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.

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.

That's not how streaming services work

They can, and they do. Through VAT. Netflix is a consumer service. They can simply create a different VAT category and be done with it.

>If someone downloads your software from a mirror

Who pays the tax in 'anonymous' p2p schemes?

If I upload to a french server from a ukranian server that I seed through a swiss based VPN using a norwegian seedbox that I paid a friend for in cash, how does the french government bill me? Do they subpoena the ukranian server to see where the data come from? Does the swiss government, not seeing any legal issue with my data, comply and hand over my norwegian server? Does the norwegian seedbox provider or my friend at the company foot the bill because they've no record of me?

What about networking stacks in which the requester can't necessarily identify where the data genuinely originated? Suppose I torrent a genuine Linux ISO in france. Do all of the peers get fractional bills? Or is it on the distro maintainer? What if the data didn't really originate from any of the peers but was fetched for me by the peers and the peers don't tell me (or therefore the ISPs) where they got the data from?

What if I put, say, VLC in an encrpyted zip. The ISP and therefore the french gov would see this as data coming from me since it doesn't hash as VLC, but they also can't prove that it came from me if I demonstrate that it was actually downloaded from a forum.

What about anonymous data? If 4chan is mirroring images for me that I uploaded from a McDonalds and a french frog downloads it, how do I get a bill? Does 4chan eat the bill or forward it to the McDonalds? Does the McDonalds eat the bill or hire a tech to cross-reference cameras and IP logs? What if I paid for the food in cash? Do they check some mythical "who owns this laptop" database provided by google/meta/microsoft? What if my laptop isn't in those databases? The local McDonalds is forced to foot the bill as they can't provide a patsie?

If I send a friend a video on via facebook messenger, who foots the bill? Facebook didn't send the data, I did. Is facebook going to rewrite it's eula to allow them to bill me for "woops your friend was in france at the time"?

This may all seem like hand-waving what-aboutism, but there are legitimate questions at hand. If public data is expensive and there are routes that do not result in billing, why would anyone choose the expensive route for any reason other than ignorance of the free route? If those who know would choose the free route, how is france going to collect all, most, or any of their booty?

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.

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.

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.

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

> 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.

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

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.

> 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"?

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"?

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?

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.

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

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.

> 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.

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.

> 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.

They tend to be somewhat more practical and knowledgeable when it comes to pragmatic business and getting stuff done.

The stuff they want to get done might suck though.

They are complete imbeciles on many other issues.