when life expectancy was much less and unhealthy people died fast; they weren't structured to let you spend the last third of your life touring the country in an RV. When you look objectively at the real costs of these things they quickly become insurmountable.
Many communities have tried to stop the bleeding by shaving money off of infrastructure budgets, which has only compounded the problem. Not to mention there's now decades of lack of investment in these systems... I hate to jump on the "blame the boomer" bandwagon, but in my small town 30 years ago I was educated in a building built around the time of the first world war. Eventually a bond passed for a new school, due in no small part to the fact the ceiling was literally falling down and almost hitting children. The boomer generation simply refused to reinvest in the nation, instead opting for the comforting lies of the Reganites that we could cut taxes dramatically and still maintain our communities. Now their accumulated debts coming due. And on a national level prosperity has been drained out of most areas into enclaves of wealth, such that the tax base simply isn't there to pay those debts. Taxing people at 150% of jack shit is still jack shit, and anyone with more than jack shit understandably would abandon the community if taxes were jacked up anyway.
Ultimately this has progressed past what most local government can handle. Probably past what most state government can handle. It's easy to shit on these local leaders, but the problems they face are just flat out beyond them, and frankly we can't expect every person on a city council to be a genius.
In the last gilded age things led to societal upheaval. Hundreds of men with weapons blocking industrial centers demanding better treatment. People drug from their homes and beaten. What we're seeing in cities today that has people so aghast is the faintest shadow of those prior workers rights movements, and make no mistake that the racial equality movements today are very much tied at the hip with these socioeconomic issues. I'm curious if we have the stomach to handle this next round of unrest. We probably aren't past the point of no return yet. You could convince people that the new retirement age is their early 70's if you paired it with a dramatic increase in taxes on personal wealth for the Bezos' of the world and a large reinvestment in the public space. Maybe we'll see the work week contract again, or even better the salary requirement before overtime is required dramatically raised. Or maybe we'll just see companies hire mercenaries to clear out rioters and 30 foot walls around corporate campuses. Tough to tell. These will be interesting times.
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And once the rich are drained, there's no where to go.
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Cities are largely funded by property taxes, some larger cities also have income taxes, but that is more the exception than the rule.
The issue for cities is declining property values.
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That is why you need to vote for the other guy, who is only willing to overly tax the product and services that you do not benefit from. Vs the current guy who is taxing services that you need to pay for.
Those darn liberals who tax business for making money.
Those darn conservatives who create an overly complex set of criminal law making it impossible to not break the law, which they then can collect fines for every law breaker out there.
Those darn liberals who are taxing the Rich who will not invest their
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I hope these idiots get curb-stomped in court.
I hope a lot of things, but having a city run out of funding is not one of them. I mean shit America's infrastructure is a disgrace as it is. I can only hope that after being curb stomped by Netflix governments actually come and ask *you* to pay some reasonable taxes before the entire country crumbles more than it already is.
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If the city is under-financed, do something to attract businesses to the city, get some damn ratables on the books.
I can't see a tax on a Netflix generating enough income to suddenly make insolvent cities solvent again.
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The lawsuit may have been spurred in part by cities getting less franchise revenue as TV customers switch to online video. "Records maintained by the Valparaiso clerk-treasurer show the Porter County city received $446,000 in video franchise fees last year, $457,000 in 2018, and $476,000 in 2017," The Times of Northwest Indiana wrote last week.
To dredge up an old quote relevant to the situation, although it refers to individuals and corporations, not government: “There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to the public interest. This strange doctrine is not suppor
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$30,000 cut on what used to be a $476,000 fee? That works out to a 6% cut - big whoop!
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Just goes to show how city governments will literally tax anything and everything to death. Revenues are in decline and they are reaching out and shaking down anything with a pulse.
I think it's more likely that Comcast or whoever else is the local monopoly provider is behind this.
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Funds paying for what again... (Score:1, Troll)
Those city funds pay for schools
The same schools that are all closed? And that the teachers unions close if anyone tries to open?
Just sayin'
police
The same police people and cities now want to defund? So taxpayers are getting some of that money back right?
drug addiction rehab
Is that working anywhere? If it I, why is San Francisco the way it is?
