
Hungary Internet tax cancelled after mass protests - dan1234
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-29846285
======
atleta
Cancelled, well not really. The PM Orban's reaction was the following:

\- the tax cannot be introduced given the current reactions.

\- people question the rationale behind this whole thing

\- the whole argument went off track

He also said that they'll start a "national consultation" about the topic. Now
a "national consultation" (invented by them a few years ago) means that they
send out a paper via snail mail to every citizen who is eligible for voting
(around 8 million out of 10). The questions are phrased manipulatively. We
won't see a clear question like "Would you like to pay this tax YES/NO"
option. It is usually it is phrased in a form like "Some people think this
thing is good because blblablabla, while others think this is not that good
because blablabla". Now it is always phrased in a very manipulative way and
contains biased arguments. I mean arguments (i.e. campaigning) on the
questionnaire itself.

Then of course no one controls or oversees the processing of the collected
questionnaires. So it looks like a referendum but it's a plot device, a
persuasion device to show fake support. The result can (and will) be
manipulated, interpreted at will by the government.

The guy in charge of the 'consultation' is Tamas Deutsch, who previously
called the protesters stinky bugs (while he also didn't agree with the idea of
the tax). Also, FIDESZ (Orban's party) regularly and outrageously censor their
FB page. They delete opposing but polite comments, ban users.

This happened to me after the first protest when their reaction was that they
are open to arguments and discussion but reject vandalism (two windows of
their empty HQ were broken by 5 people). I made a try. Posted 2 comments, got
banned (comments deleted).

(edit: formatting)

So while it is a major result for the people in Hungary, it by no means is a
final victory.

------
edem
For most people who were protesting this proposal was the last straw and what
you can't see from these posts that people were saying "Orban get lost!" and
"Down with the corrupt government!" during those events. People started
talking about a much needed referendum to get rid of Orban and his corrupt
retinue so after the first protest this started to be about much more than the
internet tax. This momentum is broken now since we got what we wanted
__initially __. We 'll see what happens next.

~~~
rektide
Do you have any articles you would point to that describe the governmental
machinations? You pose this as a part of a larger arc, and I'd love to see
more effort done to make it clear what that arc is, what this is a part of.

I did a little digging around for articles on the 27th (as that wonderful
picture of the protests made the round,
[https://twitter.com/RyanHeathWriter/status/52740681179280588...](https://twitter.com/RyanHeathWriter/status/527406811792805888)).
I ran into _Slow and Steady: Hungary 's Media Clampdown_ which seemed a
reasonable enough job at illustrating that this isn't just a vie against the
internet or a vie for revenue, it's part of a longer programme very
deliberately creating _Soft Censorship,_ and installing new undemocratic ways
for the politicos to grab onto power.

[https://www.ifex.org/hungary/2014/07/28/slow_steady/](https://www.ifex.org/hungary/2014/07/28/slow_steady/)

~~~
afterburner
Krugman has reposted several entire articles on his blog by Kim Lane Scheppele
on the rising authoritarianism in Hungary:
[http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/?s=hungary&_r=0](http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/?s=hungary&_r=0)

~~~
dmix
Is it me or we entering a new golden age of authoritarianism?

Unlike in the last century, this time around it's not under the guise of
nationalism or communism, but in representative democracies where the
executive branches consumes greater and greater power, while weakening the
well-vetted and centuries old safe-guards that were in place to prevent power-
abuse.

Whenever the states sky-rocketing growth in power is questioned by the media
or the citizenry the leaders can point to the fact that - hey it's still a
democracy, you voted us in. So the populous is placated and ignorant to the
fact the democratic process has been made impotent.

~~~
throwaway344
I disagree.

Many democracies around the world are admittedly flawed, but regardless, a
larger portion of humanity today lives in democratic countries than anytime in
history.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
Large, powerful, democracy. Pick two.

You can have a powerful democracy with a small number of constituents because
then an individual has a realistic capacity to rally his neighbors and make
change when something sour is going on.

You can have a large democracy when the government's power is strictly limited
to a small well-defined area of influence, because then most constituents can
realistically remain informed about that specific area of influence.

You cannot have a large, powerful democracy. A large democracy with many
powers can't resemble a direct democracy because constituents can't
realistically remain informed on so many issues. But it also can't resemble a
republic because that forces voters to choose between e.g. the party that
promotes censorship and the party that promotes police militarization, without
sufficient influence to affect the position of either party.

The problem is that more and more of the things people describe as
"democracies" are large and powerful.

~~~
yuhong
Thinking about it,
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition)
would probably be better than democracy in this case, though even that is not
free of problems.

------
amelius
Why do taxes always have to be so artificial?

The reason to have income tax is to have people who can afford it contribute
to society. I can see how that is a good thing.

The reason to introduce an internet tax is what? To only have people who make
enough money use the internet? What kind of nonsense is that?

Please, let us agree that whenever a new tax is introduced, it is justified.

And perhaps lawmakers should ask system/OS programmers for help, because they
actually can come up with good and fair rules to make complex interacting
systems work as they should.

~~~
danielweber
There is nothing natural about an income tax. However, personal income is a
relatively _easy_ thing to tax. Land-value or real-estate-value is also easy
to tax, because it happens in the open.

