Ministers looking at broadband tax

Comments

• There's already a tax on every broadband connection. It's called VAT. Posted by Gerard Krupa, UK
• Yeah - but this seems to be in addition to that. Posted by stuartmiles, United Kingdom
• It's a bit like car insurance - we'll all be paying for the freetards who feel that they shouldn't have to.
  
  I don't illegally download music/movies, but I sure will if I'm made to pay a tax to support it! Posted by Jp, UK
• I like the idea that people are trying to be creative and it is fundamentally important that we find ways to ensure copyright based material is paid for but I am not sure that a tax levy is the right way of policing this, once you go down this route what about other areas like books, poems, pictures, software, newspaper articles etc etc. What about people who don't download music or video. Other ways are to allow more digital models to evolve so there is a range of choices for consumers which makes piracy a thing of the past.
  
  Steve Purdham
  CEO - We7
  http://www.we7.com Posted by We7Steve, UK
• Groups like the IFPI say 'its about paying the artiists'. Rubbish, its about paying themselves, same as with the EU performance copyright extension. the IFPI doesn't represent artists, or creators, it represents the companies that make their money from the artists.
  The IFPI says they ar losing money etc., they're not - they're just not getting as much as they feel they should be. They then make up statistics, like this study mentioned. Notice how these types of studies never make the data behind the reports publicly available. It's because if they do then they will have to only give facts.
  
  The MPAA's oft-quoted LEK study of a few years ago was found, a year ago, to have one figure saying 45% when it 'should' have said 15%. If they'd kept quiet, who would have known? The same study said the total loss in tax to the UK because of piracy was about £99Million. The British Video Associaton did a study for the same time period, and said the total lost in VAT alone was was £110Million. The losses in VAT were 10% *greater* than the losses in ALL tax? How can that be, unless someone's figures were a bit, well, useless.
  
  I've been doing some studying of my own, and so far, my data seems to show that downloads/P2P has little to no negative effect on the income. It comes down to product quality, and P2P just makes the good stand out from the bad a bit more. Unlike the others, when I publish my findings, I will include ALL the data, because that is what my conclusions will be based on, not promoting my business group's aims.
  
  Andrew Norton
  International Coordinator
  Pirate Party International Posted by Andrew Norton, US/UK
• We7Steve: "I like the idea that people are trying to be creative and it is fundamentally important that we find ways to ensure copyright based material is paid for but I am not sure that a tax levy is the right way of policing this, once you go down this route what about other areas like books, poems, pictures, software, newspaper articles etc etc."
  
  If you're going to do it for music and films, then I think it should also include other sorts of material available on the net. Software and books are also shared on P2P networks, so they should be included in the recipients of any broadband tax.
  
  In fact, why not let each individual taxpayer decide where their broadband tax goes? That way, no-one has to pay for types of content they don't care about. This could be done via a system of "Content Compensation Funds" each of which would be set up to distribute money to creators for each type of content (music, films, software, etc). Each taxpayer would decide which CCF their broadband tax is channeled to.
  
  I've written about this in more detail on my blog: A broadband tax for the UK?.
  
  I'm not convinced that a broadband tax is the way to go, but if we are going to have one, let's put consumers in charge, not industry fatcats. Posted by Cabalamat, UK