Yet another Hacker News

French digital tax may kill VideoLan non-profit

83 points miohtama 2 hours ago 74 comments

claude-ai 2 hours ago | parent

The stupidity of European politicians is that extreme, it cannot be explained away by assuming a lack of education. I was never a conspiracy theorist, but the discrepancy between "That's something an educated person should understand" and what they are actually doing is that large I cannot bridge it mentally.

This may be a defect of mine, it probably is, but I have no but.

Gys 2 hours ago | parent

The combination of ignorant politicians and smart lobbyists is universal.

Edit: why would VLC or any online company stay in France?

advisedwang 1 hour ago | parent

> why would VLC or any online company stay in France?

IIRC all the people involved with VLC are French and live in France. They might want to stay in their native country where they speak the language, have families, have the right to remain and vote etc etc.

docdeek 42 minutes ago | parent

I don’t work for VLC but do live and work in France. I think you’re right on the reasons (and there are likely others) but of all the ones you mention, I think it is the family that is the biggest reason I stay. I could speak English and French elsewhere in Europe, have the right to live anywhere in the EU thanks for the Union’s freedom of movement, and I can ‘sort of’ vote, if only for local and European elections.

But with kids in school, relatives close by, and family links in the city and region whre we live, moving somewhere else is not yet on the cards no matter how large the tax bill and unsettled the politics - at least for the moment.

cjs_ac 1 hour ago | parent

If you’re an American, the only news you hear from Europe is clickbait peddled by American journalists. Day-to-day politics in European countries doesn’t affect Americans, so it isn’t reported on. Journalists in Europe pay excess attention to American school shootings and Texas’ decades-long struggle to successfully administer the death penalty for the same reasons.

ThrowawayTestr 1 hour ago | parent

What does your comment have to do with out of touch European politicians?

nekusar 1 hour ago | parent

I disagree.

I've been watching Iceland news, along with machine translation of Icelandic.

Right now, they're increasing taxes on parking, toll roads, 30% increase on hotels and B&B's, and per-kilometer driving tax.

It's insane the amount of taxes on taxes on taxes. And foreigners not in the know are about to get whalloped for $1000 extra around the ring road.

Sure, Iceland isn't EU proper. But they are Schengen along with other alliances. EU complaint stands, given they tax tax tax tax.

yesfitz 1 hour ago | parent

Here's a link to the amendment: https://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/dyn/17/amendements/3210A/...

I don't have an X account, so I can't see the conversation, but there don't appear to be any carveouts for non-profits or small businesses in the amendment, unless perhaps "any company offering an internet access service to households and businesses" has more criteria in context than a simple reading would suggest.

I wonder how distribution via torrent would be accounted for. Or if it would be worth it for larger players to adopt such a model, or just pay up or exit France.

MrMorden 1 hour ago | parent

Your version is marked as rejected three weeks ago. The screenshot is of a version that was adopted today.

kingstnap 37 minutes ago | parent

https://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/dyn/17/amendements/3210A/...

This is the current one.

I haven't done french since high school. So totally chatgpt and google translate reading this to me, but I really don't get what VideoLAN has to do with this.

The law is crazy with a €55/TB tax on ingress to France (including local cdns). But it's got nothing to do with your video player.

> A tax is established based on the flows of digital data emitted by content providers and paid by the latter

> When a data emitter uses a content delivery network to cache content near end users, the amount of data emitted is considered equal to the sum of the outgoing flows from the delivery network

Imagine paying €8 to download Balder's gate 3 lol.

croisillon 56 minutes ago | parent

https://xnologin.com/videolan/status/2116229135919919278

https://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/dyn/17/amendements/3210A/...

the text menstions several times that internet providers are the one in charge of collecting and paying the tax, i don't see how the softwares enabling the streaming/download would be under threat?

draugadrotten 1 hour ago | parent

That Laffer curve is going to hit France in the gonads.

mitxela 1 hour ago | parent

Laffer curve is about percentages (and also irrelevant below 80-90% and irrelevant if you think government shouldn't be a business). Taxing people with zero money millions of dollars isn't even on the curve, it's just a completely separate bad thing.

