6 ms·
Canada says online streaming services must hand over 5% of their revenues
- dangerboysteve 2y agoso, in other words, a 5% tax to the consumer.
- alangibson 2y agoThis is a myth. Pricing is not deterministic like that. There are many reasons that a company may choose not to raise prices when it's costs go up.
- exe34 2y agoPlus they're going to raise the price whenever they think they can get away with it anyway.
- alangibson 2y agoThis is closer to the real answer. The price is what the buyer is willing to pay.
- exe34 2y agothe price the buyer is willing to pay is whatever is cheaper than the effort of piracy.
- bequanna 2y agoI’d like to see a solid, peer reviewed study that states: in a normal, competitive market, business cost increases are not correlated with consumer price increases.
- mrtranscendence 2y agoI mean, obviously they're going to be related. Even in a perfectly competitive environment, if everyone's costs increase then so will the going price. The operative question is whether these increased costs will be passed onto the consumer in their entirety, and that much isn't necessarily clear. If they do pass those costs on 100%, then it's a tacit admission that they weren't pricing in a profit-maximizing way before the cost increase.
- alangibson 2y agoJust Google 'price elasticity' for one well known case where there is not necessarily a linear relationship.
- saaaaaam 2y agoWhen a similar (though lower) streaming levy was implemented in France, Spotify passed it onto consumers.
- seivan 2y ago[dead]
- JackSlateur 2y agoYes, a myth Just like VAT increases are not quickly followed by price increases A myth.
- alangibson 2y agoLol. No clue what you're talking about eh? VAT is not paid by businesses. It is paid directly by the consumer.
- JackSlateur 2y agoHere in France, VAT is a tax collected by the business. The myth is that a VAT increase (for instance, 7% => 10%, a couple of years ago) would shrink the business' margins : for 100€ paid by the customer, 93€ used to go to the business before the change, and only 90€ would go after the change. Of course, and this is a massive surprise, all prices increased : the product now costs 110€, with 99€ going to the business and 11€ as VAT So yeah, I'm pretty sure I know how my taxes work. That said, I can only speak about here in France, as I do not know how it works in other countries.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- bryanlarsen 2y agoThis isn't a tax, it's a requirement that 5% must be spent on Canadian content. So unless they aren't already spending at least 5% on content then it might affect the mix of content they have available but it shouldn't affect their costs.
- jpl56 2y agoIn that case, they just need to create a Canadian company and create AI-generated programs...
- eesmith 2y agoCompanies charge as much as they can, not how much it costs to produce plus fixed overhead. They likely already charge what the market will bear, to maximizing revenue, such that increasing the price lowers revenue. Raising the price by 5% as a straight pass-through means lowering total revenue. Depending on the elasticity, the consumer price change could be 0 (assuming no one will pay for a higher price), but is almost certainly less than 5%.
- votepaunchy 2y agoYes, in a competitive market, but when the entire industry is hit with a new exogenous expense then this is much more likely to be passed on to customers.
- mike_d 2y ago> Companies charge as much as they can, not how much it costs to produce plus fixed overhead. Companies will sometimes overtly pass a cost on to the consumer in the hopes of creating political pressure against that cost. For example take a look at your phone or cable bill and how they itemize every tax and fee they have to pay and pass along to you.
- eesmith 2y agoAnd have those itemized breakdowns resulted in political pressure to change things? If one of those taxes were removed, do you think the overall cable bill would actually go down, and stay down?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- gustavus 2y agoWow what is Canada's end game here? First they tell the search engines. Engines they have to hand over part of their revenue to legacy media. Now they're going after all the streaming services. Like what is their actual end game? Rather than trying to do something to improve their own economic situation, their solution is just a parasitically leech off of other countries. Large businesses. I mean there's a case to be made for ensuring that massive conglomerates better than appropriate tax burden, but there's got to be a better way than just hamfistedly slapping arbitrary revenue numbers on every service offered in the country, especially when it's already more expensive than across the border. I guess what I'm really asking is who is John Galt?
- pstrateman 2y agoTransfer all money to the government and spend it subsidizing bombardier.
- kalupa 2y agomore like subsidizing Bell and Rogers, these days
- exe34 2y ago> their solution is just a parasitically leech off of other countries From TFA: > Major online streaming services operating in Canada will be required to contribute 5% of their Canadian revenues
- marcusverus 2y agoI think his comment contains a speech-to-text error. I assume it is supposed to read "their solution is just a parasitically leech off of other countries' large businesses."
- exe34 2y agoas opposed to other countries' corporations leaching off their economy by taking the profits to tax havens.
