Content distribution via the Internet: Comments on upload taxation plans

We take the opportunity of recent publications on a minimal price regulation scheme for the upload traffic on broadband internet (upload taxation) to clarify some points regarding the current development of information and communication technologies (ICT) and to comment on this proposition which entails, beyond the reinforcement of intellectual property rights and the prosecution of internet users, the disappearance of peer-to-peer networks and the restriction of information exchanges between internet users. Even when information is free and non-rival, it would be naive to believe that there is no longer scarcity in information distribution. Scarcity is merely displaced from physical supports (CD, DVD,..) and retail networks to the matching between highly differentiated products and more aware and segmented customers. On the internet consumers organise themselves, exchange information on forums or via retail web sites, share files via peer-to-peer networks and freely re-use excerpts from works (text, sounds and images). The unidirectional model of the mass media is gradually evolving towards a model of cultural co-evolution. Authors, producers, network operators and consumers have to change their practices and build a new business model together. This will certainly call for a fresh definition of intellectual property that is broader, more flexible and certainly not reinforced, as currently the case under pressure from producers who are delaying changes to their business models. Against this background, the proposal to tax the upload traffic in order to re-establish the rivalry of cultural goods and turn the internet into a mass media is the exact opposite of what needs to be done.