A GTA 6 download is estimated to be 210 GB. Under this law the publisher or storefront will have to pay an extra 11.5 EUR per copy in tax. And not just for a sale, but for every download.
Got the latest Apple security update? Think about whether it is really worth paying a couple bucks to install it.
How so? If you're paying a few EUR to watch a movie there's should be plenty of profit left.
720p AV1 is about 700mb/hr, so about an order of magnitude less than your 7GB/hour.
It's not like a 720p limit for tax reasons is any worse than a 720p limit for lack-of-Widevine-support reasons.
Summary of n°I-1358:
- It's a tax on internet "content", but they haven't defined what that means exactly, so by default it would apply to all internet traffic.
- Bytes delivered to French users by ISPs are taxed (but not user uploads).
- ISPs are responsible for tracking exactly where every GB originates from and will have to report the names to the government.
- The "content provider" then has to pay 0.055 EUR per GB that they sent.
- No explanation for how user-to-user traffic is handled. No explanation for what ISP -> user means (e.g. does P2P count)? No details on how ISPs will track the upstream source. About a million other similar questions are unanswered.
- The amendment was adopted today, and the assembly will vote on it as part of their full budget (but there are still many stages left before it can become law). Even by government standards this is way too idiotic to actually come into effect.
The way this tax looks it just means you have to exclude French people from the internet. This won't work.
I don't have VideoLan's internal metrics, but if they're saying it'll cost them millions they're saying they deliver over ~18tb (or ~36tb for a tax of 2million) to french peeps per year
This is supposed to let the French tax authorities collect 20B in additional tax revenue.
And yes, I don't see how Youtube (or Facebook, or Tiktok, or Netflix, or even something like Steam ...) can operate with such a tax in France.
Who pays the tax in 'anonymous' p2p schemes?
If I upload to a french server from a ukranian server that I seed through a swiss based VPN using a norwegian seedbox that I paid a friend for in cash, how does the french government bill me? Do they subpoena the ukranian server to see where the data come from? Does the swiss government, not seeing any legal issue with my data, comply and hand over my norwegian server? Does the norwegian seedbox provider or my friend at the company foot the bill because they've no record of me?
What about networking stacks in which the requester can't necessarily identify where the data genuinely originated? Suppose I torrent a genuine Linux ISO in france. Do all of the peers get fractional bills? Or is it on the distro maintainer? What if the data didn't really originate from any of the peers but was fetched for me by the peers and the peers don't tell me (or therefore the ISPs) where they got the data from?
What if I put, say, VLC in an encrpyted zip. The ISP and therefore the french gov would see this as data coming from me since it doesn't hash as VLC, but they also can't prove that it came from me if I demonstrate that it was actually downloaded from a forum.
What about anonymous data? If 4chan is mirroring images for me that I uploaded from a McDonalds and a french frog downloads it, how do I get a bill? Does 4chan eat the bill or forward it to the McDonalds? Does the McDonalds eat the bill or hire a tech to cross-reference cameras and IP logs? What if I paid for the food in cash? Do they check some mythical "who owns this laptop" database provided by google/meta/microsoft? What if my laptop isn't in those databases? The local McDonalds is forced to foot the bill as they can't provide a patsie?
If I send a friend a video on via facebook messenger, who foots the bill? Facebook didn't send the data, I did. Is facebook going to rewrite it's eula to allow them to bill me for "woops your friend was in france at the time"?
This may all seem like hand-waving what-aboutism, but there are legitimate questions at hand. If public data is expensive and there are routes that do not result in billing, why would anyone choose the expensive route for any reason other than ignorance of the free route? If those who know would choose the free route, how is france going to collect all, most, or any of their booty?
I don't have an X account, so I can't see the conversation, but there don't appear to be any carveouts for non-profits or small businesses in the amendment, unless perhaps "any company offering an internet access service to households and businesses" has more criteria in context than a simple reading would suggest.
I wonder how distribution via torrent would be accounted for. Or if it would be worth it for larger players to adopt such a model, or just pay up or exit France.
This is the current one.
I haven't done french since high school. So totally chatgpt and google translate reading this to me, but I really don't get what VideoLAN has to do with this.
The law is crazy with a €55/TB tax on ingress to France (including local cdns). But it's got nothing to do with your video player.
> A tax is established based on the flows of digital data emitted by content providers and paid by the latter
> When a data emitter uses a content delivery network to cache content near end users, the amount of data emitted is considered equal to the sum of the outgoing flows from the delivery network
Imagine paying €8 to download Balder's gate 3 lol.
https://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/dyn/17/amendements/3210A/...
the text menstions several times that internet providers are the one in charge of collecting and paying the tax, i don't see how the softwares enabling the streaming/download would be under threat?
- content providers and application providers
- providers of both content and applications
I don't think that the first interpretation has a leg though, because of the remaining of the text.
