Tens of thousands of people took to the streets in Hungary on Sunday night to protest against a proposed Internet tax that they say would limit freedom of expression and cripple some online companies.

The Hungarian government last week submitted a bill to parliament that calls for a tax of 150 Hungarian forint (US$0.62) on every gigabyte of data consumed.

Should it become law, the tax will undermine technological development and hurt companies, said a spokesman for a Facebook group that gathered over 215,000 likes since last week. It organized the Sunday protest that was attended by tens of thousands in Budapest.

Companies that process a lot of data would be especially hurt by the tax. One of might be the Wigner Research Centre for Physics in Budapest which has been acting as the main extension data center for CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, since 2012. CERN’s data center processes about one petabyte of data every day

If the tax bill is approved the Wigner center would likely have to close, according to the protesters. “It just proves the government has no idea what they are talking about,” the protester’s spokesman said, adding that many other companies including cloud services and Internet startups would have the same problems. /taken from PCWorld/

Hm... If this tax bill is approved, it will be an oil boom for the lousy Hungarian government, but then the masses will suffer educational and informational decadence. This is what I think. What is your take on this issue, especially if our uncaring government should adopt internet tax??



Sourcehttp://www.pcworld.com/article/2839292/internet-tax-brings-hungarian-protesters-into-streets.html