[governance] France Proposes an Internet Tax

[William Drake]

Hi Mike

The GATS has 15 General Obligations and Disciplines (GODs).  Absent waivers or other limitations, the key GODs of MFN and national treatment apply to their scheduled services, and the EC schedule is quite liberalizing and covers information services, which presumably includes the targeted "over the top" services.  If instead you wanted to argue for a narrowly content-based categorization, I've not looked at it in a decade but the EC schedule is probably more restrictive regarding advertising services; however, in this it's probably typical in not being reflective of contemporary web-based transactions like what Google, FB etc. are up to (could look on the WTO site). And of course, one could debate whether that simple category would suffice here.  

In any event, despite all the intensive debate and rule making of the 1990s, com ministries don't generally appear to be all that attentive to the GATS, at least until the national trade ministries call and tell them there's a complaint etc.  I've not detected much attention to it in the ITU in some time, and certainly did not hear anyone talk about it or suggest it mattered to what they were proposing in Dubai.

Bill

On Jan 22, 2013, at 9:35 PM, michael gurstein <gurstein at gmail.com> wrote:

> Bill I'm very curious as to the specifics of your assertion below.
>  
> Could you provide?
>  
> Tks,
>  
> M
>  
> From: governance-request at lists.igcaucus.org [mailto:governance-request at lists.igcaucus.org] On Behalf Of William Drake
> Sent: Tuesday, January 22, 2013 12:23 PM
> To: governance at lists.igcaucus.org; Nick Ashton-Hart
> Subject: Re: [governance] France Proposes an Internet Tax
>  
>  
> On Jan 22, 2013, at 9:18 PM, Nick Ashton-Hart <nashton at ccianet.org> wrote:
> 
> 
> It would not be possible for a measure  to target foreign companies only - that would breach France's WTO obligations (and that of many other countries were they to try to do the same thing).
>  
> A small problem that seemed to receive zero discussion among the proponents in Dubai
> ____________________________________________________________
> You received this message as a subscriber on the list:
>     governance at lists.igcaucus.org
> To be removed from the list, visit:
>     http://www.igcaucus.org/unsubscribing
> 
> For all other list information and functions, see:
>     http://lists.igcaucus.org/info/governance
> To edit your profile and to find the IGC's charter, see:
>     http://www.igcaucus.org/
> 
> Translate this email: http://translate.google.com/translate_t

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.igcaucus.org/pipermail/governance/attachments/20130123/3e50dacb/attachment.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
____________________________________________________________
You received this message as a subscriber on the list:
     governance at lists.igcaucus.org
To be removed from the list, visit:
     http://www.igcaucus.org/unsubscribing

For all other list information and functions, see:
     http://lists.igcaucus.org/info/governance
To edit your profile and to find the IGC's charter, see:
     http://www.igcaucus.org/

Translate this email: http://translate.google.com/translate_t