Re: [PHP] Re: [PHP-WEBMASTER] Re: [PHP] The Cat Signal
Sales tax isn't the point with SOPA/PIPA. Thinks like the government being able to force any site off the Internet at the ISP / DNS level on the say-so of a private corporation are the point. And no, that's not a defensible or acceptable position. Breaking the Internet to prop up industries that don't like being disrupted is not a proper use of governmental power. I'm quite happy to see PHP.net joining in with other defense-of-freedom voices. --Larry Garfield On 7/21/12 1:56 PM, With No Name wrote: On Fri, July 20, 2012 10:04, Lester Caine wrote: In Europe VAT is applied even on on-line sales. It is the likes of Amazon shipping bulk stock from overseas 'clients' into European warehouses and then supplying them without VAT added directly in Europe that is the problem! How can I compete with someone who is also giving next day delivery, but 20% cheaper ... American sellers are one of the problems here. It depends, because in Europe (I live in Germany), VAT is only added if the value + shiping exceeds 25 Euro and customs are only added, if the value exceeds 150 Euro It does NOT discriminate American sellers, because German sellers have to bill the VAT too Also I buy regulary in the USA and even with heavy USPS costs plus Import-VAT I am mostly lesser expensive as if I buy in Germany... Greetings -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] Re: [PHP-WEBMASTER] Re: [PHP] The Cat Signal
On Mon, 2012-07-23 at 13:31 -0500, Larry Garfield wrote: Sales tax isn't the point with SOPA/PIPA. Thinks like the government being able to force any site off the Internet at the ISP / DNS level on the say-so of a private corporation are the point. And no, that's not a defensible or acceptable position. Breaking the Internet to prop up industries that don't like being disrupted is not a proper use of governmental power. I'm quite happy to see PHP.net joining in with other defense-of-freedom voices. --Larry Garfield On 7/21/12 1:56 PM, With No Name wrote: On Fri, July 20, 2012 10:04, Lester Caine wrote: In Europe VAT is applied even on on-line sales. It is the likes of Amazon shipping bulk stock from overseas 'clients' into European warehouses and then supplying them without VAT added directly in Europe that is the problem! How can I compete with someone who is also giving next day delivery, but 20% cheaper ... American sellers are one of the problems here. It depends, because in Europe (I live in Germany), VAT is only added if the value + shiping exceeds 25 Euro and customs are only added, if the value exceeds 150 Euro It does NOT discriminate American sellers, because German sellers have to bill the VAT too Also I buy regulary in the USA and even with heavy USPS costs plus Import-VAT I am mostly lesser expensive as if I buy in Germany... Greetings From what I can gather is that it will break DNSSEC, which has been designed to establish trusted connections with DNS calls. Essentially, browsers will accept only signed responses from web servers, and SOPA (and PROTECT IP) would be redirecting DNS requests for US citizens, which is precisely the sort of thing DNSSEC is meant to prevent; silent redirection of DNS requests. I'm not normally very vocal about these sorts of things, but it will have ripple effects that can't be predicted in the very industry we all have our livelihoods in, so I'm glad there's resistance against it. -- Thanks, Ash http://www.ashleysheridan.co.uk
Re: [PHP] Re: [PHP-WEBMASTER] Re: [PHP] The Cat Signal
On Fri, July 20, 2012 10:04, Lester Caine wrote: In Europe VAT is applied even on on-line sales. It is the likes of Amazon shipping bulk stock from overseas 'clients' into European warehouses and then supplying them without VAT added directly in Europe that is the problem! How can I compete with someone who is also giving next day delivery, but 20% cheaper ... American sellers are one of the problems here. It depends, because in Europe (I live in Germany), VAT is only added if the value + shiping exceeds 25 Euro and customs are only added, if the value exceeds 150 Euro It does NOT discriminate American sellers, because German sellers have to bill the VAT too Also I buy regulary in the USA and even with heavy USPS costs plus Import-VAT I am mostly lesser expensive as if I buy in Germany... Greetings -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] Re: [PHP-WEBMASTER] Re: [PHP] The Cat Signal
