Last year, Apple and Meta were also fined €500 million and €200 million, respectively, a move that strained the relationship between Brussels and Washington, with the U.S. calling the penalties ‘a novel form of economic extortion’ that it will not tolerate. That said, the amendments' adoption in parliament is only the first step. If it can clear the remaining stages of France’s 2027 budget process, it can become law, with parliament scheduled to vote on the budget’s first section in early November.
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Newton Gitonga Freelance Writer Newton Gitonga is a tech journalist covering gadgets, PC hardware, AI, data centers, and the wider tech industry. His interest in technology started early, taking apart things around the house to see how they worked, often to his dad’s frustration. His curiosity sometimes got the better of him, including a few failed attempts to fix laptops, one of them a gifted Dell XPS. He has previously written for Notebookcheck, ZyCrypto, CoinCentral, and Crypto News Flash.
Sluggotg My World of Warcraft install takes up 128GB of data. If a French person installs that, Blizzard will owe France about $79. (Based on $0.62 per gig listed in the article, the headline says $0.64). Am I missing something? Every Movie you stream. Every online game you play. Costs you that much per Gig. Seems very out of control. I can't see how a company like Blizzard would be able to support France without having a "France Only" additional fee. Good Luck with that! Reply
hotaru251 Sluggotg said: My World of Warcraft install takes up 128GB of data. If a French person installs that, Blizzard will owe France about $79. (Based on $0.62 per gig listed in the article, the headline says $0.64). Am I missing something? Every Movie you stream. Every online game you play. Costs you that much per Gig. Seems very out of control. I can't see how a company like Blizzard would be able to support France without having a "France Only" additional fee. Good Luck with that! games are whatever with this. THis is targeting the mega corps who stream massive data or upload and download stuff. and there is no way they would serve the area if it is passed. if someone set up a bot to constantly download petabytes from youtube, facebook, MEGA, netflix, etc etc it would cost them a fortune they can't control. This 100% also encourages Gov to set up these types of bots to constantly download stuff to make them more $ from the law. Reply
bill001g hotaru251 said: games are whatever with this. So you don't think steam will care. There business selling games that needed to be downloaded. The tax on the download exceeds the cost of the games in many cases. So the government wants steam to give them all the money they were paid plus even more. What about microsoft game pass that costs $15/month and lets you download all the games you want. How long before microsoft gets tired of paying $500 per month to the government and getting $15. Even netflix can not afford this when it costs them a couple dollars per hour of movies watched. I suspect some idiot that can't do math proposed this. If it was that much per terabyte the companies would likely grumble but pay the tax. At these rates companies will just stop selling into that market or find a way to directly pass the cost onto the consumer which likely will have the same effect since many people feel games are over priced. They already pay a 20% vat tax for the game. It also depends on who they think they are going to tax. They likely could force their local ISP companies to pay and maybe companies that have a office in france. This will just lead to more people using VPN based in countries with no agreements to hide any of the actual traffic. Then again this is likely something some politician says to get votes knowing nothing will be said about it again after a election. Reply
Edward Jazzhands Sluggotg said: My World of Warcraft install takes up 128GB of data. If a French person installs that, Blizzard will owe France about $79. (Based on $0.62 per gig listed in the article, the headline says $0.64). Am I missing something? Every Movie you stream. Every online game you play. Costs you that much per Gig. Seems very out of control. I can't see how a company like Blizzard would be able to support France without having a "France Only" additional fee. Good Luck with that! You might want to check what the article says again. It says 6 cents per gig. Not 62 cents. Reply
txfeinbergs Yeah, there is no way this is going to be acceptable to those companies. That is a massive tax. I would tell the French government to go bite themselves. Reply
txfeinbergs Edward Jazzhands said: You might want to check what the article says again. It says 6 cents per gig. Not 62 cents. Last time I checked: $0.65was 65 cents. Reply
hotaru251 bill001g said: So you don't think steam will care. i didnt say wouldnt care it was just w/e. fun fact: most of the internet usage isn't gaming related. music, video, streaming, etc etc. txfeinbergs said: Last time I checked: $0.65was 65 cents. per article (never trust an article title especially on TH as typos are frequent anymore): The latest amendment, introduced by socialist lawmaker Laurent Lhardit, could see content providers pay €0.055 (roughly $0.06) to the government for every gigabyte of content distributed to French users. that is 6 pennies. not 65 pennies. Reply
tntdyno france ip = do not serve literally that simple for these mega corps. they are not going to pay jack. Reply
greenreaper France has a big server hosting company, OVH… I doubt they're particularly happy about this, because who's going to want to serve France via a company the government can coerce into collecting such a tax? That's the most realistic way I see this working. Reply
SomeoneElse23 The gall that governments have, thinking they can tax everything. Maybe they should reduce expenses like the rest of us have to when funds get tight? Reply
Key considerations
- Investor positioning can change fast
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- Macro rates and liquidity can dominate flows
Reference reading
- https://www.tomshardware.com/software/social-media/SPONSORED_LINK_URL
- https://www.tomshardware.com/software/social-media/french-lawmakers-approve-usd11-2-billion-internet-tax-based-on-traffic-usage-costs-usd0-65-per-gigabyte-of-content-accessed-us-tech-giants-like-google-and-meta-face-new-levies-on-content-delivered-to-french-subscribers#main
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Informational only. No financial advice. Do your own research.