- Cypher 2y agoI still torrent so good luck collecting
- RegnisGnaw 2y agoThis totally make sense. The Liberals under Trudeau is losing badly and will lose the next election. When the Conservatives and Poilievre come to power next election, they will cancel it for sure. Then the Liberals can attack Poilievre and the Conservatives for being anti-minority, anti-aboriginal and anti-French (where the money is suppose to go). Why do you think the buy back for the assault style weapons is being pushed back to the election? Poilievre and the Conservatives will cancel the buy back. The Liberals will attack saying the Poilievre and Conservatives are pro-gun nuts and are anti-women (banning guns is huge in Quebec due to École Polytechnique massacre).
- endominus 2y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeWn3Sso2RE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeWn3Sso2RE It's amazing that this South Park clip just gets more and more true every year. "Canada wants more money! Other countries get lots of money, we want some of that money. How about the Internet? Internet makes lots of money!"
- Rinzler89 2y agoSame with some EU countries. They're full of parasite mafia-like organizations that have been given power by the state to just rent seek. In Austria there's a tax on all devices with built-in storage, from phones to blank DVDs and external HDDs, because the association of movies and music IP holders claim digital storage is used to store pirated content so it's their way of clawing back revenue lost to piracy. You can't make this up. That South Park skit is spot on for this country. I think there's similar taxes in other countries too.
- bags43 2y agoWhat is german word for this tax?
- Rinzler89 2y agoDifferent names in every German speaking country https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pauschalabgabe https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pauschalabgabe
- jmholla 2y agoSounds like it's should be legal to pirats theb since you already paid for it.
- JackSlateur 2y agoCorrect In France, for every storage devices (USB stick included), for every smartphone (which has storage), even for GPS (related .. god knows how) : you pay a tax. Because of said device, you could store a file "shared" by somebody else (that is, a file you did not pay for). You MUST pay the tax. As such, I consider my right to store files "shared" by somebody else. I paid for it, ffs.
- monetus 2y agoEventually, propping up these news conglomerates is going to feel like taxing icann to maintain flash. Short-sighted idiocy, of one variety of another if regnisgnaw's comment is correct.
- tossandthrow 2y agoA countries main assets, beside land, is the attention of their citizens. Like my attention has a monetary value to meta (eg. To expose me for ads), equally so has all the attention of the citizens of a country. This is just the new generation of protectionism and toll.
- OutOfHere 2y agoCanada and Europe are well known to engage in such mafia behaviors, seeking "protection money", in exchange for no real protection at all. If the companies pay now, they will only have to pay even more later. Taking it to court might help. If it doesn't, maybe the US federal government can intervene.
- Teever 2y agoWhat if Canada just decided that copyright protection on the type of material that America streaming companies make crazy profits from was only valid for 25 years? Like let's be honest here, these companies only make money because of an onerous protection racket that was lobbied for by the likes of the RIAA and MPAA. Canada is just deciding that they want their cut. That's all it is. There's no good guy here.
- OutOfHere 2y agoWell, that would be an amazing thing if Canada weakened copyright law. It's what differentiates good change from bad change. But I guess there is no honor among thieves (copyright cartel and Canada). Neither side is morally worth defending. As an aside, weakening copyright law sufficiently would strongly accelerate democratic AI because AI thrives on high quality data.
- samsin 2y agoand tech companies avoid paying tax in many countries through dirty accounting tricks, such as redirecting their profits to tax havens like Ireland.
- tossandthrow 2y ago> Taking it to court might help. If it doesn't, maybe the US federal government can intervene. What court? Last time I checked Canada was a sovereign country.
- OutOfHere 2y agoObviously a court in Canada. There has got to exist a law or a historical case in Canada against unfair taxation.
- ca_ca_dot_ca 2y agoI see a lot of american voices seemingly unaware of the reach and control of their platforms. I see nothing wrong with forcing them to support the creation of local content in countries where they operate (in order to extract wealth). If those american media platforms (for which there are no local equivalents) want my canadian dollars, I'm ok with them having to re-invest some of that locally.
- iteria 2y agoI see your POV, but at the same time, shouldn't Canada ask itself why it doesn't have a Netflix equivalent? American media reaches far, but it's made in the US. It's not really the US's fault that other nations aren't investing in making media that appeals to their culture such that another culture can take over.
- ChrisArchitect 2y agoPlease fix the link: https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/canada-says-online-streaming-services-must-hand-over-5-their-domestic-revenues-2024-06-04/ https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/canada-says-o...
- ChrisArchitect 2y agoRelated: Foreign streamers must pay into fund to boost Canadian content, CRTC says https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/canada-online-streaming-services-1.7223840 https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/canada-online-streaming-ser...
- 486sx33 2y agoPiss off Trudeau. I’ll pay 10x as much as the tax to get a vpn and watch US tv
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]