The problem is that all of the services you list, cities seem to be doing a very awful job at these days, and with Covid shutdowns are often not even offering some
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We're already paying sales tax on these services, which in itself is sketchy at best. It's not able giving these guys a break, it's about keeping corrupt unaccountable local governments in check. These companies are already taxed at the federal level and all of their employees pay hefty income taxes as-is.
If they're not paying their fair share, raise the existing taxes and pipe more funding to municipalities through existing programs. Letting unaccountable local municipalities exercise legal taxing authori
"Unaccountable Local Governments" (Score:2)
We're already paying sales tax on these services, which in itself is sketchy at best. It's not able giving these guys a break, it's about keeping corrupt unaccountable local governments in check.
How are elected governments unaccountable? You can throw them out.
The fact is that the residents of these cities often LIKE it when their governments do these shakedowns. If they can shake Netflix down, then that's less pressure to raise THEIR taxes or to give up or cut back on favored city services.
Not very funny (Score:3)
Well I put some popcorn in the microwave and all that .. but then as I was waiting I thought .. wait a second .. what if my own local government decides to implement this? I'll have to pay more for Netflix and what will I get in return? Nothing. At least with Netflix getting the money they can spend it on half-ass entertaining shows. As terrible as Netflix shows are, they're much better than the cash disappearance magic show my local government puts on.
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But if you get internet through your cable company, then who pays? The ISP, Netflix, both?
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I'd be for this if our internet infrastructure was provided by a local utility who provided internet service at cost rather than huge corporations who provide sub-par service and just try to charge as much as the market will bear.
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Yep exactly. This is a crazy solution very mob like. Usually a cable and phone operator has a regional monopoly. You charge them access to be part of the monopoly/duopoly that immediately gets passed along to the customers. The customers also get robbed blind because of lack of competition. Basically we are paying for both the no show employees and the goons that beat us up.
If the government wants to pretend that their right of way is providing any value to their citizens how about use it to run at cost ser
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If the government wants to pretend that their right of way is providing any value to their citizens how about use it to run at cost services like public utilities instead of handing it to someone else to decide what to charge?
You've never really heard of the Public Utility Commission, have you?
You really think utilities get to charge whatever they like for water, electricity, sewage, etc.?
Hell, the Post Office can't even alter its postal rates without a literal act of congress.
Here's a clue for you - those politicians that you keep electing each year, they are the ones who confirm the people that set the rates on utilities.
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You are arguing against someone that said the exact opposite that I did. It is precisely because the rates are set at or near actual cost for public utilities that I think it's stupid that they just slapped a tax/fee on the cable operators and let them go nuts setting the pricing to whatever they felt like on the government granted monopoly they got handed to them.
Wait until... (Score:2)
Wait until they discontinue the services in Marion County.
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Worth trying, but how comfortable of a voter margin is there for the current government? My guess is even if every Netflix subscriber voted for the other guy, they'd still win.
Re: Wait until... (Score:2)
More likely their own wives or kids will start complaining they can't watch their shows
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This is "bread and circuses". There will be angry mobs storming city hall before any election could ever occur.
They could just tax the services (Score:2)
They could just tax "yes". (Score:4, Insightful)
Legalize prostitution, then tax that. Never-ending source of money since people will never say no to sex. Legalize drugs. Tax that since people will never say no to their drugs. Anything people can't say no to, tax that. Guaranteed income.
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>Legalize drugs. Tax that since people will never say no to their drugs.
California legalized weed, and the illegal market is still 80% of sales. Most local governments went full throttle on taxes, ensuring the success of the black market. If I buy weed retail I have to buy it in little jars and pay crazy tax, there is no volume discount. If I buy black market weed, I can touch it, smell it, probably even try it, before its weighed out in front of me and I can buy exactly the amount I want - all with v
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>Legalize drugs. Tax that since people will never say no to their drugs.
California legalized weed, and the illegal market is still 80% of sales. Most local governments went full throttle on taxes, ensuring the success of the black market. If I buy weed retail I have to buy it in little jars and pay crazy tax, there is no volume discount. If I buy black market weed, I can touch it, smell it, probably even try it, before its weighed out in front of me and I can buy exactly the amount I want - all with volume discounts.
Legalize and tax now seems a little naive, you need to plan for a successful market too.
