[governance] France Proposes an Internet Tax

[Milton L Mueller]

The report published Friday said a tax on data collection was justified on grounds that users of services like Google and Facebook are, in effect, working for these companies without pay by providing the personal information that lets them sell advertising.
[Milton L Mueller] Good deal. In order to compensate and protect us from "working without pay" we will work for the government of France without pay as well. Cartesian logic at work.
Or perhaps they will use the revenues to subsidize access to Facebook and Google, since they charge their users so much that...um, well, some of them, um, can't afford... oh, never mind.
Of course, this is just a tax on the advertisers, in the end. It will simply increase the costs of Google/Facebook and be recovered from advertisers.
It wouldn't be France however unless you threw a soupcon of anti-Americanism and trade protectionism into the pot as well (will the same tax will be applied to all commercial broadcasters in France, whose viewers are sold to advertisers "without pay"?) How about French newspapers with ads - their poor customers even have to pay for the newspaper, and then are sold to advertisers. Merde!
Interestingly, this whole line of argument presumes that the services users receive in return for their data are worthless. Remember that next time you hear someone claim that Google and Facebook are "essential facilities" that no one can live without.
It's sad that governments that just want more money have to strain to come up with trendy rationalizations. What happened to the good old days when they just sent in armed thugs to appropriate a bunch of your pigs and cows?
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