LAST week Ricky Carandang in The Coming Deficit Blowout wrote that our government wasn’t collecting enough money, and so we’d all better expect an increase in taxes. He wrote this a few days before the national treasurer resigned, as he (Omar Cruz, the national treasurer who quit) acknowledged it, while the going was good.
So if increased taxes are in our future, what shape might those future taxes take?
One answer came out of left field. The Mike Abundo Effect started the ball rolling, by quoting from a Manila Times article (but not linking to the article itself, so that in commenting on the whole thing, It’s hip2b2 has asked for anyone, anyone, to find the original article) whose gist is that a gentleman named Edgardo Cabarrios was quoted as saying that the National Telecommunications Commission wants to classify websites, including blogs, to register with the government, presumably as a prelude to taxing them. Blogs and websites would be considered a value-added service, you see.
Edgardo Cabarrios has apparently been NTC department chief for common carriers authorization for ages now, and his name has regularly cropped up in the news, whether concerning the VoIP brouhaha, or the proposal to mandate compulsory registration of SIM cards, as well as rather nifty proposals to allow people to keep the same number, regardless of the network they subscribe to, for example. But this latest attribution has gotten bloggers all lathered up.
See Pinoy Problogger (using the famous line from the Borg) and Yugatech, who snappily borrowed the phrase“all your base are belong to us,” to headline his take on the NTC official’s alleged statement.
The Unlawyer takes a look at the potential basis for such a requirement, finds a TMC.net article to link to:
The National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) has released a draft circular that seeks to put value-added service (VAS) providers in the telecom and technology industry under its ambit.
If the proposed rules are approved, all firms in the loose VAS provider industry - from mom-and-pop ventures to those owned by large multinationals - would have to register with the regulator…
Services covered by the proposed rules include messaging, audio and video conferencing, voice mail, e-mail, information services such as road traffic and visa application data, gaming services except gambling, applications services such as mobile banking, content and program services such as music and ring tones, audio text, domain name hosting, fax, IP multicasting, virtual private networks, and PBX hosting.
“The foregoing list of value-added services may be revised, modified, expanded or shortened by the Commission after due public consultation,” the regulator said.
The NTC defined “value-added services”, in an earlier circular signed in 2005, as “enhanced services” beyond those ordinarily offered by incumbent local and foreign telecom operators.
Unlawyer says the practical effect will be registration fees that may be easy enough for multinationals to absorb, but which will be pretty stiff for ordinary Filipino bloggers. If you read Unlawyer’s list of the kinds of websites that would be covered, you’ll understand why Mike Abundo says proposals like these is one reason companies like Paypal don’t set up shop in the Philippines (and the absence of a good, cheap, widely-used service like Paypal is often suggested as a reason e-commerce hasn’t taken off as big as it should, locally, among other things).
The income-generating aspect of the proposal, if true (my hunch is that the whole thing is a trial balloon, and who knows, perhaps the statement being attributed to Cabarrios is being airbrushed, so to speak, off the face of the internet?), will keep bloggers’ and others hackles raised. But here’s what raised my hackles: it’s all something that could be very, very useful, National Security-wise.
Imagine Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez armed with such a list, and on a bad quote day. Jeepers Creepers.
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13 Feedbacks on "Squeeze the virtual turnip"
Mike Abundo
Gonzalez? *cringes*
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gilbert
such infidelity of our government. i mean, what gives? I’m your average student who strives to earn a living and i get financially challenged these days. How am i suppose to pay an amount like howmuch it is. Even if it be cheap enough, the effects haven’t even been felt neither will it ever be. I do believe this is an issue that we should focus on. Apropos, affiliating with the government eliminates our freedom of being independent bloggers. We’re watching.
