France to tax data transmission from content providers

LEBUserJoe

@SteveMC said:

France's National Assembly on 30 October adopted, by 11 votes to 10.

Wow! 21 voters?

By the way, you all miss the point, it's not a matter of taxing to get more money, it's about encouraging and helping companies to improve their energy and ecological footprint and, therefore, reduce their impact on the environment and lower their electricity bills.

Its authors also argue that it would push companies to compress and optimise the data they send.

By the way, you all miss the point, it's not a matter of taxing to get more money, it's about encouraging and helping companies to improve their energy and ecological footprint and, therefore, reduce their impact on the environment and lower their electricity bills.

You actually believe this or is it heavy sarcasm?

AndreyGubanov

@nikio said:

@Tange said:

@nikio said:

@Tange said:
is this a robbery?

Yes, taxation is theft.

But also: this is essentially egress pricing on big CDNs/clouds. And fastly's pricing is (digital) highway robbery.

50 euros per TB is insane for CDNs, especially free CDN like Cloudflare

You are welcome to visit: https://www.fastly.com/pricing

Also free cloudflare will have a thing or two to say to you if you insist on streaming video on the free tier (not that people don't abuse R2 for that....)

customer focused protections or hyprscalers are overpcied asf
renting dedi's for anycasting through own asn and filters yourself is way cheaper than any stuff like fastly
10 tb in europe on fastly costs like 10gbps flat unmetered upstream

rpqu

@Amari said:

@rpqu said:

@nikio said:

@Tange said:
is this a robbery?

Yes, taxation is theft.

But also: this is essentially egress pricing on big CDNs/clouds. And fastly's pricing is (digital) highway robbery.

Aye. Government are more interested in increasing their budget and giving handouts to bottom rung of society. They're not interested with the rest of society who clocked more than 160, 200, 240 hour a month

France economic policy has been obsessed for decades by the belief that the richest create the wealth and in consequence is built to accommodate them. The 'social' narrative hides the inequalities on the ground. If the weakest are feeling weaker it's also because all the governments of all sides who took charge focused on making labor cheaper while the richest 10% saw their share of the total private wealth increase.

It doesn't solve the structural issue of the pension problem.
Government may pass one-time wealth tax on the population. But, they will come for another round, because they're just irresponsible bunch.

netguy

@barbarza said: France voted yesterday to tax content providers €0.05 per gigabyte transmitted. Madness?

Madness and greediness.

tentor

@SteveMC said:

France's National Assembly on 30 October adopted, by 11 votes to 10.

Wow! 21 voters?

By the way, you all miss the point, it's not a matter of taxing to get more money, it's about encouraging and helping companies to improve their energy and ecological footprint and, therefore, reduce their impact on the environment and lower their electricity bills.

Its authors also argue that it would push companies to compress and optimise the data they send.

I think first optimisation they will come up with is GeoIP France block to reduce volume of sent data.

RAVNIX

@tentor said:

@SteveMC said:

France's National Assembly on 30 October adopted, by 11 votes to 10.

Wow! 21 voters?

By the way, you all miss the point, it's not a matter of taxing to get more money, it's about encouraging and helping companies to improve their energy and ecological footprint and, therefore, reduce their impact on the environment and lower their electricity bills.

Its authors also argue that it would push companies to compress and optimise the data they send.

I think first optimisation they will come up with is GeoIP France block to reduce volume of sent data.

Might need to go a bit further and just drop anything from a French ISP ASN

atroxz

riot time !

OpaqueRegistrant

Someone said this was an amendment/attachment to a budget bill that's guaranteed to fail anyway. It's hard to verify if this is true because all the information is in French but if this is true then it's a nothing burger and probably just some politicians trying to cheat their donors out of more money.

JoshR

@atroxz said:
riot time !

As if people would riot over something like this.
Isn't this like net neutrality?....

fredo1664

@OpaqueRegistrant said:
Someone said this was an amendment/attachment to a budget bill that's guaranteed to fail anyway. It's hard to verify if this is true because all the information is in French but if this is true then it's a nothing burger and probably just some politicians trying to cheat their donors out of more money.

Yes it's true (except the donors part) but this is LET.
The social democratic party used a quiet moment to pass an amendment to the budget against the advice of the government. There is zero chance that this budget will be voted by the Senate.
They did it to float the idea with the population, it made the news, people talked about it, mission accomplished.

cold

@SteveMC said:

France's National Assembly on 30 October adopted, by 11 votes to 10.

Wow! 21 voters?

By the way, you all miss the point, it's not a matter of taxing to get more money, it's about encouraging and helping companies to improve their energy and ecological footprint and, therefore, reduce their impact on the environment and lower their electricity bills.

Its authors also argue that it would push companies to compress and optimise the data they send.

sure they do it for our sake. less time online more time offline. finally ppl can go again and do porn in the park

bugabuga

Apparently it was all just a mistake!!

Eric Coquerel

Translated from French
Hello @fitetok, I’m responding to you clearly: it’s a mistake. We were voting very quickly
 on a series of taxation amendments on the Gafam, and we’re two among the LFI who 
pressed the wrong button on this amendment that charges users instead of the platforms.
 We’ve since asked to have our vote corrected. This amendment won’t have any impact 
anyway, since the budget will be rejected. Fraternally

Even thought he previously signed a similar bill..

