No, they're arguing there's ways to use their software to commit an illegal act, which is true of literally anything.

I can't imagine anyone making the argument that using AI tools to rewrite code in another language removes the copyright.

Not exactly, because the amount of stearates that came off the gloves would be fairly random, so there's no way to apply a general correction. You might not even know what kind of gloves they used in the experiment!

That doesn't mean you throw out the results, but you maybe mark those results and say there was potential factor unaccounted for and the results needs to be replicated.

That justification is pure, unmitigated bulls**t. The average EU tariff on importing U.S. goods prior to last year was 1.35%. The average U.S. tariff on importing goods from the EU was 1.47%. That means the U.S. charged higher tariffs than the EU, not the other way around.

Done.

Purchases are not the same thing as subscription streaming.

And under that definition, they can import one copy of the content, pay the tariff, and subject to licensing agreements that allow them to do so, they can then serve it from a server within the country to infinitely many users without paying additional tariffs.

That's the problem with something that can be copied infinitely. There's no requirement that you import it more than once. So the entire model of charging a tariff fundamentally breaks down.

And if you add a 1,000,000,000% tariff on digital content import to make up for that, then now you've shut down the sale of digital goods to individuals and made everyone in your country poorer.

It is genuinely hard to charge tariffs on something like this without either A. the tariffs being ineffectual or B. the tariffs causing catastrophic side effects.

Without having something for their troubles? They pay tariffs on things they BUY, not on things they DO. I really can't think of any exceptions here.

Let me clarify: From a legal perspective, it is NOT a sale. The legal definition of "sale" is the transfer of title in exchange for compensation (paraphrase mine). If nothing is transferred, it is not a sale.

A subscription service is paying a fee for a service that is entirely ephemeral. Nothing of permanence is transferred. At the end of the month, you have nothing to show for that money other than memories.

More to the point, even if you stretch the legal definition to within an inch of its life and say that you bought words in an email saying that you have a one-month subscription, the content itself is still not sold. There is no transfer of property, and a tariff makes no sense in that context, because tariffs apply to the sale of goods, not to rental of goods.

Hope that clears up any confusion.

Literally all of what I described are exactly the sorts of tricks corporations pay to work around taxes. And in general, they're better at finding loopholes than governments are at closing loopholes. I'm not saying it's not possible, just that it's likely to be way, way, WAY harder to pull off than you think, at least when it comes to subscription-based streaming services.

Plus there's not a sale when you're doing subscription-based streaming. It is no different than going to another country and watching it and coming back with the memory of having watched it in a theater, minus the actual travel, plus the pixels having briefly appeared on a screen somewhere else. Most people will balk at paying tariffs without actually having something in the end for their troubles.

Well, that's great then. I pay for a subscription. I pay nothing extra for the imported content. So no tariff.

But wait, the subscription is from a foreign company. Why isn't anyone paying taxes on this? We should tax it all because the company is foreign.

Ah, now the company has an in-country subsidiary, and you're paying that company. And suddenly the fees are no longer taxed. Instead, the content that comes from overseas is taxed. But the in-country company pays a licensing fee that is an infinitesimal fraction of the subscription fee that you pay. Then, they pay a huge "trademark licensing fee" for the use of the Netflix/Hulu/Paramount Plus/* name, so that nearly all of the money you pay for your subscription goes to the parent company untaxed.

Good luck sorting it all out and proving that they're violating the law.

So no, for entirely virtual goods and intellectual property, it's almost never that simple. In fact, it is ridiculously hard, and enforcement is downright nightmarish. The term "Hollywood accounting" didn't become a household term for no reason.

Headline to read "United States Massively Raises Tariffs, Shocked When World Refuses To Not Tax U.S. Digital Exports".

Some things are entirely predictable.

Mostly infeasibility. Taxing streaming means assigning a value to the content and sending someone a bill for the taxes, or else finding a way to absorb the taxes, and in any case, are you importing when they watch it, or when Netflix (or whoever) imports it onto their servers?

Once VPNs exist, it becomes impossible for a law like this to be enforced without enforcing strict age verification around the world, which is impossible given the technological state of many countries in the world (including the United States). It isn't even possible for companies to reliably comply with a law like this by blocking all access from Australia (because VPNs exist).

Once again, dumb legislators who don't understand technology have passed laws demanding something that is technologically infeasible (bans) instead of something that is technologically feasible (providing special accounts for underage people that give parental supervision, blaming the user if the user deliberately goes around that, and encouraging parents to report when their kids make friends with other kids who use fake ages to go around that).

The result, predictably, is that it doesn't work. And everyone who has ever worked in the tech industry is shocked in much the same way that we are shocked when the sun comes up in the morning, despite us demanding that it not come up until noon.

Yup.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news...

When your shareholders want to redeem their shares, and you fix cap outflows at 5%, that's not a good sign.

Essentially, it's the bit in "Wonderful Life" where they're trying to minimize the run on the bank.

"By the 1970s these 'bombed to shit' countries were outcompeting American manufacturers in their own domestic market."

LOL
"I'll just prove his exact point for him!"
Thanks man!

Best isn't the question. Sales is the question. If you do a poll of photographers, the names you'll hear when you ask what they shoot with are almost always going to be Lexar and SanDisk. Sony won't be in the top five. IMO, that's mostly because they spent a decade with their own Memory Stick nonsense while other manufacturers were claiming the SD and CF card market for themselves. It's hard to force your way into an already crowded field where everyone has already picked favorites.