Be that as it may, does a thriving black market really signify the tax wasn't a success? https://www.ocregister.com/202... [ocregister.com]
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Be that as it may, does a thriving black market really signify the tax wasn't a success? https://www.ocregister.com/202... [ocregister.com]
I guess it depends on what you thought the goal was. My goal was to ensure most sales were legalized so you could buy at a reputable outlet. Tax revenue was incidental.
If your goal was to raise the most tax revenue possible, I think it's massively underperforming. My understanding is the tax revenue is far below what was anticipated, I assume because so much of volume is still black market (and untaxed). Part of that is the very high tax rates (so people have a strong incentive to stay in the black market),
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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California legalized weed in California and then set out to heavily regulate it. The regulations are a serious drain on the system. The black market has been in place for generations. If you want to kill that black market then the legal market needs to be more efficient. I'm all for legalization but I still want something like the black market experience that has been regulated out of existence at retail.
Alcohol is worse for society than weed and always will be no matter what the law says.
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Yep, been saying that for years. Helps kill the illegal druglords, or at least hurts them when there are plenty of legal, regulated alternatives....
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Anything people can't say no to, tax that. Guaranteed income.
Like food?
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It was a few years ago now, but I remember when congress decided to levy a new tax on Telcos, and the telcos put the tax on every customers bill as a line item, so that customers would know why their bills went up.
Congress actually tried to prevent telcos from breaking out the tax - they claimed it was a telco tax, not a customer tax.
The telcos won, they simply passed on the expense to consumers as a pass-thru line item.
and the websites just don't serve those towns (Score:4, Interesting)
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This is the response I'd enjoy seeing...
And don't forget Google cutting them off from all is services when they go after YouTube too....
Get the popcorn cooking and sit back and enjoy...
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we will simply be disconnecting service from residents of the town
Which Netflix could not actually do since they have no idea where the subscriber is located. Which ultimately is why the suit must fail: what they are asking for is practically impossible because the internet does not care where people are physically located. Yes, IP addresses and geolocation systems can make a guess, but that's not good enough for legal or billing purposes. The only way to do this is for the ISPs to block Netflix, which would be an egregious neutrality violation.
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we will simply be disconnecting service from residents of the town
Which Netflix could not actually do since they have no idea where the subscriber is located.
...you block their access based on billing address on their account and then don't collect their subscription fees that month.
Next insurmountable problem?
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That doesn't work because the address does not determine which network is used. The user could be on 5G or satellite or a non-residential internet provider. Those are not subject to the franchise fee.
DirecTV and Dish (Score:2)
The FCC would like a word with you. These are not your airwaves.
"Netflix owes ..." (Score:2)
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Oh... I assure you, you're still going to get those emails for a long, long time.
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I gotta wonder what they're thinking (Score:2)
Maybe it's a fake suit they're planing to lose so they can help the companies set a precedent before a State AG takes interest? All
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They could just do what Chicago did and implement a specific tax on this: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/n... [cbsnews.com]
Instead they look to be just trying to use existing laws, it will be interesting to see how it ends up.
They don't want a specific tax (Score:2)
They're trying to say "If you want access to profit from our city's residents you're going to have to contribute financially to the community". I don't necessarily see anything wrong with that (especially given that a lot of times the cities pay more to the feds & State governments than they get, though I'd have to look into the individ
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"They're trying to say "If you want access to profit from our city's residents you're going to have to contribute financially to the community". I don't necessarily see anything wrong with that"
I am not merely a resident. I am a citizen. I am not a slave. They do not own me. They have no right to sell access to me, especially when in fact I am the one accessing the remote resource.
Re:I gotta wonder what they're thinking (Score:4, Informative)
while I see their point (I could see them taxing to use the public thoroughfares and I understand the desire to tax the companies rather than their constituents directly )
You need to look at what the law allows them to tax. Right now, in most cities, the law allows for the direct use of public thoroughfares. That is, Comcast is paying a city to use public land (easements mostly) to run their cables. What it doesn't allow the city to do is to tax HBO for sending a signal down those cables.
The "Use" of the city property is the cables occupying space, not the signals being sent down those cables. If the cables were owned by the city they might have an argument.
The DirectTV tax is flat-out illegal. The FCC in in charge of the airwaves, full stop. If you pay the FCC for the right to use spectrum for something, you are indemnified from any oher tax. IIRC something similar was tried before, and the courts came down saying the FCC is solely responsible for the regulation of commercial broadcasting, and any other entity attempting to place regulations on commercial broadcast is barred from doing so.