I think taxes are an infringement on freedom; but society needs taxes in order
to fund the essential features of government that secures freedom, so I
tolerate them.

To that end, "total taxes are too high" is an entirely separate argument from
"we are taxing (and therefore discouraging) the wrong things."

Something has to be taxed. As people communicating online we are biased to
think taxes on internet traffic are wrong, but dispassionately I don't see
much of a difference between taxing traffic and taxing gas (and boy do drivers
hate gas taxes). You can argue that gas taxes fund the roads that are being
used, but the internet is not entirely self-funded by private enterprise.

~~~
nhaehnle
Why did you not address a key point of the comment you were replying to, which
was that income taxes allow taxation to correlate with how well one is able to
carry the burden? It would be nice (and helpful to the overall signal-to-noise
ratio) if we all here talked _to_ each other rather than _at_ each other.

Two points on the topic of gas taxes: (1) While it is perhaps still true that
the internet is not entirely privately funded (is it?), I'd be interested in
actual numbers. Most likely, the public spending on cables is ridiculously
tiny compared to the public spending on roads. (2) In some (many?) countries,
gas taxes are also justified by environmental and sustainability concerns:
they provide an economic incentive to reduce fuel consumption. I don't see a
similar concern with mere bandwidth usage. An environmentalist may bring up
the power consumption of data centres, but that is a slightly different issue:
bandwidth used does not always correlate with compute power used, and so it is
still no justification for an _internet_ tax.

------
theGimp
Last time the proposed tax was posted [1], a lot of people thought it was a
distraction from Hungary's international relationships -- specifically its
increasing reliance on Russia.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8491882](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8491882)

~~~
narag
It doesn't seem wise to give people against you a reason to rise, gather, be
visible and reward the protest with a decision reversal. Now you can expect
similar demostrations whenever you step the line.

~~~
spindritf
Or people feel satisfied with the cancelled tax and the energy for protest is
safely released.

~~~
pestaa
Most of the protesters were civilized and informed. A few aggressors threw
hardware at the windows, but I wouldn't say the overall tension against the
Hungarian government has diminished.

------
akos
I'm Hungarian and I can assure that this move is a beautiful temporization
from our government. They proposed this tax to herd the attention from the
'banning scandal'.[1] And now from one moment to the other, they are heroes.
[1] [http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/10/20/us-usa-hungary-
idU...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/10/20/us-usa-hungary-
idUSKCN0I921220141020)

------
shangxiao
An internet tax? That sounds like something that the Australian government
would conjure up [1].

[1] [http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-
news/secret...](http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/secret-
government-briefing-admits-metadata-law-cost-and-warns-of-internet-tax-
campaign-20141030-11e1v8.html)

~~~
pessimizer
That's not an internet tax as much as full surveillance over the internet. I'd
take a tax over that any day.

~~~
shangxiao
It's actually both - surveillance and we will have to pay for it

------
goulash5577
USA law is the Patriot Act which EFF dot org says is used mostly for 'low
level' drug caes and not the intended targets. Cyprus. redacted

Hungary needs a reason to monitor and peek at you. So, a small tax. Famous USA
gangster Al Capone never convicted for murder, but he was convicted for
evasion of tax laws.

Allegedly some say the laws were passed just for the famous gangster.

Why did the USA invade in the middle east? Supposedly the 'internet forgery'
Italian letter, which would be taxed by the HUNGARY INTERNET TAX.

Technical question: What happens if there is a DNS hijacking on the country
level like before? Or some high bandwidth sent from the botnets to YOUR
PERSONAL COMPUTER?

Pay up Hungary because that RUSSIAN 'assistant sofware' makes for high
bandwidth. The video cassete manufacturers will make sure that HUNGARY NETFLIX
dies an early death.

Pay up Hungary!

------
middleclick
What were the politicians thinking when they decided to tax the Internet?

~~~
pestaa
To distract the public opinion from talking about high priority officers being
forbidden from entering the USA.

~~~
xxs
The technique is known as smoke&mirrors.

------
akhatri_aus
Something quite interesting in the article is that it was intended to be a
telecommunications tax and ended up being perceived as an internet tax.

In some countries there are already telecommunications taxes/duties that would
also be 'internet tax'

I guess the phrasing can be a big deal.

~~~
eperfa
Hungary already has a separate telecommunication tax paid after every minute
of phone calls and every sent message (SMS or MMS). The telco providers
(T-Mobile, Telenor and Vodafon are the three major players here) were supposed
to pay this from their own profit without making the customers pay for it, but
that is of course not how the market works. The current proposed internet tax
would be based on the amount of data transfer.

------
dpweb
Tax the things that have an associated social cost, like fast/low nutrition
food.

~~~
spyder
This already exists in Hungary:
[http://blogs.wsj.com/emergingeurope/2011/06/22/hungary-to-
ta...](http://blogs.wsj.com/emergingeurope/2011/06/22/hungary-to-tax-foods-it-
thinks-unhealthy/)

------
tn13
I am surprised that US government has not got this tax idea before Hungary.
After all only rich people use Internet more while the poor and welfare
dependent people dont use much of internet.

------
dudeson
One of the very few times that protesting was effective.

