14 DAY TRIAL // France is once again leading the way with a new proposal to advance the state of the Internet after the very popular, and apparently delayed, 'three strikes' law. A report presented to the French officials suggests a great way of helping the misfortune news publishers and the music industry, which just can't seem to be raking in the kind of revenue they've been used to, by taxing online advertising. The report claims that companies like Google, Microsoft or Yahoo shouldn't be able to profit from the advertising they sell while the poor content creators can hardly make ends meet. And if that doesn't cut it, ISPs should also pay based on their traffic.
The French government, known for its innovative solutions and practical approaches to solving this nefarious problem, represented by its culture minister Frédéric Mitterrand put together a crack team to come up with a plan. Dubbed the Zelnik Mission, the group was formed by Patrick Zelnik, who also lent his name, a former music executive at Polydor and Virgin France currently CEO of independent music label Naïve, Guillaume Cerutti CEO of Sotheby's France and former culture minister Jacques Toubon.
The team now presented their proposals to the French government and isn't trying to hide that some of the more controversial proposals are aimed squarely at Google. The report calls for a tax on big advertising companies, regardless if they operate in the country or not. Every click on an ad in France should be making the government money. Money that would then be directed at those hardest hit by Google's evil scheme, old media players like newspapers and the music industry.
The logic behind the move: “No profit without compensation,” says Toubon. It gets better, the tax is meant to put an end to "enrichment without any limit or compensation,” Cerutti is quoted as saying by the French newspaper Liberation. Surprisingly or not, these arguments bare a striking resemblance to the ones coming from US publishers which are also outraged by Google's nerve of making money when they aren't. Of course, the flawed logic behind these arguments has been exposed time and time again, just because you as a publisher or music label can't make any money online or you aren't even trying it doesn't mean that those that can should pay for it. Hopefully, the French government will be wise to ignore the suggestions, though its previous track record would say otherwise.