Mr. Coquerel was a signature to a similar amendment for the PLF2025 which proposed the 
same tax but higher (€100 per To, compared to 55 for the present amendment)
This makes the hypothesis of an error hardly credible.

https://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/dyn/17/amendments/0324A/AN/2475

rpqu

@bugabuga said:
Apparently it was all just a mistake!!
pressed the wrong button on this amendment that charges users instead of the platforms.

Doesn't matter. That's bullshit

DewlanceVPS

A similar bill will be introduced in India, but they will charge consumers instead of platforms.

I think there should be some restrictions on content consumption. Some of us waste our time by endless scrolling.

jenkki

@DewlanceVPS said: A similar bill will be introduced in India

Soon it will be the same everywhere. There are already all ways to limit the Internet. Either a lock or a megabyte fee, which is psychologically even worse for a person. After the first bill for a thousand dollars arrives, the desire to visit these sites will abruptly disappear.

rpqu

@DewlanceVPS said:
A similar bill will be introduced in India, but they will charge consumers instead of platforms.

I think there should be some restrictions on content consumption. Some of us waste our time by endless scrolling.

Just don't give government handouts/subsidy/social assistance

network

@jenkki said:

@DewlanceVPS said: A similar bill will be introduced in India

Soon it will be the same everywhere. There are already all ways to limit the Internet. Either a lock or a megabyte fee, which is psychologically even worse for a person. After the first bill for a thousand dollars arrives, the desire to visit these sites will abruptly disappear.

Will web devs finally care about not putting 10MB of JS on a page?

barbarza

Octave from OVH’s thoughts on the matter:

https://x.com/olesovhcom/status/2116452969793151347

OpaqueRegistrant

@rpqu said:

@bugabuga said:
Apparently it was all just a mistake!!
pressed the wrong button on this amendment that charges users instead of the platforms.

Doesn't matter. That's bullshit

If they all know the budget is going nowhere and they just have to go through the process to vote on its amendments anyway it's pretty plausible that they don't pay any attention and that doesn't say anything bad about the politicians.

The problem is that it's indistinguishable from malice. "I pressed the wrong button" is exactly the same thing an evil person would say to get off the hook.

ascicode

At the end, big techs always getting a backdoor to save milliards of euros and after some years getting sued to pay a small part of it.

Mainfrezzer

The only solution Is to just make the internet illegal.

Load of horseshit is proposed. Why not tax printed words in books? Pay a tax for the amount of spoken sentences?

It's time to just stop all advancement and go back to monkey. Clearly that's what the goal is.

Who the fuck keeps putting those idiots in any position of power? They should be scrubbing toilets

TimboJones

@Mainfrezzer said:
The only solution Is to just make the internet illegal.

Load of horseshit is proposed. Why not tax printed words in books? Pay a tax for the amount of spoken sentences?

Books are taxed. They can also be banned.

It's time to just stop all advancement and go back to monkey. Clearly that's what the goal is.

Who the fuck keeps putting those idiots in any position of power? They should be scrubbing toilets

Taxes on content providers is not new. In Canada, the broadcasters pay a percentage of revenues to support Canadian content.

I could see France doing something similar to support French culture.

rpqu

@OpaqueRegistrant said:

@rpqu said:

@bugabuga said:
Apparently it was all just a mistake!!
pressed the wrong button on this amendment that charges users instead of the platforms.

Doesn't matter. That's bullshit

If they all know the budget is going nowhere and they just have to go through the process to vote on its amendments anyway it's pretty plausible that they don't pay any attention and that doesn't say anything bad about the politicians.

The problem is that it's indistinguishable from malice. "I pressed the wrong button" is exactly the same thing an evil person would say to get off the hook.

Yes, that's the problem. If they just mindlessly press button, what's even the purpose of their existence? They're taking their job lightly.

Mainfrezzer

@TimboJones said:

@Mainfrezzer said:
The only solution Is to just make the internet illegal.

Load of horseshit is proposed. Why not tax printed words in books? Pay a tax for the amount of spoken sentences?

Books are taxed. They can also be banned.

It's time to just stop all advancement and go back to monkey. Clearly that's what the goal is.

Who the fuck keeps putting those idiots in any position of power? They should be scrubbing toilets

Taxes on content providers is not new. In Canada, the broadcasters pay a percentage of revenues to support Canadian content.

I could see France doing something similar to support French culture.

Imagine, my internet connection too!

DrNutella

@JoshR said:
I thought that was funny.
AS IF Google let alone Netflix will pay a tax to the Government let alone the ISPs have to keep track of data usage to whats going to what...

The answer was always know. Everything is data. Just pick a number and tax it.

ascicode

They should pay taxes for streaming subscriptions. But its funny anyway, they could easily raise vat and no one would speak about it.

Mainfrezzer

I'm sure they would notice. You get nickel and dimed everywhere.

Your god damn income is already tax'd, then you pay tax for your god damn internet and then more tax for whatever you're consuming. And god knows what other taxes are sprinkled within.

averagedatahoarder

@rpqu said:

@DewlanceVPS said:
A similar bill will be introduced in India, but they will charge consumers instead of platforms.

I think there should be some restrictions on content consumption. Some of us waste our time by endless scrolling.

Just don't give government handouts/subsidy/social assistance

Hey, that's me!