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john marzan
kung totoo, is this similar to china, or different? they say they want to tax the internet and blogs raw, and they all want us to register. i bet they’d drop the tax thing as a concession and just require us to register.
anyway, will this be implemented AFTER the elections?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/china/story/0,7369,1501184,00.html
China orders bloggers to register with government
Associated Press
Tuesday June 7, 2005
Guardian Unlimited
The Chinese authorities have ordered all weblogs and websites in the country to register with the government or face closure in Beijing’s latest attempt to control online dissent.
Commercial publishers and advertisers could be fined up to 1m yuan (£66,000) for failing to register, according to documents on the Chinese information industry ministry’s website.
Private bloggers or websites must register the complete identity of the person responsible for the site, and the ministry - which has set a June 30 deadline for compliance - said 74% of all sites had already registered.
Article continues
“The internet has profited many people, but it also has brought many problems, such as sex, violence, feudal superstitions and other harmful information that has seriously poisoned people’s spirits,” the ministry said in an explanation of the new rules.
All public media in China is controlled by the state, but limits on the internet have tended to lag behind advances in technology that hindered Beijing’s ability to keep tabs on users and service providers.
In the latest move, information industry ministry computers will monitor sites in real time and search for their registration numbers, reporting back if a site is unregistered.
China has more than 87m internet users - the world’s second largest online population after the US.
The government has long required all major commercial websites to register and take responsibility for internet content. At least 54 people have been jailed for posting essays or other content deemed to be subversive online.
However, blogs on which writers post their thoughts for others to read have been harder to police. According to cnblog.org, a Chinese blog hosting company, the country has around 700,000 such sites.
The international press freedom group Reporters Without Borders has criticised the new rules, saying they would force people with dissenting opinions to shift websites overseas. Mainland Chinese users could be barred from accessing them because of government censorship filters.
“Those who continue to publish under their real names on sites hosted in China will either have to avoid political subjects or just relay the Communist party’s propaganda,” the group said. “This decision will enable those in power to control online news and information much more effectively.”
The latest restrictions follow the introduction of many other measures. Authorities have closed down thousands of internet cafes, the main point of entry to the internet for many Chinese unable to afford a computer or web access.
cocoy
i wonder if there was ever a time, a government was never an idiot?
what if your servers are located elsewhere? how are they going to “tax” you for that? what if you link via youtube?
all these “taxes” will do as you’ve pointed out. paypal and such will never take off. because government makes it SO difficult to make business work. people WILL take their business elsewhere. when information and telecommunication becomes SO high a price to pay, say good bye to the opportunity of providing good, fast internet connectivity across the entire country.
in a time where government SHOULD be encouraging telecoms to lower the barrier of access: a move to tax will do just the opposite.
there are better ways to increase tax collection: make it efficient.
you know blogs and websites HARDLY make any money. you probably all know this. except for the sites that really generate traffic, there’s no money to be made.
even podcasts have a barrier point: so far as i’ve heard, about 400,000 downloads and that is for the really famous ones.
these old school dinosaurs running around town have no understanding of how this new world is. cyberspace trully is a disruptive technology.
Isang Hamak na Blogger
“old school dinosaurs”? Wag naman ganyan… kawawa naman mga dinosaurs. They were decent creatures who died peacefully when it came their time to go.
But anyway this is one more reason why I’m about to migrate to another country. If there’s a cheaper way to revoke my Filipino citizenship I’m all for it. This way the government wont have to strip me of my so called rights bit by bit.
This country is simply hopeless! And being a Filipino is being hopeless. I don’t want to be hopeless, guess I’ll just quit being a Filipino.
journeyist
I hate to disagree but I think the dinosaurs of old didn’t die peacefully. They were beset with a catastrophe that obliterated their race suddenly. Only a catastrophe of such magnitude would force these old school dinosaurs running around town to die peacefully.
At any rate, If you want to quit being a Filipino by migrating to another land, make sure you will not be covered by the soon to be enforced OFW income tax. You see they will never die easy nor peacefully.
I’m done with nationalism after hello Garci.
I now have a better plan. I am migrating to another world. It takes some time but I’m getting there.
shooo!
Shooo! the government is listening!!!
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