FCC Approves New Internet Phone Taxes 230
basotl writes to tell us CNet is reporting that the FCC has approved a new round of taxes for internet phone service. Some 4 million users could receive this nasty little surprise as early as their next monthly bill. From the article: "The VoIP industry wasn't alone in questioning the FCC's move. In a letter sent last week to commissioners, attorneys for the U.S. Small Business Administration urged the agency to postpone its action until it had done a thorough analysis of the economic effect on smaller providers."
Trust the FCC... (Score:5, Insightful)
For the love of God! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I hate extraneous taxes... (Score:1, Insightful)
FCC is working for big telecom.
DSL double dipping? (Score:5, Insightful)
( i dont have DSL, so no, i cant go look at my bill )
This is a slippery slope. (Score:5, Insightful)
If I'm taxed for talking to someone using VOIP but not when I happen to be playing a game at the time - then maybe VOIP providers should include a copy of PONG that you can play with the other person while you talk to them?
The idea that you can tax bytes that contain the human voice in realtime - but you don't tax bytes that contain pictures, or human voice that was recorded a few hours ago...of all the millions of uses for data sent over the Internet - why should realtime human voice be singled out as special. It's just silly.
We either need to tax ALL data transfers over shared communications links or NONE of them. Repeal the tax on telephony or tax broadband the same way you tax dialled telephony - there is no practical difference.
Hmmm - so if I use dialup to connect to the Internet - and then use VOIP - do I get taxed twice? I think that's probably illegal.
The lawyers will make a fortune arguing this one.
Re:so why didn't they tax the rest of the internet (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Trust the FCC... (Score:5, Insightful)
In other words, the established phone companies out-lobbied the startups.
The very notion that a nation with a First Ammendment needs a "Federal Communications Commission" is absurd. It's one thing to manage RF bandwidth, which was the FCC's original mandate... in the 1920's or 1930's. But they've expanded their mission to micromanaging every electronic communcation in the country, which, nowadays, includes just about everything. It's such an impossible task that they continue to pass new rules because the old ones are "broken". Of course, the new rules will quickly be "broken" too. And then they'll pass more.
I say, set up an eBay store to auction bandwidth, and close down the rest of the FCC. We can continue to pay the employees, that's not expensive compared to the damage they do when they're working.
Re:For the love of God! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Semantics (Score:2, Insightful)
Thought experiment. (Score:5, Insightful)
You speak into a microphone and a speach-to-text program IMs the words to your friend's computer which then reads them aloud. Is that voip? Taxable?
-Grey [wellingtongrey.net]
Re:I hate extraneous taxes... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Trust the FCC... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:you can't enforce it. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:This is a slippery slope. (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem is that this is a fuzzy definition. Taxing telephones made sense when they were single function devices for carrying realtime analog voice from A to B. When Fax machines appeared, it still made sense - when dialup modems showed up it made sense because all data was taxed uniformly.
This new thing makes no sense - if you send a picture by connecting your fax machine to VOIP then you are taxed. If you email the same picture, you aren't. If you phone someone up using VOIP and get their voicemail, you leave a recording of your voice and are taxed for doing it. But if you email them a WAV file containing that exact same recording - no tax.
These distinctions will become more and more tricky to separate out.
If I play Battlefield II online - I can chat with other players - no tax. If I call them up using Vonage - tax.
If I want to save money, I should chat with my Mom via Battlefield II.
Then there is software like Ventrilo - end to end VOIP with no service provider involved. How can that be taxed?
This all makes no sense at all. You either have to tax all communications or none of it because it's nonsensical to talk about only taxing bytes which happen to contain realtime acoustic pressures.
This is just a way for lawyers to make big money.
As Reagan said... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:For the love of God! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Trust the FCC... (Score:3, Insightful)
The one part of the FCC's involvement that I don't have much of a problem with is their "censorship" of *broadcast* TV... if all they did was mange the public bandwidth and "censor" language (as opposed to opinions) to keep the public airwaves suitable for the public discourse, that wouldn't be a problem.
But beyond that, the First Ammendment promises freedom in our communications, not a federal authority that dishes out freedom where it sees fit. First they mandate a national telephone monopoly, then they congratulate themselves for breaking it up into six small monopolies. Somehow they've managed to extend their reach to managing who connects to the Internet and how much they pay. While they're promising consumer benefits, they're simply arbitrating between several huge corporations, and using that as an excuse to mandate all sorts of regulatory restrictions on the way we communicate; they specify from whom we can buy services, the records they must keep, which services we can use over which lines, to whom we must pay arbitrary fees, and which corporations we have to pay off for not doing business with the their competitors. All the while, they're protecting the established interests from market-based competition.
Am I the only one who finds the very idea of a "Federal Communications Commission" somewhat authoritarian?
Re:so why didn't they tax the rest of the internet (Score:2, Insightful)
The Universal Service Fund actually does subsidize rural phone users -- poor ones more than richer ones, but a lot of the subsidy goes to the service provider rather than the customer. It's a pretty good chance that without the Universal Service tax, your parents wouldn't have a phone, much less DSL. Or they would be on a party line with 16 other subscribers.
Same thing with schools. A lot fewer elementary or high schools in the US would have Internet connections if it weren't for Universal Service.
Now, I personally, happen to think that getting phone service (and DSL) to rural customers is important. On the other hand I think putting the Internet into schools so that the school can then spend a tidy sum to try to keep viruses and pornography out is kind of dumb. But for some reason they overlooked my name when looking for a candidate to replace Michael Powell (and we should all thank God that he is gone) at the FCC.
Anyway, the US has been subsidizing rural phone users for so long that most of us have forgotten that it happens and we are taxed to support it. We don't have a tax to support DSL to rural areas and as a result, most rural areas don't have broadband. If you believe that subsidizing rural users is important, then taxing calls made via VOIP is perfectly reasonable. (Whether the tax rate is reasonable is a different issue -- and one on which I don't have an opinion.)
Re:Trust the FCC... (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure it is, but it's somewhat scary when there's a secret list of things you can't say on TV/radio, and get your ass fined to the poorhouse if you do.
Re:Trust the FCC... (Score:5, Insightful)
Where I live, there is one (1) AM station, and one (1) FM station. yet, I cannot get a license to transmit without paying huge fees, employing lawyers, installing ridiculous over-featured equipment (I'm a 1st class HAM operator and at one time held the 1st class FCC radiotelephone operator's license as well -- so I know what's required, in fact, I'm the very fellow you used to have to hire in order to ensure that your installation complied technically. You can broadcast a clean AM or FM signal for under a grand, easily.)
The fact is, the FCC has created a situation where exactly one (1) type of entity has access to the airwaves: The rich. Rich individuals or rich corporations, these are the only ones who can get on, and therefore, they 100% control what is said. Clearly, this is a 1st amendment issue.
Re:so why didn't they tax the rest of the internet (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Trust the FCC... (Score:3, Insightful)
thats kinda intresting because the do censor more than just language.. and who they hell are they to tell me what words are bad.. i am sorry but i am sick of this bad word here bad ideas and the damn people that take money out of my pay check whcih i work for - and no they don't give me an option about how much.. they just take - then they turn around and tell me what is best for me with out my impout.. no.. i am sorry this is bull shit.. we have the right to say what ever we want to whom every we want and they have the right to ignore us.. but they don't have the right to stop us from saying it..
the FCC is doing just that.. you really need to sit down and think about what you are saying