Originally Posted by waste gate

My only question is why only four years? Why not permanent?

Originally Posted by P_Funk

What happens in American democracy every 4 years? :hmm:

Originally Posted by SUBMAN1

Ahh, because they want to have the option to tax in the future when the net explodes beyond what it is today?

-S

Originally Posted by P_Funk

Probably. 4 years is a nice length of time. Long enough to make it sound like they're doing something real while leaving room to abruptly change policy if ever the lobby payments exceed their fear of electoral defeat.

Originally Posted by P_Funk

Probably. 4 years is a nice length of time. Long enough to make it sound like they're doing something real while leaving room to abruptly change policy if ever the lobby payments exceed their fear of electoral defeat.

Originally Posted by waste gate

What lobby could possibly want a rise in taxes. :hmm: Perhaps not a lobby so much as a political leaning. :dead:

Originally Posted by P_Funk

[What kind of lobby would want to effectively destroy the internet? You been keeping up with all the lawsuits in every country trying to kill P2P or music 'theft' etc... The internet is a wild west of the modern world. They gots to get a hold on this one bucko, a'fore these savages think they actually got somethin' goin' on. There are lots of interests that don't much like the internet.

Originally Posted by waste gate

I haven't heard the music industry calling for a tax on the internet. I think the law suits are about retaining the money which they are rightfully entitled to. The music companies invested the money and deserve the fruit of what they sowed. If P2P and napster types were on the high seas it would be piracy and then gov'ts would be directly involved in removing that threat. Bringing a lawsuit uses gov't as an arbritator with current law and precidant as the paridigm.

No lobby to increase taxes involved in those cases.

Originally Posted by P_Funk

Look past the obvious CNN headlines. Much more happens beneath the surface than is put out in press releases. I'm not talking about some conspiracy but more of a general sentiment whereby some wouldnt want to see the internet as such a free and loose place.

As for all that entitlement crap, well I tend scoff at these 'intellectual property' people. Frankly I think that if these mega-corporations want to commodify and have the entire consciousness of our culture as their product then they can't turn around and say we can't talk about it amongst ourselves. It isn't all people downloading Halo3 the first night its out. There was that lawsuit where MLB wanted to keep fantasy baseball from using their stats, or where youtube has been sued and forced to remove lots of content because its copyrighted. This stuff is our cultural currency but apparently they want us to not talk about it when we leave the movie theatre.

Can you imagine a wandering poet in the 6th Century BC reciting Homer's Odyssey and after the story is over telling them "HEY and you better not tell your kids about it. Thats my job!"

Its an unpopoular viewpoint but then I think that American law has been one big corporate sell out for more than 100 years. Besides you wanna talk about music companies getting cheated, most musicians don't even own their own music when it get published.

But I think we're digressing.