A French proposal to tax online advertising revenues to subsidise struggling newspapers and music companies has drawn fire from the internet community.
The proposal was contained in a government-sponsored research paper following claims that news aggregators such as Google, Microsoft, AOL, Yahoo and Facebook are profiting from their work without paying for it.
Internet activist Quadrature du Net said the tax would make all taxpayers pay for « out of date businesses ».
In a separate response to a European Commission consultation on creative content in the digital age, it said the authorities should seek to « reorganise the internet-based creative economy around the emancipatory practices enabled by new technologies, such as the sharing and re-use of creative works. »
http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2010/01/08/239869/Google-slams-French-plans-to-tax-online-news-aggregators.htm