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How cute, you are trying to bring logic to a social justice fight. The city just wants the money to build bike paths so they can cut down on greenhouse gas emissions - what, are you a climate denier?
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Well I suppose if you consider software and encryption a facility that creates "a closed transmission path" the may have an argument here. Not a strong one, just trying to play the devil's advocate here.
Double Dipping (Score:5, Insightful)
Why should the cities get a franchise fee from the cable company used to bring people internet, then also Netflix delivered over that same connection?
If I host video on my own website in theory that would mean I owed them a franchise fee as well. Nuts to that.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
You're absolutely right. Any idea if Indiana has sales tax on streaming subscriptions like this?
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Wait 'till they figure out ESPN and Pay-Per-View also send signals over those rights-of-way!
Rent seeking (Score:3)
The same phenomena appears when utilities try to use existing right of way to provide data services. Properties owners sue to try to get a piece.
You can't rely on courts to keep this nonsense at bay. It has to be taken to the legislature and they have to make everything explicit, otherwise the rent seekers fuck everything up.
Also, utilities have to be forced to get off the dime with obligatory pole access and conduit access laws. While a few are forward thinking, many just want to squat on their power lines, etc. and pretend it's 1930 forever. You can try to encourage them with subsidies or whatever but it doesn't matter. They just squat and have to be forced.
Municipal Internet, anyone? (Score:1)
Now imagine, how much stronger this argument would've been, if the Internet service was city-provided too...
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This just in, the county is proposing taxing the value of the contents of tractor trailers as they drive thru the county, since they use county roads.
Cities: (Score:2)
"See, we too can invent funny arbitrary fees on bills"
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Explains the Moose Insurance.
Then when moose actually attacks, "Oh, sorry, you don't qualify, you missed a payment back in June 2017."
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Many people do not realize that there was a line item on their phone bill (prior to the breakup of Ma Bell) specifically to pay for the Spanish-American war. (since that war was before fiat currency)
I wonder how much of that money (almost a hundred year's worth) ended up with JP Morgan, since the man himself was America's banker at the time (before the Fed).
Shit like that is why I'm Independent, politically. The parties and the Congress can go fuck themselves. Sideways, with a rusty tool.
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The tax revenues went to the general fund, and it was A 3% tax on calls, from 1889-2006.
As a note, it, like the income tax and so many others were passed with the promise that only the wealthy will pay it (who had phones in 1889?).
The income tax was passed to get the carnegies, mellons, Rockefeller's, Astor's, and other to "pay their fair share".
Interweb pipes... (Score:2)
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That'll be those pipes George W. Bush was tellin' us about.
Tubes. "A series of tubes" and it was Alaskan Senator Ted Stevens.
If he'd actually said "pipes" all of Slashdot would have been on his side.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pipeline_(Unix) [wikipedia.org]
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Chatham County GA (Score:3)
I believe it was 2008? 2009? when Chatham County (Savannah, GA) sent a letter to my firm, stating that they had a clear local ordinance claiming tax revenue from goods stored in /or passing through/ their county, and that I needed to declare the value of this property so they could tax it.
In short, goods that we had brought to the US (paying import duties and taxes, of course) and were sitting in a warehouse gathering dust, would be taxed X% per year simply by virtue of sitting there.
Naked tax grab for a district a little light on revenue that year.
The result was that we promptly closed the warehouse in that county, and made arrangements with our customers to consignment stock our materials. The warehouse we were using ultimately went out of business, as we were a major customer.
Congratulations Chatham county, your tax policy essentially closed a business, costing jobs as well as ancillary businesses like trucking, etc in the surrounding area. BRILLIANT.
Every public right of way (Score:2)
Every public right of way their traffic travels on is paid for by the ISP that carries the service and trenched cable/fiber in the right of way.
Will they next go after broadcast networks, cable channels and music streaming services based on the same flawed logic?
Load of crap, won't work. (Score:2)
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More government greed (Score:1)
Lawyer thinking (Score:1)
Goose and Gander? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Bull.
Rich people (like, for instance Bruce Springsteen) take advantage of their states farmland exemption, classifying their 100 acre home as 'farmland' and paying pennies on the dollar compared to what they would pay without the farmland exemption.
https://whyy.org/articles/fake... [whyy.org]