The separate internet tax on the other hand, that's about 1000% of the cost of internet, and a 1000% tax is definitely on the wrong side of the laffer curve. They are essentially banning the internet.

sophrosyne42 23 minutes ago | parent

The laffer curve is the law of diminishing returns applied to taxation revenues. It is relevant anywhere the government cares about tax revenues rather than being punitive or arbitrary, and its effects depend on the item being taxed and the effect this has on the wider economy.

Scaevolus 1 hour ago | parent

Paying 0.055 EUR per GB of traffic sent to French residents makes video streaming fundamentally unprofitable.

phkahler 1 hour ago | parent

>> Paying 0.055 EUR per GB of traffic sent to French residents makes video streaming fundamentally unprofitable.

How so? If you're paying a few EUR to watch a movie there's should be plenty of profit left.

irq 1 hour ago | parent

What if you're paying a few EUR a month for unlimited streaming on some app, not high profit new movies? The profit they make per episode for some rerurn of some old show you binge is probably a few cents at best.

Kirby64 1 hour ago | parent

Video streaming platforms are not generally running on a pay-per-view monetization model. A few offer this, but the vast majority of them are offering it at $15-20/months for unlimited streaming. 4K video uses quite a bit of bandwidth. Low end is something like 15Mbps. That’s ~7GB/hour. Or, $0.385/hour at these proposed rates. Doesn’t take long to start approaching the cost of the streaming services charge.

kstrauser 54 minutes ago | parent

And for households with kids, it's easy to imagine that turning into 30 hours a month, or $12 by your reasonable estimate. That's not a huge number, but I'm sure that'd push almost any streaming service into negative territory. I don't know what the average service's profit margins are, but highly doubt any of them could absorb that kind of hit.

Marsymars 39 minutes ago | parent

The easy answer there is to limit French residents to 720p rather than 4K for the $15 plan.

720p AV1 is about 700mb/hr, so about an order of magnitude less than your 7GB/hour.

It's not like a 720p limit for tax reasons is any worse than a 720p limit for lack-of-Widevine-support reasons.

paxy 40 minutes ago | parent

That's not how streaming services work

mindslight 25 minutes ago | parent

Sure, but the problem is that this is outweighed by the downsides to this law.

paxy 25 minutes ago | parent

Not just video streaming. Think of game downloads, software updates, video calls, cloud storage, backups.

A GTA 6 download is estimated to be 210 GB. Under this law the publisher or storefront will have to pay an extra 11.5 EUR per copy in tax. And not just for a sale, but for every download.

api 1 hour ago | parent

My big fear about right wing politicians is corruption and authoritarian right assaults on women and minorities.

My big fear about left wing politicians is well intentioned stupidity.

arjie 1 hour ago | parent

That does present the situation grimly. Do you pay the Danegeld to get the former to not do the assault thing? After all, the malicious competent can perhaps be bought. On the other hand, the incompetent could be manipulated by a sufficiently capable intelligence. I'm not one of those, but then again I'm not one of those who can buy the malicious competent either, to say nothing of the unfortunate situation where one ends up with the malicious incompetent - having mistaken malice for unaligned self-interested competence.

mitxela 1 hour ago | parent

It's extremely common that when a right wing government transitions to a left wing government, the left wing government notices it has insane unpayable debt and tries a bunch of desperate things to repay it.

Mamdani had the same problem but was luckily able to negotiate practicable payment plans on NYC's debt.

Also I believe it's much easier to solve well intentioned stupidity than to solve malice.

hagbard_c 28 minutes ago | parent

You do realise the same is true for moves from the left to the right? The left spends until the coffers are empty, gets voted out by those fed up with the miserable state of the economy, the right takes over and brings things back on track through austerity measures, the economy wakes up but austerity is still demanded due to the size of the mess left by the lefties. Those same lefties point at the blooming economy and complain that only the rich get to profit while we live in austerity, vote for us and everyone gets a free beer and pony. People vote the left in, they start spending like crazy until the cycle repeats. Been there, seen it happen several times.

api 26 minutes ago | parent

I assume this is Euro centric? In the US it’s been the right that have spent like drunks.

hagbard_c 22 minutes ago | parent

No, it is not euro-centric. The previous US regime also spent like drunks, did you forget about all the stimulus packages which pushed inflation up to almost 10%?

