UK Entertainment Industry Proposes Tax On Broadband Access

[zidine100]

wait, were paying for a service, and now your wanting us to pay more for it, using the old overused excuse of piracy.

COME ON NOW.

yep.... lets punish everyone instead of pirates, thats the way we want it, thats how innocent unitll proven guilty works....

bleh this is all an excuse to try and get more money for our failing economy its plainly damn obvious now isnt it.

And let me guess after this tax there going to go around hunting the pirates down again to punish them again, let me put it this way, you cannot punnish people twice for the same crime without screwing up the entirety of law's morality.

heh, isnt this just a way to remove poor people from the internet, i mean come on there are people who aren't able to spend an extra two pound a month now, good idea lets create a bigger divide between the information rich and the information poor, because that doesn't reak of censorship now doesn't it. yep i went there.

on a side note, this will probably never make it through.

 

[underattack86]

Its thing like this that make me agree with laissez faire capitalists.

This policy is lassezfaire. You think they are going to re-distribute the taxes they collect??

W-w-w-what? Taxing broadband access is laissez faire? No, c'mon. Laissez faire means NON-INTERFERENCE: taxation is the very opposite.

I agree with laissez faire capitalists for a million different reasons. This is just one more.

 

[InevitableFate]

Even worse considering how poor our broadband is anyway. I would seriously put as down as a contender for worst value internets in the developed world. Companies charge ridiculous rates for [globally relatively] low speeds, and don't even give us those (a package advertised as 10 MB would be lucky to go over 2 sort of thing).

As it is, I wouldn't be surprised if this actually happens. Our government is so ridiculously corrupt. It doesn't even try to pretend it's not:

http://www.conservatives.com/Donate/Donor_Clubs.aspx

Scroll right down to The Leaders Group. Yes that's right. People who donate that much (wealthy traditionalists and businessmen basically) essentially get DIRECT ACCESS to the Prime Minister. It's like they're advertising a "buy a policy" scheme.

 

[zidine100]

on a side note when has piracy been, or infact ever been an equilibrium? Stop treating it like one. If it only takes a freaking first year whos doing a ecconomics course at uni to figure this one out, its quite obvious piracy is just a pretense for money in this case.

 

[Gingerman]

I currently live in Britain (hopefully not for ever) but I can safely say I have not pirated anything.

But if this law passes I will probably have to, my money is as tight as it is already and if it gets any tighter due to a law like this I'll glad take more money out of their greedy pockets.

When will they realise punishing normal users will not effect pirating at all and merely make it worse?

 

[Shinrae]

Wouldn't this legitimise piracy?

I'd like to think it would, but somehow 'I payed my taxes so Ima gunna go ahead and download all the vidya I want' is unlikely to hold up in court.
This seems pretty stupid to be honest, if they're gunna tax it then they need to make sure everyone has access to high speed broadband without any other costs.

> Pay for the initial broadband
> Pay a tax ontop of that
> Pay for your downloads
> Pay tax on those downloads

Do you think the UK gov' would pay to ship me off to some other country? I don't like it here v.v

 

[GeorgW]

This may be the stupidest thing I've heard in a good while.