Why a broadband tax is a bad idea to solve the p2p dilemma

[TankGirl]

Public debate on filesharing continues in Sweden. The idea of a broadband tax as a way to collect money to copyright holders has received a cautious positive response from several parties who have lately turned from anti-filesharers into pro-filesharers at the face of the scary approach of the Swedish Pirates towards the Swedish Parliament.

Newspaper Expressen opposes the new proposed tax in no unclear terms. Here's what they say in their 10.6.2006 editorial:

"Absolute No" to broadband tax

"The police raid against Pirate Bay finally initiated the debate that we should have had already a year ago. At the time we criminalized filesharing, and the only protests we heard were those from the activists. Now that the debate has grown wider, it took only one week until the responsible parties started to bend in the question. This says a whole lot about the quality of legislation work. When a legal proposal comes in an EU directive, we way too often take it as some sort of supernatural force that cannot be influenced on.

It is remarkable that other parties besides Centre Party and Green Party are now starting to realize that we cannot criminalize a whole generation of youth and a whole Internet culture. Downloading films and music from Internet is here to stay. Recording music from radio to cassette tapes and taping films from TV to videotapes cannot be stopped either, even if the content industry really hard tried to do it.

However, it is distressing to see how many Parliamentary parties seem to favor a special broadband tax supposed to compensate artists for the claimed losses of CD sales. The idea is to tax the traffic on Internet so that the state could give money to a particular segment of culture.

This is the biggest threat of socialism since the employee stock funds. The artists will in practice become state employed culture workers. Free culture life will become a joke.

We should be extremely cautious to give the state any permissions to tax new activities. It will soon become like V.A.T. - first a temporary minor cost but soon the biggest cost in the household.

It is also very worrying that the first question for all the parties has been how the artists and the film industry will get paid. A progressive policy in an active broadband country like Sweden would instead protect freedom in the Internet, totally ditch the present laws on filesharing and leave it to the acting parties to find a way to make their money."

I agree with them totally. Internet must remain as affordable as possible, as available as possible, as lightweigtht as possible. It is a new era communication platform that operates on fast, free global connectivity. Its gracious neutrality regarding the content it carries is what makes it such a powerful cultural accelerator. Content can evolve freely, new file formats and new communication protocols can emerge freely - Internet will handle them all just fine because it was designed to be universal.

Internet does not have favorites. For the Internet, movie industry's bits - whether paid for or pirated - are just bits among others - its job is to deliver them all from the sender to the receiver, quickly and reliably, period. The idea of some particular content business suffering so much from the existence of this superb neutral communication infrastructure that it would earn a special permanent priviledge to tax all communication on Internet is ridiculous. Businesses that cannot survive free Internet do not deserve to survive. They must reform, restructure or die. True creativity will never be threatened by free communication. And there will always be new, smarter, more visionary businessmen who can set up new businesses - even content businesses - that are fit enough to survive the Internet.


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