The separate internet tax on the other hand, that's about 1000% of the cost of internet, and a 1000% tax is definitely on the wrong side of the laffer curve. They are essentially banning the internet.
This may be a defect of mine, it probably is, but I have no but.
I've been watching Iceland news, along with machine translation of Icelandic.
Right now, they're increasing taxes on parking, toll roads, 30% increase on hotels and B&B's, and per-kilometer driving tax.
It's insane the amount of taxes on taxes on taxes. And foreigners not in the know are about to get whalloped for $1000 extra around the ring road.
Sure, Iceland isn't EU proper. But they are Schengen along with other alliances. EU complaint stands, given they tax tax tax tax.
>Right now, they're increasing taxes on parking,
Great! Less car-centric infrastructure.
>toll roads
Great! Less cars.
>and per-kilometer driving tax
Great! Less cars on the road.
>And foreigners not in the know are about to get whalloped for $1000 extra around the ring road.
Which is probably the point (same with the hotel tax), if I had to guess? I mean Iceland gets a lot of tourists, and they have no obligation to provide free roads to everyone. In fact, they have a beautiful country, so if they can, they should capitalize on it. How is this a proof that "The stupidity of European politicians is that extreme, it cannot be explained away by assuming a lack of education" (the original claim)? They're doing their job.
Edit: why would VLC or any online company stay in France?
IIRC all the people involved with VLC are French and live in France. They might want to stay in their native country where they speak the language, have families, have the right to remain and vote etc etc.
But with kids in school, relatives close by, and family links in the city and region whre we live, moving somewhere else is not yet on the cards no matter how large the tax bill and unsettled the politics - at least for the moment.
To be fair, it's limited to what a "business" make as money. So it should exclude associations (which are not allowed to make money in France).
But yes, it's really a stupid law.
They have a deficit problem, they cannot print money and people really don't want to give up their pensions.
Unless the curb public spending they are heading to a hard crash (and will probably take a couple other economies for the ride).
The french government is who decided the french government has to pay all that money, they can just decide differently.
The billionaires are irrelevant. You could take every penny they have and it wouldn't make a difference
1) paying money to billionnaires cost 67B euros, let's say 10% more this year, to 73B (interest on debt so France can keep lending 170B more every year)
2) not paying money to billionnaires costs 170B euros (france needs 170B euros in new debt every year to balance the books)
Oh and of course when it does become worth doing, stealing the public debt, there is still the little matter of needing to get French people to do 250B worth of extra labor without paying them 1 cent extra (if they kick the can down the road, which they will, it should settle on about that amount per year). Essentially French people will have to work 1/6th harder one way or the other. But by paying billionnaires they can wait with that another 4 years.
Or, you know, they could work 1/30th extra now. 11 days per year. But that means not kicking the can down the road.
Similar figures for all EU countries (except Germany, for the moment at least), but they get to watch France solve it first because they're not the worst offender.
What do you mean when you say "capitalism"?
Could you elaborate how France is "giving all the money to billionaires"?
https://www.ipp.eu/publication/note-ipp-n92-quels-impots-les...
They arent the ones driving up pensions for the retired, or instituting the anti-growth policies.
Like I said, kill every single one and the problem would still be there.
Which EU members feel that regarding a ""mini wartime" economy"? Where can I see that evidenced?
My big fear about left wing politicians is well intentioned stupidity.
As a leftist you don't have tobworry about comrades burning down your home.
My big fear about politicians is corruption, authoritarian tendencies and stupidity
There, done, put a pin in it. There's corrupt politicos on all sides of the spectrum, there's authoritarians on all sides and stupidity seems to be endemic.
Also, left-wing governments are generally as corrupted and freedom-infringing as right-wing governments, at least in Europe.
Mamdani had the same problem but was luckily able to negotiate practicable payment plans on NYC's debt.
Also I believe it's much easier to solve well intentioned stupidity than to solve malice.
Unfortunately, political tribalism is rife online, and it is as bad here as anywhere else.
They both often continue increasing deficits and spending until they can't.
> Mamdani had the same problem but was luckily able to negotiate practicable payment plans on NYC's debt.
The last right-wing mayor was Bloomberg (I don't know how right-wing Bloomberg really is when he tried running as a Democrat), and that was 13 years ago.
> Also I believe it's much easier to solve well intentioned stupidity than to solve malice.
Well-intentioned stupidity can go on for far longer because people won't want to intervene because of a negative perception when intervening. If there is malice, there isn't a negative perception when intervening.
Meanwhile the right wing opposition keeps pointing fingers and telling that it's the left's (or center's, whatever) fault. Happened multiple times.
The stuff they want to get done might suck though.
They are complete imbeciles on many other issues.
I find it astounding that people can apply different rules to one group of politicians because they say things they like. I hold them all to the same standard; I assume they are all lying and corrupt until proven otherwise.
How can I see an English translation?