Google and Yahoo Against France

[unhappycamper]

http://watchingamerica.com/News/232408/google-and-yahoo-against-france/

Google and Yahoo Against France
Le Nouvel Observateur, France
By Claude Soula
Translated By Bora Mici
6 February 2014
Edited by Eva Langman

Relations between France, Europe and the giants of the Internet are increasingly crazy. Now with film, the video website Netflix is preparing its landing in France, apparently following all the rules and paying visits to parliament. All the film industry’s producer’s unions have already placed one condition on this arrival: that Netflix establish headquarters in France and that it pay import and regular taxes.

For the moment, Netflix is recruiting its French team in order to station it in Amsterdam. It would be a first if it respected French law, because this is a territory where Google remains the "big bad": For months now, rumors have been making the rounds regarding a tax adjustment. The French government would ask for more than 1 billion euros, because the giant confines its turnover to its European headquarters in Ireland.

However, the French position is ambiguous: Last December, Minister of Culture Aurélie Filippetti boycotted one of its protests, which had the merit of consistency, but as a result, Digital Technology Minister Fleur Pellerin came kowtowing to push her aside. Why? Even worse, France Télévisions, dependent on the Ministry of Culture, thumbed its nose at its ministry while cooking up a deal for municipalities and partnering with Google.

In summary, Google mocks the French state but sponsors municipal elections, and a public company is becoming evident at its side. This company prefers to spend money on lobbying to please politicians instead of on the welfare of the French by taking on its role as a taxpayer. We cannot but agree with Arnaud Montebourg when he wants to require France to limit the handling of all data that originates there, which would provide a legal basis for its taxation ... but this seems to surprise us still: Pellerin, who is hierarchically dependent on Montebourg, has said nothing. And Montebourg released his bomb before a visit by President Hollande to Silicon Valley. Where is the consistency? Above all, where is the real political will beyond the armed reels of the media’s viewfinders?