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.
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?
Video streaming platforms are not generally running on a pay-per-view monetization model. A few offer this, but the vast majority of them are offering it at $15-20/months for unlimited streaming. 4K video uses quite a bit of bandwidth. Low end is something like 15Mbps. That’s ~7GB/hour. Or, $0.385/hour at these proposed rates. Doesn’t take long to start approaching the cost of the streaming services charge.
And for households with kids, it's easy to imagine that turning into 30 hours a month, or $12 by your reasonable estimate. That's not a huge number, but I'm sure that'd push almost any streaming service into negative territory. I don't know what the average service's profit margins are, but highly doubt any of them could absorb that kind of hit.
What if you're paying a few EUR a month for unlimited streaming on some app, not high profit new movies? The profit they make per episode for some rerurn of some old show you binge is probably a few cents at best.
Laffer curve is about percentages (and also irrelevant below 80-90% and irrelevant if you think government shouldn't be a business). Taxing people with zero money millions of dollars isn't even on the curve, it's just a completely separate bad thing.
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.
I mean, the law is stupid, but as one of the commenters there says, there is a 2% revenue (profit?) cap, and I don't think that VideoLAN makes a lot of revenue.
As the Europeans were forced to cut off cheap energy supply from Russia, it has really hurt some of their economies and it has partly contributed to the economic crisis emerging in EU. It is one of the major reasons why EU members are so opposed to ending the Ukraine war, despite their ally US pointing out that that horse (i.e. the proxy war) has been whipped for all its political worth and prolonging it anymore will likely backfire on the west (a defeat of Ukraine strengthens Russia, a defeat of Russia may result in nuclear war or further break up of it resulting in unrest and possibly civil war in that region that China would exploit and benefit hugely from as it moves to capture Russian territories, to protect its own interest, while any new breakaway nation states that form may also possess nuclear weapons from the vast Russian nuclear arsenal presenting other long term headaches). A "mini wartime" economy due to the Ukraine war is the only thing, some EU members feel, is sustaining their economy, away from the breakpoint. And specifically, with respect to France, one of the major issue it has is that it never really gave up its imperialistic stake in its African colonies, which has been increasingly challenged by competition from China and Russia. As Africans increasingly assert their sovereignty, France is slowly being edged out in Africa. Even the Americans are now encroaching in Africa, on French influence, to retain western influence there and protect West's access to African natural resources.
Couldn't they just admit the problem with capitalism is that you run out of other people's money, and then stop giving all the tax money to billionaires, and then there'd be enough money left for everyone else?
The french government is who decided the french government has to pay all that money, they can just decide differently.
Quite terrifying that this appears to be a sincere comment. The top marginal tax rate on French nationals including CEHR is over 55%. The country spends ~60% of its GDP, almost 10% higher than the European average, let alone the average worldwide.
Could you elaborate how France is "giving all the money to billionaires"?
That's quite easy: billionaires are not contributing fairly and constantly evade taxation, thus concentrating more and more of the national added value.
The stupidity of European politicians is that extreme, it cannot be explained away by assuming a lack of education. I was never a conspiracy theorist, but the discrepancy between "That's something an educated person should understand" and what they are actually doing is that large I cannot bridge it mentally.
This may be a defect of mine, it probably is, but I have no but.
If you’re an American, the only news you hear from Europe is clickbait peddled by American journalists. Day-to-day politics in European countries doesn’t affect Americans, so it isn’t reported on. Journalists in Europe pay excess attention to American school shootings and Texas’ decades-long struggle to successfully administer the death penalty for the same reasons.
> 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.
That does present the situation grimly. Do you pay the Danegeld to get the former to not do the assault thing? After all, the malicious competent can perhaps be bought. On the other hand, the incompetent could be manipulated by a sufficiently capable intelligence. I'm not one of those, but then again I'm not one of those who can buy the malicious competent either, to say nothing of the unfortunate situation where one ends up with the malicious incompetent - having mistaken malice for unaligned self-interested competence.
It's extremely common that when a right wing government transitions to a left wing government, the left wing government notices it has insane unpayable debt and tries a bunch of desperate things to repay it.
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.
Wait, why is VideoLan hit by this? Do they stream content themselves?
The tax seems to be general, not limited to video/audio. Like downloads of the VLC client.
Here's a link to the amendment: https://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/dyn/17/amendements/3210A/...
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.
https://xnologin.com/videolan/status/2116229135919919278
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?
Your version is marked as rejected three weeks ago. The screenshot is of a version that was adopted today.
Paying 0.055 EUR per GB of traffic sent to French residents makes video streaming fundamentally unprofitable.
>> Paying 0.055 EUR per GB of traffic sent to French residents makes video streaming fundamentally unprofitable.
How so? If you're paying a few EUR to watch a movie there's should be plenty of profit left.
Video streaming platforms are not generally running on a pay-per-view monetization model. A few offer this, but the vast majority of them are offering it at $15-20/months for unlimited streaming. 4K video uses quite a bit of bandwidth. Low end is something like 15Mbps. That’s ~7GB/hour. Or, $0.385/hour at these proposed rates. Doesn’t take long to start approaching the cost of the streaming services charge.
