Companies that leverage the Internet to advertise to citizens should help support industries that are suffering thanks to the Internet, according to some in France. The French government is considering a tax on companies that advertise online as a way to prop up creative industries that are having trouble keeping up with the digital world, such as musicians and publishers. Unsurprisingly, the proposal has drawn criticism from those who believe governments should not be in the business of punishing Internet success and instead embrace the new things it has to offer.
The report was commissioned by France's culture ministry and written by record producer Patrick Zelnik. In it, Zelnik argued that big companies like Google, Yahoo, Facebook, AOL, and Microsoft should together be taxed up to €20 million per year (about US$29 million), even if their offices were not based in France. This, he said, was in order to end "the endless enrichment without payback"—essentially, these companies shouldn't be able to make a buck off the clicks of French citizens without giving back to the French creative community.
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