Technology

This was fake news the first 900 times it was posted, and still is. France doesn't "plan" this. 10 fringe people with no power or influence suggested it. Everyone has already rejected it.

Again, here is the real story behind the sensationalized headlines https://tech-insider.org/french-lawmakers-per-gigabyte-internet-traffic-tax-11-10-vote-2026/

Headlines called it an approval, and technically it was. But the vote covered one amendment during the first reading of the 2027 finance bill, only 35 of the Assembly’s 577 deputies took part, and the government opposed it. Nothing here is law.

What a comically bad idea.

That tax is 1) going to just be a drag on everything IT, and 2) that is a higher tax than bandwidth costs, by a pretty good margin.

They think it's some brilliant scheme against big tech, when really it's so obvious that they're just going to tack the tax onto the users bill. French Netflix users will now have a "usage tax" on every bill, guaranteed.

It's exactly the same thinking as the tarriffs. They think businesses will eat that cost and protect the customers? BS they will they'll pass it on down.

How am I supposed to download anything if the government takes 5.5%? The checksums will not match!

This is such a bad idea, though it is funny to imagine people smuggling in hard drives like they are narcotics to avoid the crazy data tax. If this took off Physical games would be even more valuable, what a great time for Sony and MS to kill them!!

Initiative to make it exhorbitantly expensive to request user data from services?
I shudder to imagine what using Google takeout would be like under this.

Good job France for emboldening American big tech's market domination, I guess.

https://itsfoss.com/news/vlc-outrage-at-french-internet-tax/

If that goes through, it's going to make local caching a lot more financially-appealing in France.

Does this mean they'll actually market plans in the gigabyte instead of the misleading gigabit?