IslandRebel 7 minutes ago | parent

The logic is "left good, right bad". In other places that people here would scoff at it, it is the opposite way around "right good, left bad".

Unfortunately, political tribalism is rife online, and it is as bad here as anywhere else.

478392742992 25 minutes ago | parent

What would the totalitatian left do without useful idiots like you voting them into power?

well_ackshually 20 minutes ago | parent

We'd be very sad because there wouldn't be legitimate idiots like you to entertain us <3

WesolyKubeczek 21 minutes ago | parent

> It's extremely common that when a right wing government transitions to a left wing government, the left wing government notices it has insane unpayable debt and tries a bunch of desperate things to repay it.

Meanwhile the right wing opposition keeps pointing fingers and telling that it's the left's (or center's, whatever) fault. Happened multiple times.

IslandRebel 14 minutes ago | parent

They both blame each other for their own incompetence.

IslandRebel 15 minutes ago | parent

They both often continue increasing deficits and spending until they can't.

> Mamdani had the same problem but was luckily able to negotiate practicable payment plans on NYC's debt.

The last right-wing mayor was Bloomberg (I don't know how right-wing Bloomberg really is when he tried running as a Democrat), and that was 13 years ago.

> Also I believe it's much easier to solve well intentioned stupidity than to solve malice.

Well-intentioned stupidity can go on for far longer because people won't want to intervene because of a negative perception when intervening. If there is malice, there isn't a negative perception when intervening.

nbajka 54 minutes ago | parent

What part of "Paying 0.055 EUR per GB of traffic sent to French residents" is well-intentioned? It's nothing but a nonsensical shakedown.

Also, left-wing governments are generally as corrupted and freedom-infringing as right-wing governments, at least in Europe.

hagbard_c 25 minutes ago | parent

Please stop pressing that down-vote button on anything outside the desired narrative. What nbajka says is true, corruption is universal. It is also true worldwide, not just in Europe. Corruption knows no ideological boundaries. Power corrupts, politics is about power, those in power sometimes abuse it. Yes, right-wing politicians are sometimes as corrupt as left-wing politicians. Yes, left-wing politicians are sometimes as corrupt as right-wing politicians. There's corrupt centrists as well.

hagbard_c 32 minutes ago | parent

Drop the labels, preferred victim groups and excuses for your preferred ideology, heap everything together and you're getting closer to the truth:

My big fear about politicians is corruption, authoritarian tendencies and stupidity

There, done, put a pin in it. There's corrupt politicos on all sides of the spectrum, there's authoritarians on all sides and stupidity seems to be endemic.

478392742992 27 minutes ago | parent

Of course you're not worried about looting, arson, gang rapes and stabbings.

As a leftist you don't have tobworry about comrades burning down your home.

IslandRebel 23 minutes ago | parent

Why do left-wing politicians always get given an out when they do malicious stuff, but the right doesn't? I think all politicians are lying and corrupt scumbags.

I find it astounding that people can apply different rules to one group of politicians because they say things they like. I hold them all to the same standard; I assume they are all lying and corrupt until proven otherwise.

jszymborski 14 minutes ago | parent

Hard to describe the current French government as particularly left wing.

juancn 1 hour ago | parent

France is desperate.

They have a deficit problem, they cannot print money and people really don't want to give up their pensions.

Unless the curb public spending they are heading to a hard crash (and will probably take a couple other economies for the ride).

mitxela 1 hour ago | parent

Couldn't they just admit the problem with capitalism is that you run out of other people's money, and then stop giving all the tax money to billionaires, and then there'd be enough money left for everyone else?

The french government is who decided the french government has to pay all that money, they can just decide differently.

brandur 1 hour ago | parent

Quite terrifying that this appears to be a sincere comment. The top marginal tax rate on French nationals including CEHR is over 55%. The country spends ~60% of its GDP, almost 10% higher than the European average, let alone the average worldwide.

