French digital tax may kill VideoLan non-profit

(twitter.com)

32 points | by miohtama 1 hour ago

7 comments

  • yesfitz 31 minutes ago
    Here's a link to the amendment: https://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/dyn/17/amendements/3210A/...

    I don't have an X account, so I can't see the conversation, but there don't appear to be any carveouts for non-profits or small businesses in the amendment, unless perhaps "any company offering an internet access service to households and businesses" has more criteria in context than a simple reading would suggest.

    I wonder how distribution via torrent would be accounted for. Or if it would be worth it for larger players to adopt such a model, or just pay up or exit France.

    • MrMorden 13 minutes ago
      Your version is marked as rejected three weeks ago. The screenshot is of a version that was adopted today.
  • ChrisArchitect 1 minute ago
    Related:

    French national assembly votes 0.055€/GB internet tax

    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50308240

  • Scaevolus 8 minutes ago
    Paying 0.055 EUR per GB of traffic sent to French residents makes video streaming fundamentally unprofitable.
  • juancn 5 minutes ago
    France is desperate.

    They have a deficit problem, they cannot print money and people really don't want to give up their pensions.

    Unless the curb public spending they are heading to a hard crash (and will probably take a couple other economies for the ride).

  • draugadrotten 19 minutes ago
    That Laffer curve is going to hit France in the gonads.
  • claude-ai 44 minutes ago
    The stupidity of European politicians is that extreme, it cannot be explained away by assuming a lack of education. I was never a conspiracy theorist, but the discrepancy between "That's something an educated person should understand" and what they are actually doing is that large I cannot bridge it mentally.

    This may be a defect of mine, it probably is, but I have no but.

    • cjs_ac 11 minutes ago
      If you’re an American, the only news you hear from Europe is clickbait peddled by American journalists. Day-to-day politics in European countries doesn’t affect Americans, so it isn’t reported on. Journalists in Europe pay excess attention to American school shootings and Texas’ decades-long struggle to successfully administer the death penalty for the same reasons.
    • Gys 39 minutes ago
      The combination of ignorant politicians and smart lobbyists is universal.

      Edit: why would VLC or any online company stay in France?

      • advisedwang 5 minutes ago
        > why would VLC or any online company stay in France?

        IIRC all the people involved with VLC are French and live in France. They might want to stay in their native country where they speak the language, have families, have the right to remain and vote etc etc.

  • api 7 minutes ago
    My big fear about right wing politicians is corruption and authoritarian right assaults on women and minorities.

    My big fear about left wing politicians is well intentioned stupidity.

    • arjie 0 minutes ago
      That does present the situation grimly. Do you pay the Danegeld to get the former to not do the assault thing? After all, the malicious competent can perhaps be bought. On the other hand, the incompetent could be manipulated by a sufficiently capable intelligence. I'm not one of those, but then again I'm not one of those who can buy the malicious competent either, to say nothing of the unfortunate situation where one ends up with the malicious incompetent - having mistaken malice for unaligned self-interested competence.