European Parliament member sparks online 'furor'

[STEED]

Email, mobile phone text message tax idea floated by European Parliament member sparks online 'furor'

06/11/2006 @ 8:51 pm

Filed by RAW STORY


A 'furor' has broken out in Europe after a European Parliament member suggested that emails and mobil phone text messages could be taxed, according to a story set for Monday's edition of The New York Times RAW STORY has learned.
Excerpts from the article written by Thomas Crampton:
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A French member of the European Parliament, Alain Lamassoure, recently uttered the dreaded T-word -- taxes -- in connection with e-mail and mobile phone text messages, and in so doing earned the wrath of the Internet generation.
No matter how remote the possibility may be -- or how useful such taxes might be in financing the European Union budget -- the mere mention of taxing messages was enough to ignite the blogosphere and industry lobbying groups.
Lamassoure raised the option of a Europewide tax on e-mail and text messages last month in a meeting on ways to finance the European Union's rising costs. As indignant missives filled the message board on Lamassoure's Web site, he distanced himself from the proposal, saying he had mentioned the idea only as a topic for discussion, not as something he supported.
Any new tax could not move ahead without approval from all of the European Union's 25 national legislatures, and a message tax in particular is not even at the stage of a formal proposal. Still, some politicians and technology experts say the debate could serve to highlight imbalances between casual users and Internet hogs.

http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/Em..._tax_0611.html

June 12, 2006

Idea for Electronic Message Tax Prompts Swift Outcry in Europe

By THOMAS CRAMPTON, International Herald Tribune
PARIS, June 11 — A French member of the European Parliament, Alain Lamassoure, recently uttered the dreaded T-word — taxes — in connection with e-mail and mobile phone text messages, and in so doing earned the wrath of the Internet generation.
No matter how remote the possibility may be — or how useful such taxes might be in financing the European Union budget — the mere mention of taxing messages was enough to ignite the blogosphere and industry lobbying groups.
Mr. Lamassoure raised the option of a Europewide tax on e-mail and text messages last month in a working group on ways to finance the European Union's rising costs. As indignant missives filled the message board on Mr. Lamassoure's Web site, he distanced himself from the proposal, saying he had mentioned the idea only as a topic for discussion, not as something he supported.
Any new tax could not move ahead without approval from all of the European Union's 25 national Parliaments, and a message tax in particular is not even at the stage of a formal proposal. Still, some politicians and technology experts say the debate could serve to highlight imbalances between casual users and Internet hogs.
West Europeans spent a total of about 15 billion euros, or $19 billion, sending 157 billion phone text messages in 2005, according to Thomas Husson, a Paris-based mobile phone analyst at Jupiter Research. International Data Corporation has estimated that the number of daily e-mails sent in 2006 — including the 40 percent that are spam — will exceed 60 billion a day worldwide, up from 31 billion in 2002.
Text messages in Europe range from about 0.10 euro to 0.15 euro each when charged individually; a set number of texts is also sometimes part of a monthly subscription. At that price, Mr. Lamassoure said, there is ample room to lower consumer prices and impose a tax of 0.01 euro a message.
E-mail messages — which are not currently counted on a per-unit basis like mobile phone text messages — would initially be more difficult to measure for taxation, Mr. Lamassoure said.
Mr. Lamassoure said he had learned that reaction from Internet users could be swift and harsh. "I appreciate their concern," he said, "but it is absurd to say that my ideas will kill the Internet."
Phone companies and Internet service providers, the companies that would be most affected by the proposed taxes, have reacted harshly as well.
"Taxation of e-mails or Internet flies in the face of principles the E.U. has been trying to support," said Richard Nash, secretary general of the European Internet Service Providers Association in Brussels, in reference to efforts by Europe to encourage the growth of technology. "This is one of the more bizarre initiatives, and it is unlikely to increase the popularity of the European Union if it succeeds."
Yet some in the technology industry say Internet costs are no longer divided equitably among users. Heavy users typically pay the same monthly price as light ones.
"The current system of payments for the Internet made sense when it all started, but the incentives are getting more and more misaligned," said Esther Dyson, a technology consultant.
Ms. Dyson said, for example, that users who consumed more network resources through downloading video should pay more than users who just viewed a few Web sites each day. For e-mail, Ms. Dyson advocates a system in which senders would pay on a graded scale to be certain their messages are delivered. Friends would not pay to send an e-mail, for example, but those who did not know the recipient, like companies sending promotional mail, would pay.
The result, Ms. Dyson said, would be to cut down on spam and make those who send unwanted e-mails bear the cost. "As it stands, the unfortunate recipients of spam pay to receive and store unwanted e-mails," she said. "It only makes sense to have those sending spam pay."
This concept provoked considerable debate in February, when AOL and Yahoo said they had signed up with Goodmail, a Silicon Valley company that charges companies for sending bulk messages that are guaranteed to arrive in users' mailboxes. AOL and Yahoo have been guaranteeing delivery of Goodmail-sponsored messages since May.
"People have become very comfortable with e-mail being a free medium, so there was some surprise that companies would pay to send e-mails," said Richard Gingras, chief executive of Goodmail. "The difference is that consumers view our e-mail as more certain."

