OT - Stop The TV Tax

[Christopher Browne]

On Mon, Oct 5, 2009 at 1:56 PM, Darryl Moore <darryl-90a536wCiRb3fQ9qLvQP4Q at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> Oddly enough a real tax that the government collects, like the BBC TV
> tax, I'd be all in favour of.
>
> If we can actually manage to make the paradigm shift in the right
> direction, then this will be a really good way to fund the creation of
> national cultural content. That content could then be distributed freely
> via efficient Internet P2P.

Hmm...

i. Would that be a tax on the Internet, assumed to imply that all of
our usage of the Internet is of "broadcasted" material which needs to
be paid for?

ii. Or a tax on the TV set, implying that our usage of a television
set involves the use of "broadcasted" material which needs to be paid
for?

Both of those have some pretty big holes that can get poked in them:

a) Any time I'm accessing not-broadcasted material on the Internet,
then i. isn't valid.  At a gross protocol level, there are a number of
kinds of traffic where that's really not true...
 - When I receive messages via SMTP/POP/IMAP
 - When I connect to a web site where I'm "transacting" some kind of
business (whether commercial or not!)
 - When I connect to a Git repository to pull code (which may be
extended infinitely to other protocols ;-)

b) Personally, the only time I turn my television set on anymore is to
play recorded material on it.  I haven't tuned it into a broadcast in
many months.  Is it proper to charge a TV tax for broadcasts if I'm
not tuning into broadcasts?

I'm not saying you're wrong (nor that you're right! :-)) - rather that
the policy needs to be rather precisely defined, otherwise one might
assume things and come to dramatically wrong conclusions based on how
actual usage might differ from assumptions inherent in the policy...
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