Courtesy of Mish.
The economic stupidity in France is astounding. It’s hard keeping up with all the inane ideas of President Francois Hollande’s socialist administration. Here’s another one of Hollande’s ideas for your amusement.
RT reports French broadcasting watchdog CSA eager to tax YouTube, Facebook, Dailymotion
France’s Superior Council of Audiovisual, an independent broadcasting authority, wants to impose taxes on media giants like YouTube, Facebook and Dailymotion to force them to contribute to financing French culture.
The sites fall into the same category as video-on-demand services, the organization said; so they would be subject to French cultural protection laws that require distributors to hand over some of their revenues to help subsidize productions.
“These platforms have been developing partnerships with audiovisual publishers and content providers for years, with which they share revenues from advertising,” the report [in French] said.
The watchdog has urged the French government to conduct research into the websites’ profit from professional productions and to determine how much they may be required to pay.
The obstacle which remains, though, is the fact that the legislation is only applicable to websites that are based in France. In the future, the organization is planning to demand all video-on-demand services to declare their existence to the CSA.
Culture Tax
Bloomberg reports France’s ‘Culture Tax’ Could Hit YouTube and Facebook
Should YouTube subsidize le cinéma français? France’s audiovisual regulator thinks so. In a report this week, the Superior Audiovisual Council (CSA) says that video-sharing websites should be subject to a tax that helps finance the production of French films and TV shows.
The so-called culture tax, totaling more than €1.3 billion ($1.8 billion) annually, is paid by movie theaters, broadcasters, and Internet service providers in France. The CSA contends that YouTube (GOOG), French video-sharing site DailyMotion, and their ilk are effectively providing video-on-demand services, which are already subject to the tax.
Separately, France is considering a tax on smartphones, tablets, and other devices as another source of revenue for cultural subsidies. A government-commissioned report, released in May, said that a sales tax of 1 percent should be imposed on electronic devices capable of accessing movies, music, and other content. The proposed tax would raise an estimated €86 million annually that would be used to finance the “cultural industries’ digital transition,” France’s Culture Ministry said at the time.
Trade associations for French Internet and technology companies spoke out against the proposal, which the government has not yet acted on. Rejecting the government’s assertion that a 1 percent tax would be “painless,” the groups warned in a statement in July that the government should be encouraging growth of the digital economy, rather than taxing it.
Subsidies For Films No One Watches
…