Could you elaborate how France is "giving all the money to billionaires"?

quadrige 51 minutes ago | parent

That's quite easy: billionaires are not contributing fairly and constantly evade taxation, thus concentrating more and more of the national added value.

478392742992 30 minutes ago | parent

Where is your evidence that they're "giving all the tax money to billionaires", comrade?

s1artibartfast 29 minutes ago | parent

You could kill them all and take every penny they own and it still wouldn't solve the problem.

vorpalhex 28 minutes ago | parent

So once you've milked the 43 French billionaires to extend French spending by 2.5 years or so (this assumes you extract 100% of their wealth into actual liquidity), what's your plan for year 3?

mmmattt 16 minutes ago | parent

Quite terrifying that this appears to be a sincere comment. Do you really believe billionaires pay even near the top marginal rate? It’s well established that once you reach the very very top of fortunes, the effective tax rate starts going down.

https://www.ipp.eu/publication/note-ipp-n92-quels-impots-les...

thaumasiotes 1 hour ago | parent

> Couldn't they just admit the problem with capitalism is that you run out of other people's money

What do you mean when you say "capitalism"?

CamperBob2 47 minutes ago | parent

Anything he doesn't like is capitalism. And we're all Redditors now, don't you know?

spwa4 44 minutes ago | parent

If you're suggesting what I think you're suggesting (just stealing the public debt) the problem with that is

1) paying money to billionnaires cost 67B euros, let's say 10% more this year, to 73B (interest on debt so France can keep lending 170B more every year)

2) not paying money to billionnaires costs 170B euros (france needs 170B euros in new debt every year to balance the books)

Oh and of course when it does become worth doing, stealing the public debt, there is still the little matter of needing to get French people to do 250B worth of extra labor without paying them 1 cent extra (if they kick the can down the road, which they will, it should settle on about that amount per year). Essentially French people will have to work 1/6th harder one way or the other. But by paying billionnaires they can wait with that another 4 years.

Or, you know, they could work 1/30th extra now. 11 days per year. But that means not kicking the can down the road.

Similar figures for all EU countries (except Germany, for the moment at least), but they get to watch France solve it first because they're not the worst offender.

s1artibartfast 30 minutes ago | parent

The proble. Is they dont do that. It is mostly going to retired pensioners. Now you have a conflict between the voting elderly masses and the workers paying taxes.

The billionaires are irrelevant. You could take every penny they have and it wouldn't make a difference

thisislife2 59 minutes ago | parent

As the Europeans were forced to cut off cheap energy supply from Russia, it has really hurt some of their economies and it has partly contributed to the economic crisis emerging in EU. It is one of the major reasons why EU members are so opposed to ending the Ukraine war, despite their ally US pointing out that that horse (i.e. the proxy war) has been whipped for all its political worth and prolonging it anymore will likely backfire on the west (a defeat of Ukraine strengthens Russia, a defeat of Russia may result in nuclear war or further break up of it resulting in unrest and possibly civil war in that region that China would exploit and benefit hugely from as it moves to capture Russian territories, to protect its own interest, while any new breakaway nation states that form may also possess nuclear weapons from the vast Russian nuclear arsenal presenting other long term headaches). A "mini wartime" economy due to the Ukraine war is the only thing, some EU members feel, is sustaining their economy, away from the breakpoint. And specifically, with respect to France, one of the major issue it has is that it never really gave up its imperialistic stake in its African colonies, which has been increasingly challenged by competition from China and Russia. As Africans increasingly assert their sovereignty, France is slowly being edged out in Africa. Even the Americans are now encroaching in Africa, on French influence, to retain western influence there and protect West's access to African natural resources.

RandomLensman 54 minutes ago | parent

I don't think anyone is opposed to ending Russia's war of conquest in Ukraine, what Europeans tend to be opposed to is allowing conquest to stand, no?

Which EU members feel that regarding a ""mini wartime" economy"? Where can I see that evidenced?

paxy 39 minutes ago | parent

I don't understand. Can't they just borrow $40 trillion?

