PARIS (AP) — How to help prop up the ailing music industry? Tax Google, suggests a new report commissioned by the French government.
The report, handed to Culture Minister Frederic Mitterrand on Wednesday, says Google and other Internet portals should be slapped with a new tax on their online ad revenues in France to fund the development of legal outlets for buying books, movies and especially music on the Internet.The proposal is the latest idea to emerge amid France's efforts to fight illegal file-sharing and impose order — French-style — on the free-for-all that is the Internet.
The plan "seemed inevitable to us, if we want to maintain a certain pluralism in the culture world" and prevent the "endless enrichment of two or three world players who will impose their cultural formatting on us," Patrick Zelnik, a record producer who helped lead the commission, was quoted as telling Liberation newspaper.
Google appears cool to the idea but sought a conciliatory tone. Google France's public affairs director said the company told the commission it wanted "cooperation between Internet players and the cultural fields to develop new models."