 GrepLaw |
|
|
|
This site is a production of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society. Please email if you have questions, contributions, or ideas about improving this site.
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Voluntary Tax on Digital Media
|
|
|
|
posted by mpawlo
on Tuesday November 12, @03:57PM
from the suggestion-box dept.
|
|
|
|
|
Signature Viscix at Gnu-friends suggests a voluntary tape tax for digital media. The idea seems to be to introduce an extra fee on storage media. The seller would in return make sure some of the fee is redistributed to the appropriate authors.
Personally, I do not find this particulary compelling. What is the difference between this proposal and selling the media with the content on it? Will not this suggestion just add red-tape measures and more bureaucracy to the system?
Still, it is good to have the debate going. Artists and middlemen need to be compensated. Still, technical innovation and progress should never be sacrificed on the altar of copyright.
Read the suggestion at Gnu-Friends.
|
|
|
|
< Tony Says No
| Patrik Faltstrom on IESG, IETF and ICANN >
| |
|
|
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
|
|
Voluntary Tax on Digital Media
|
Login/Create an Account
| Top
| 3 comments
|
Search Discussion
|
|
|
|
The Fine Print:
The following comments are owned by whoever posted them.
We are not responsible for them in any way.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The problems I see with this approach is that it relies on a company being honest, upfront, and trustworthy. Most companies are struggling in the present economy and need every penny they have. I doubt they would willingly give up money. No matter how small of an amount.
Congress continues to put off taxing the internet because no one can come up with a workable plan to do so. The real problem I see is that the government is still locked in a pre-digital era thinking position. What I mean is, is that you have widget A and A needs to be taxed. So we set the tax on A to X. If A is something we consider bad, or that needs to be restricted, then we set X high (like cigarettes). If it is something we have to have in order to live - then X is set low (like salt). With digital transmissions all of the transmissions are the same. Music, ads, pictures, etc.... All are transmitted in the same way, using the same protocols, and so on. This makes it extremely hard to distinguish between the various things and to set a tax on them. Further, how do you stop someone from using something over and over once it has been transmitted? Even heavily protected games, songs, movies, or whatnot can have their protections circumvented. No matter what the industry tries. Why? Because everything has to start somewhere and that somewhere has to be readable by the computer. If it is readable by the computer - it is readable by a hacker. End of story.
Soon, if everything keeps going the way it is going, you will be able to even create items, at your home, without going to the store. There are already printers which can do this. We have some of them here at NASA. What's going to happen when people can download widget A and replicate it indefinitely? Chaos. That's what.
The easiest thing to do is to simply throw up your hands and just say "Sorry, can't do anything about it." But what if we did two things:
First, with IPv6 we now have enough IP addresses to use them as an international id system. They can be split up according to universe, solar system, planet, country, state/county/area, city, person. Maybe even further. Like the DNS servers, the IIS (IP/ID Server), could contain the full four values associated with your name. This would seem to open up a problem with trying to be anonymous. But no more than we currently have in this area. Further, as with current on-going research in this area, a person could join a group which pools it's funds and allows people to do things anonymously. In this situation everyone pays for whoever wants to do something. I am sure there are other ways to maintain anonymity - this is just one and all I am saying is - having an IP address attached to you does not have to make it where someone can monitor everything you do.
Second, we need to reverse the way we charge for everything. What if every time you went to a given website you were charged a penny? Or even a thousandth of a penny? So instead of paying your ISP - everyone who goes to your ISP pays them. Now, you may think this is strange but remember we are talking about micropayments. Each company, every step along the way on a given TCP/IP track (like what you see along traceroute) is given 1/1000 of a penny each time it is accessed. Thus, if a song writer or a singer/performer's website is accessed it is automatically given 1/1000 of a penny.
Now think of someone's site being /.'d. That person would suddenly become quite rich. :-) All you need is some way to keep track of who has visited where. Well, that is already done for you by each site. Further, this method would not stop someone from playing EverQuest. It's just that EverQuest doesn't have to ask people to pay them anymore. AOL and all of the rest of them can now drop their monthly charges. Instead, you just need to have a credit card number they can charge each month based upon what you do. (Or rather, maybe I should say that whomever is handling the money needs to be able to transfer micropayments. It doesn't have to be a bank and it doesn't have to come from your credit card. You could pay into a given account at your ISP and the ISP handles moving the money to where it is supposed to go. Having to give out a credit card number is only one of the ways to do this.) Banks can also handle this. They are already set up to handle money information out to something like twenty decimal places. So 1/1000th of a penny is nothing to them.
This brings up the last problem: The fact that we think of money only in tenths and hundredths. That needs to change as well. Especially if we are to deal with thousandths of a penny.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Who would pay such a tax?I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, however the sig limit is too small to contain i
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Are you asking me about what I wrote or the subject in general?
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
Humanity has the stars in its future, and that future is too important to be
lost under the burden of juvenile folly and ignorant superstition.
- Isaac Asimov
|
 |
|
|
|
[
home |
contribute story |
older articles |
past polls |
faq |
authors |
preferences ]
|
