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I leak it, Farrar reviews it

by Whaleoil on October 17, 2011

I leaked Labour’s ICT policy and David Farrar reviewed it.

The key point of the policy is Labour’s plan to tax the internet and then control it. Basically their plan for New Zealand is to find a way to measure everything and then tax it.

Labour is proposing to levy a special Internet tax on Internet users to fund copyright holders, plus it is effectively proposing that the Government gain the power to regulate the non-broadcast media, allowing it to fine and censor newspapers and maybe even bloggers.

Let’s start with the Internet users tax.

Labour will also investigate the viability of a small copyright levy on Internet access, which would develop the digital platform for accessing Kiwi content mentioned above. Funds raised could go to content creators through an arms length collecting and distribution arrangement.

So vote Labour if you want a tax on Internet users. And like many taxes it might start small but over time it would grow. At first it might fund a content distribution system. Then it might fund projects which close the digital divide. And then it might fund Government websites (as they are done for the benefit of users not Government).

Just as I am against the Government’s DIA filter, because one day it might expand to be a filter against other content, likewise I am against any Internet tax on users.

That is Labour’s big idea for the internet, seriously…an Internet Tax.

 

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  • Anonymous

    They can get f****d, we already pay GST on our internet accounts. But that isnt the important issue here  – we are talking about the possibility of censorship, government control  & the possibility of partial or total loss of freedom of expression.

  • Cactus Kate

    An internet tax?  You are fucking joking. “Kiwi content”? You mean blogs?  I started reading the policy and seriously would rather read a copy of Helen Clark’s book.  At least her book has an ending.

  • Anonymous

    What an utterly ridiculous and poorly thought out policy.

    “Digital technology offers many new opportunities. The creators of content should be compensated for their work and consumers should have freedom for personal use of digital content they rightfully possess.”

    It sounds as though Clare Curran thinks that instead of people purchasing content they want access to, as and when they want it, she’ll tax every internet user (yay, double dip taxation!) in order to compensate for accessing content, whether the user wants to access and use that content or not. That’s how I understand it anyway and it is an absolutely nutty scheme.

    If Curran thinks that there is currently a problem with consumers having “freedom for personal use of digital content they rightfully possess” then the answer is not to tax the internet. The answer lies in Format Shifting. I can’t think of any other way in which consumers do not have freedom to use content they possess. I wonder if she even knows what Format Shifting is?

    “Funds raised could go to content creators through an arms length collecting and distribution arrangement.”

    Who are these content creators? Is it anyone who maintains a blog or uploads a video to youtube? If I put photos on my flickr account or on facebook, that makes me a content creator right? That certainly widens the pool of people who could be eligible to put their hand out for a slice of some Labour Internet Tax. Unless Curran can narrow the definition of who counts as a content creator and therefore becomes eligible to grab some Internet Tax, the large number of people who could potentially ask for that ‘compensation’ could be so vast that the resulting slice of the pie that everybody receives would be so minuscule as to defeat the purpose of the scheme in the first place… whatever that purpose is.

    But let’s be real: if I create content and put it on the internet, why the fuck should I be entitled to money that the government snatches from people who use the internet? Unless I create something that people actually want, unless I go to the effort to monetise that content, then I sure as hell am not deserving of other people’s money.

    I’m going to be real cynical here and put forward what I think is the real purpose behind Curran’s Tax The Internet scheme. I think she has decided that starving artists are being ripped off by having their works being pirated on the internet. The answer? Why, it’s obvious! You simply assume that everyone using the internet is a pirate and they ought to pay for what they’re pirating. You get that with a blanket tax going into a money pool to give to poor starving artists.