OT - Stop The TV Tax

[Darryl Moore]

Good points, however if you believe that there are stories that need to
be told from a Canadian perspective, that it is right for the government
to subsidize the creation of cultural content (especially in these times
when free enterprise business models are failing), then it shouldn't
really matter if you watch the particular shows or not. Just like it
doesn't matter if you have kids as to whether you pay school taxes or not.

As for the tax model to best do this. Obviously a direct television tax
is out as the line between tv and computer is increasingly becoming
grayed and, as I said, conventional broadcast would not be the preferred
distribution method.

An internet tax might be a possibility as it would be the primary means
of distribution. However a household property tax, or a head tax could
work too.

Again this would be to fund new productions by public broadcasters, not
to compensate private producers for perceived losses.

In this way, jobs would shift from the private producers to the public
broadcasters. The private producers could be relieved of their can-con
obligations (which are incompatible with an internet world) and reduce
to a more niche market, while the public broadcasters grow to fill the
void and assume the can-con requirements.

Of course this works against the interests of the private broadcasters
as they will necessarily be reduced in size, but it is in the interest
of the Canadian public.


Christopher Browne wrote:
> 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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