Ian Morris
Ian Morris loves televisions so much he's been banned from wedding chapels in Las Vegas for trying to marry them. When he's not romancing technology, he can be found watching American TV. Ian likes roast potatoes, but he doesn't like digital rights management.
Tuesday 3 February 2009, 5:17pm
A tax on Internet access is a good idea
There's been fresh interest recently, in the light of the Digital Britain report, in some form of taxation on Internet access in the UK. The idea is that copyright holders could be compensated for the losses they incur through copyright infringement by online file-sharers. The suggestion seems to be that we'd each pay something like £20 a year on top of our broadband subscription, to cover P2P downloads.
And, in-spite of myself, I actually can't help think it might be quite a good idea.
I don't think the movie and music industries will be as keen, however. This is because a tax on broadband will encourage people to download whatever they want, for free. But that's what appeals to me. The opportunity to download as much music and as many movies as I want, for just a small sum of money added to my broadband subscription.
I think I'd be prepared to pay a couple of quid a month extra to my ISP for that. And of course, being a tax, everyone who uses the Internet has to pay, even if they choose not to download movies or music. It's kind of like the TV licence, which makes no distinction between people who watch the BBC and those who don't.
You might argue that's unfair on certain groups of people. Perhaps you could make it free for the over-65s, because old people are less likely to be downloading copyrighted material anyway, aren't they? It would probably also not be applied to mobile broadband, which has such miserable usage limits and pathetic speeds that downloading much more than short clips is totally impractical.
Such ideas aren't new. For a long time now Canada has taxed blank CD and DVD sales, with money generated going to the entertainment industry. That's quite different to taxing everyone with Internet access, though.
The only real questions I have about the whole thing are how much will it cost and who will set the amount? But as I said, I think the entertainment industry would have a blue fit at such a proposal.
Comments on this post
This seems not to distinguish between a tax to recompense losses and legalising P2P with (effectively) a subscription-based model. As far as I could tell a tax would not change the fact that P2P filesharing would remain copyright infringement and thus illegal. Thus the rights holders could still sue whoever they want, but receive some level of compensation from the tax. For the BPI and entertainment industry at large surely that's win-win. A tax in exchange for legalising P2P (which is effectively a subscription service) they certainly would balk at. Unless they get to name the price of course.
Posted by Phoenix on Tue 3 February, 2009 5:38 PM
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Good Idea!? this is just another example of us in the UK getting ripped off. How can anyone who works for a living and hence gets taxed on at least 5 occasions for every penny they spend propose that another form of tax is a good thing?
Posted by RS on Tue 3 February, 2009 6:23 PM
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It's certainly NOT a good idea. It's taxing everyone because of a few who steal music and movies. Why not just put more effort into prosecuting people who pirate music and films instead, rather than taxing the law abiders. Cut off their internet connections and blacklist their address so they cannot obtain a new one. The article author is also implying that this would then make downloads free, which is a ludicrous suggestion. Of course it won't because there are other countries other than the UK using the internet! £20 would only be enough tax to cover two film downloads.
Posted by Nick Gilbert on Wed 4 February, 2009 9:57 AM
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If they are saying that for £20 i can download whatever i like for free than that’s fine, but it's clearly not going to happen! for example what if i don’t want to risk using p2p it's not like apple are going to make itunes free in the uk is it. The problem here is that it is an unworkable model. The only solution is to work harder on finding illegal down loaders, but this is up to the music/film industries not governments OR isp’s it should not be their problem. Neither should the film/music industries be allowed to make the lives of people who do pay for their downloads harder, I’m looking at you DRM, and that is something that governments should get involved in because by selling me something that I can’t actually use they are basically stealing from me.
Posted by Paul Harding on Wed 4 February, 2009 1:19 PM
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No I don't agree with a tax on top of your connection fee. The internet should remain funded by wholly by the private sector. If we wish to improve control over what is done on the internet I think it will have to become a multi-tier service. P2P users should be segregated via separate IP range. Paying a premium to access P2P servers would then be restricted to who host and use these services.
Posted by GR on Mon 9 February, 2009 1:48 PM
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I don't download illegally and I own every piece of media i've downloaded from iTunes etc. WHY SHOULD I PAY FOR OTHER PEOPLE TO BREAK THE LAW
Posted by Daniel Baker on Tue 10 February, 2009 7:49 PM
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I'd like to thank you all for some great comments here. We discussed this more on the Podcast and I think there's a lot of interesting ideas. Of course, when I wrote the article, I was being a bit of a devils advocate. And I certainly appreciate that such a tax wouldn't be a licence to download, and would penalise law abiding citizens.
Posted by Ian Morris on Wed 11 February, 2009 12:16 PM
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I find it staggering that the naive British think tax solves everything. Possibly they have all been indoctrinated by a leftish education system and the dead hand of Government who are only too willing to take the tax and not spend it on what was promised. Of course this could never happen.......... Could I suggest writers for Cnet keep to what they are good at and not burden their brains with social engineering schemes.
Posted by Minnie on Thu 12 March, 2009 7:49 PM
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