In so many ways the internet is the last free place on earth, and by the day that freedom is being incrementally taken away.
For example, recently, politicians and Internet Service Provider cartels worldwide have been pushing the idea of a global internet tax.
A technology tycoon in India by the name of Sunil Mittal, CEO of the Bharti Airtel company, has recently come forward to support the tax, echoing statements made by the UN Last month.
“What Mittal suggested at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona last year, and is gaining rapid popularity with service providers around the world, was an “inter-connect charge”, an effective Internet tax that would force companies such as Google and Facebook to pay network operators a levy similar to the termination fee that networks pay one another to complete a voice call. This growing clamour for an Internet tax was obliquely backed by the Government at a U.N conference, held last month.”
Last month The Hill reported that:
“U.S. Ambassador Terry Kramer warned on Friday that a proposal to give a United Nations agency more control over the Internet is gaining momentum in other countries.
Proposals to expand the U.N.’s International Telecommunications Union’s (ITU) authority over the Internet could come up at a treaty conference in Dubai in December. European telecommunications companies are pushing a plan that would create new rules that would allow them to charge more to carry international traffic.
The proposal by the European Telecommunications Network Operators’ Association could force websites like Google, Facebook and Netflix to pay fees to network operators around the world.
Kramer said the idea of an international Internet fee is “gaining more interest in the African states and also in the Arab states.”
He said the United States delegation to the conference will have to redouble its efforts to convince other countries that the proposal would only stifle innovation and economic growth.”
As the economy continues to collapse and the government goes into even deeper debt, they are going to reach at any commodity or trade that they possibly can and extract money from it. Additionally, they are also going to increase the levels of taxation in areas that they are already involved in.
It would not be smart for them to do this, because making those kinds of major changes to the internet would spark a lot of unrest and make these politicians extremely unpopular. But politicians around the world are doing a lot of very bold and very stupid things, if maintaining their racket for any length of time is a real goal for them. With that being the case, anything can happen.
Read more articles by this author HERE.
J.G. Vibes is the author of an 87 chapter counter-culture textbook called Alchemy of the Modern Renaissance, a staff writer and reporter for The Intel Hub and host of a show called Voluntary Hippie Radio.
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