ChrisArchitect 1 hour ago | parent

Discussion:

French national assembly votes 0.055€/GB internet tax

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50308240

mitxela 1 hour ago | parent

Nitter link: https://twiiit.com/videolan/status/2116229135919919278

How can I see an English translation?

EmbarrassedHelp 10 minutes ago | parent

Firefox has a translation tool in the browser.

MayeulC 1 hour ago | parent

I mean, the law is stupid, but as one of the commenters there says, there is a 2% revenue (profit?) cap, and I don't think that VideoLAN makes a lot of revenue.

_ache_ 8 minutes ago | parent

They don't, association in France can't make revenue/profit. (Except some of them from Alsace/Loraine because of WWII..., not relevant here)

eclipticplane 1 hour ago | parent

Wait, why is VideoLan hit by this? Do they stream content themselves?

skinfaxi 49 minutes ago | parent

The tax seems to be general, not limited to video/audio. Like downloads of the VLC client.

goodmythical 41 minutes ago | parent

https://pastebin.com/zHkErGHP google translated version of article explains that the tax is not on any specific type of data but on any data delivered to french citizens/corps.

I don't have VideoLan's internal metrics, but if they're saying it'll cost them millions they're saying they deliver over ~18tb (or ~36tb for a tax of 2million) to french peeps per year

spwa4 17 minutes ago | parent

Because it's the actual generator of the bits that is supposed to pay. Which means you let a French person download anything at all, you're supposed to pay. If someone downloads your software from a mirror, the mirror can "identify you", and you'll be charged. No matter where you are.

This is supposed to let the French tax authorities collect 20B in additional tax revenue.

And yes, I don't see how Youtube (or Facebook, or Tiktok, or Netflix, or even something like Steam ...) can operate with such a tax in France.

PowerElectronix 44 minutes ago | parent

They will tax everyone for everything before they even contemplate controlling their spending.

whimsicalism 35 minutes ago | parent

they are in an older electorate death spiral.

gib444 6 minutes ago | parent

What can be cut and by how much?

indiantinker 38 minutes ago | parent

This was expected. France is in a lot of debt trouble and it’s highly alarming development for Eurozone. Unlike the US, France cannot print more Euros to stay afloat and the ECB, who can, is institutionally hand-cuffed to not do so. Its chief just quit in a seemingly related situation but optically unrelated way.

gib444 22 minutes ago | parent

Just to clarify: Christine Lagarde hasn't quit as in quit today, rather, she announced she will resign in February, 9 months before the end of her term.

paxy 19 minutes ago | parent

This is the most hilarious thing I have ever read. Part of me wants this law to go into effect and watch an entry country send itself back to 1988 to try and compy with it.

Quick ChatGPT summary of I‑1358:

- It's a tax on internet "content", but they haven't defined what that means exactly, so by default it would apply to all internet traffic.

- Bytes delivered to French users by ISPs are taxed, but not user uploads.

- ISPs are in charge of tracking exactly where every GB originates from and will have to report the names to the government.

- The "content provider" then has to pay 0.055 EUR per GB that they sent.

- No explanation for how user-to-user traffic is handled. No explanation for what ISP -> user means (e.g. does P2P count)? About a million other similar questions are unanswered.

- The amendment was adopted today, and the assembly will vote on it as part of their full budget.

peri-cl 12 minutes ago | parent

New cloud feature! CDN's now geolocate French users, and serve them images downscaled to 32x32.

ML algorithms trained on CIFAR are again commercially relevant. (Invest in Mistral!)

jszymborski 16 minutes ago | parent

This is an exceedingly dumb tax. A more reasonable tax would be one for storing user data. That would make PII a liability, not something you hold on to forever in hopes of selling to some scammy third party when you fold.

_ache_ 13 minutes ago | parent

This law is crazy. The "French socialists" are really disconnected to any reality, they don't even exists as a political force currently.

To be fair, it's limited to what a "business" make as money. So it should exclude associations (which are not allowed to make money in France).

But yes, it's really a stupid law.