The Google Tax

French President Nicolas Sarkozy and former French Minister of Culture, Jacques Toubon (both defenders of France's cultural heritage in the digital age) seem to have hit upon the solution to protecting home-grown literary and musical initiative by developing a new revenue stream to support this artistic output.

Two very interesting Wired articles: "France Considers 'Google Tax' to Pay Creative Work" and "France's Sarkozy Uses Tired Media Playbook to Push 'Google Tax'" take a dim view of this, and are well worth reading.

According to a proposal made by a government-commissioned survey, and leaked to the Liberation newspaper, the French President is considering taxing foreign Internet companies who do business in his country, an initiative already colloquially referred to as "the Google Tax."

This, France's latest effort to resist the freewheeling free-for-all culture so prevalent on the Internet, comes on the heels of its recently enacted New Internet piracy law--one of the strictest in the world--under which repeat illegal downloaders will be fined as well as disconnected from the Internet.

I am not passing judgment on their intentions, and I firmly believe that creator of works of art should see the direct benefit from such efforts, but I'm not sure those benefits should be funded by tax on successful Internet businesses; that appears to me the lazy way, and very much along the lines of "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need (or needs)" or should we say "greed?" Sounds familiar?

For all the flack Rupert Murdock is taking for wanting to charge for the Internet content he funds, I believe his approach is the fairest. Internet content does not appear spontaneously and at no cost, someone has to fit that bill. The enjoyment of such fare should remunerate its creator.

According to the two "Wired" articles, the commission suggested, "Taxing Internet service providers to raise tens of millions of Euros that would be invested in developing the online music business and other creative sectors. For example, they propose offering government-subsidized online subscriptions and expanding online publishing platforms," presumably those in the French language.

The French President is up against two formidable obstacles. The first, and most important, is that, lamentably, fewer and fewer--in this age of digitally-grown illiteracy--actually gives a damn about the finer points of literature or about the French musical heritage; the online world is heading for English as its mother tongue, and if you actually have to read the stuff, what's it doing on the Internet?, the home of gaming, porn, and social networks.

The second obstacle is that the ethical standards of Planet Earth seem to sink by the minute, as the prevalent view gains momentum: why should I pay for something I can get for free? It is a Me, Me, Me world now, and that mentality is a formidable hill for any defender of Culture to climb.