And for households with kids, it's easy to imagine that turning into 30 hours a month, or $12 by your reasonable estimate. That's not a huge number, but I'm sure that'd push almost any streaming service into negative territory. I don't know what the average service's profit margins are, but highly doubt any of them could absorb that kind of hit.
What if you're paying a few EUR a month for unlimited streaming on some app, not high profit new movies? The profit they make per episode for some rerurn of some old show you binge is probably a few cents at best.
That Laffer curve is going to hit France in the gonads.
Laffer curve is about percentages (and also irrelevant below 80-90% and irrelevant if you think government shouldn't be a business). Taxing people with zero money millions of dollars isn't even on the curve, it's just a completely separate bad thing.
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.
Discussion:
French national assembly votes 0.055€/GB internet tax
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50308240
I mean, the law is stupid, but as one of the commenters there says, there is a 2% revenue (profit?) cap, and I don't think that VideoLAN makes a lot of revenue.
France is desperate.
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).
As the Europeans were forced to cut off cheap energy supply from Russia, it has really hurt some of their economies and it has partly contributed to the economic crisis emerging in EU. It is one of the major reasons why EU members are so opposed to ending the Ukraine war, despite their ally US pointing out that that horse (i.e. the proxy war) has been whipped for all its political worth and prolonging it anymore will likely backfire on the west (a defeat of Ukraine strengthens Russia, a defeat of Russia may result in nuclear war or further break up of it resulting in unrest and possibly civil war in that region that China would exploit and benefit hugely from as it moves to capture Russian territories, to protect its own interest, while any new breakaway nation states that form may also possess nuclear weapons from the vast Russian nuclear arsenal presenting other long term headaches). A "mini wartime" economy due to the Ukraine war is the only thing, some EU members feel, is sustaining their economy, away from the breakpoint. And specifically, with respect to France, one of the major issue it has is that it never really gave up its imperialistic stake in its African colonies, which has been increasingly challenged by competition from China and Russia. As Africans increasingly assert their sovereignty, France is slowly being edged out in Africa. Even the Americans are now encroaching in Africa, on French influence, to retain western influence there and protect West's access to African natural resources.
I don't think anyone is opposed to ending Russia's war of conquest in Ukraine, what Europeans tend to be opposed to is allowing conquest to stand, no?
Which EU members feel that regarding a ""mini wartime" economy"? Where can I see that evidenced?
Couldn't they just admit the problem with capitalism is that you run out of other people's money, and then stop giving all the tax money to billionaires, and then there'd be enough money left for everyone else?
The french government is who decided the french government has to pay all that money, they can just decide differently.
Quite terrifying that this appears to be a sincere comment. The top marginal tax rate on French nationals including CEHR is over 55%. The country spends ~60% of its GDP, almost 10% higher than the European average, let alone the average worldwide.
Could you elaborate how France is "giving all the money to billionaires"?
That's quite easy: billionaires are not contributing fairly and constantly evade taxation, thus concentrating more and more of the national added value.
> Couldn't they just admit the problem with capitalism is that you run out of other people's money
What do you mean when you say "capitalism"?
Anything he doesn't like is capitalism. And we're all Redditors now, don't you know?
The stupidity of European politicians is that extreme, it cannot be explained away by assuming a lack of education. I was never a conspiracy theorist, but the discrepancy between "That's something an educated person should understand" and what they are actually doing is that large I cannot bridge it mentally.
This may be a defect of mine, it probably is, but I have no but.
If you’re an American, the only news you hear from Europe is clickbait peddled by American journalists. Day-to-day politics in European countries doesn’t affect Americans, so it isn’t reported on. Journalists in Europe pay excess attention to American school shootings and Texas’ decades-long struggle to successfully administer the death penalty for the same reasons.
I disagree.
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.
What does your comment have to do with out of touch European politicians?
The combination of ignorant politicians and smart lobbyists is universal.
Edit: why would VLC or any online company stay in France?
> 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.
Nitter link: https://twiiit.com/videolan/status/2116229135919919278
How can I see an English translation?
My big fear about right wing politicians is corruption and authoritarian right assaults on women and minorities.
My big fear about left wing politicians is well intentioned stupidity.
That does present the situation grimly. Do you pay the Danegeld to get the former to not do the assault thing? After all, the malicious competent can perhaps be bought. On the other hand, the incompetent could be manipulated by a sufficiently capable intelligence. I'm not one of those, but then again I'm not one of those who can buy the malicious competent either, to say nothing of the unfortunate situation where one ends up with the malicious incompetent - having mistaken malice for unaligned self-interested competence.
What part of "Paying 0.055 EUR per GB of traffic sent to French residents" is well-intentioned? It's nothing but a nonsensical shakedown.
Also, left-wing governments are generally as corrupted and freedom-infringing as right-wing governments, at least in Europe.
It's extremely common that when a right wing government transitions to a left wing government, the left wing government notices it has insane unpayable debt and tries a bunch of desperate things to repay it.
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.