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/12/te...=1&oref=slogin

If the European Parliament shoves this tax on me, I will send them the payment in the form of horse dung.

[Skybird]

EU cashing in taxes for emails. Great idea. It will become world champion in sending spam mails next. Our beloved Angela Merkel already has started a "service" that greets subscriber with weekly speeches on their handies about the oh so very much important lastest political slogans.

In bed with angie-babe. How could one resist to such an offer?

[Yahoshua]

This is the result of politicians who enjoy pissing away tax dollars:

Spend what I don't have, and then tax the population to pony up the $ to fund programs that are "for the good of the people."

This more acutely highlights an excruciatingly painful disease (for the subjects under the government bureacracies) is that ALL of these politicians suffer from Legislationitis. They don't feel like they're doing their doing their job unless they draft some wonderful new law to burden us all with.

[The Avon Lady]

Let them SMS cake.

[Yahoshua]

Eat SMS?

[August]

This isn't so much about money but rather tracking data. Anything that is taxed has to have a documented paper trail to properly count the beans so to speak. Say Bye Bye to any remaining degree of internet anonymity.

[The Avon Lady]

Originally Posted by Yahoshua

Eat SMS?

My post was a paraphrase of the oft-quoted statement "let them eat cake".

[TteFAboB]

The internet is the last standing barrier to the complete control of information in Europe.

It wouldn't be too hard to bring down the printed media (not to mention TV and Radio stations since many of those are already under political [correctness] control), it has been done in Sweden, it could be done elsewhere as long as the return for the tax is offered. Free flow of information? Take it away from me, as long as I get good hospitals, good roads, good busses.

Some would say nobody should complain of the lack of freedom as long as they are benefiting from the public services.

Well, I'd rather walk in a sidewalk that has more craters than the moon and have hospitals manned by veterinarians than surrender the free flow of information.

The deal with the internet is that nobody knows how to tame it. You can ban it altogether, put up a firewall that keeps the less computer-literate users away from it, or go big-brother and control your users.

Banning only works in prison-islands where the chances of someone setting up a satellite connection are minimal, because your slave-population is both miserably poor and completely unable of acquiring the necessary technology.

A Fire-wall will keep "most" users out, limiting them to "approved" and "safe" websites, but the damned Bourgeois class will learn how to dribble the system, it's still the second best option after banning anyway, since at least the majority of the peasantry will be kept out.

Now, if you take the Big-Brother approach, you don't need to worry about the content at all. Just scan your users messaging for the saboteurs and enemies of the state and you can enforce the "appropriate" behavior through further action.

So, as August pointed, how would such a tax work? What's the potential of using it as a mean to gather intelligence on the unwanted citizens?

I'll give you a solution to the increasing cost of the European Union, shut down the political body completely and return the project to a simple, cheap, economical block, maintaining only the economical forums and the dispute-solving infrastructure (including diplomacy), bare necessities.

[STEED]

Originally Posted by August

This isn't so much about money but rather tracking data. Anything that is taxed has to have a documented paper trail to properly count the beans so to speak. Say Bye Bye to any remaining degree of internet anonymity.

That's being done now all emails are scanned for key words by the intelligence services to what degree is anyone's guess, as for anonymity I do believe we all have an I.P address. Imaged a world where newspapers and books, letters and so on are a thing of the past.

Everything is on the internet this will make tracking and snooping a lot more convenient when it's all in one place, information is power. So who will be spying on the spies to safe guide your freedom on the internet no one I suspect.

On a lighter note as I said in my early post, if the E.U. Parliament dose go ahead with the tax. I have no problem getting hold of horse dung my only problem would be how much to send to them.

[jumpy]

To quote Harry Enfield (uk comedian) spoofing a british politician when describing europe (eeuurp = europe):

"Eeuurp; it's a bit like a train service- it's better to be on the train, standing on the seat pissing out of the window, rather than running alongside on the platform trying to piss in..."

Ok, so email/sms tax *yawn* why do I pay my ISP for webspace/email space and a certain number of email address aliases then? Obviously it's not enought to pay for something just once, I mean, who ever heard of such a daft thing?
I can see the similarity with how I run my car: pay road tax, congestion charges, parking fees, toll roads, petrol (and VAT on that), pay twice for an MOT and retest...
I think I can see where this is going- it would potentially turn my home unternet* use into the same format as we're getting at work - no swearing in email, no viewing pages labeled as 'suspect' by the IT admin whos' first language isn't even english so how can you choose content properly?

Better yet, why don't I just go and live in the peoples republic of china... then I can get all the civil oppression many governing bodies seem so keen on, and then some

*my new name for the internet -things seem to be moving backwards in this area- good freely accessible stuff is being ripped off to make a fast buck. So much for that, it can only get more restrictive/ in the end, not less. Expect the 'overseer' to be forwarding a memmo to the didgi-pigs to pay me a visit in the small hours

[Iku-turso]

I hate EU

[The Avon Lady]

Originally Posted by Iku-turso

I hate EU

There's a bumper sticker born every minute.

[Iku-turso]

Originally Posted by The Avon Lady

There's a bumper sticker born every minute.

I allready made a one, i stick it to my lawnmover.

I am sooo bad....