Paul M Foster wrote: Here's another one: There are currently discussions in the U.S. Congress in favor of forcing internet vendors to charge sales tax on*all* sales, regardless of whether the vendor has a presence in that state or not. Imagine having to file state sales tax returns in 50 states. This effort has rather significant bipartisan support. Now ask yourself what large corporation with brick and mortar stores *wouldn't* sign on to support this one? That's what you're up against. You've got Amazon.com on your side. Yay. You might want to get busy on that one. In Europe VAT is applied even on on-line sales. It is the likes of Amazon shipping bulk stock from overseas 'clients' into European warehouses and then supplying them without VAT added directly in Europe that is the problem! How can I compete with someone who is also giving next day delivery, but 20% cheaper ... American sellers are one of the problems here. There are two sides to every problem and simply fighting for one side is as bad. What is needed is a reasoned debate rather than things like 'The Cat Signal' which personally I find as objectionable as the laws it's complaining about! -- Lester Caine - G8HFL - Contact - http://lsces.co.uk/wiki/?page=contact L.S.Caine Electronic Services - http://lsces.co.uk EnquirySolve - http://enquirysolve.com/ Model Engineers Digital Workshop - http://medw.co.uk Rainbow Digital Media - http://rainbowdigitalmedia.co.uk -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] Re: [PHP-WEBMASTER] Re: [PHP] The Cat Signal
On Fri, Jul 20, 2012 at 09:04:30AM +0100, Lester Caine wrote: Paul M Foster wrote: Here's another one: There are currently discussions in the U.S. Congress in favor of forcing internet vendors to charge sales tax on*all* sales, regardless of whether the vendor has a presence in that state or not. Imagine having to file state sales tax returns in 50 states. This effort has rather significant bipartisan support. Now ask yourself what large corporation with brick and mortar stores *wouldn't* sign on to support this one? That's what you're up against. You've got Amazon.com on your side. Yay. You might want to get busy on that one. In Europe VAT is applied even on on-line sales. It is the likes of Amazon shipping bulk stock from overseas 'clients' into European warehouses and then supplying them without VAT added directly in Europe that is the problem! How can I compete with someone who is also giving next day delivery, but 20% cheaper ... American sellers are one of the problems here. There are two sides to every problem and simply fighting for one side is as bad. What is needed is a reasoned debate rather than things like 'The Cat Signal' which personally I find as objectionable as the laws it's complaining about! The real problem is the VAT tax itself. In my opinion, VAT is worse than direct income tax. The only good thing about VAT is that you (presumably) don't have to file returns with every state/province involved. Paul -- Paul M. Foster http://noferblatz.com http://quillandmouse.com -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
RE: [PHP] Re: [PHP-WEBMASTER] Re: [PHP] The Cat Signal
-Original Message- From: Lester Caine [mailto:les...@lsces.co.uk] Sent: Friday, July 20, 2012 4:05 AM To: php-general@lists.php.net Subject: Re: [PHP] Re: [PHP-WEBMASTER] Re: [PHP] The Cat Signal Paul M Foster wrote: Here's another one: There are currently discussions in the U.S. Congress in favor of forcing internet vendors to charge sales tax on*all* sales, regardless of whether the vendor has a presence in that state or not. Imagine having to file state sales tax returns in 50 states. This effort has rather significant bipartisan support. Now ask yourself what large corporation with brick and mortar stores *wouldn't* sign on to support this one? That's what you're up against. You've got Amazon.com on your side. Yay. You might want to get busy on that one. In Europe VAT is applied even on on-line sales. It is the likes of Amazon shipping bulk stock from overseas 'clients' into European warehouses and then supplying them without VAT added directly in Europe that is the problem! How can I compete with someone who is also giving next day delivery, but 20% cheaper ... American sellers are one of the problems here. There are two sides to every problem and simply fighting for one side is as bad. What is needed is a reasoned debate rather than things like 'The Cat Signal' which personally I find as objectionable as the laws it's complaining about! -- Lester Caine - G8HFL - Contact - http://lsces.co.uk/wiki/?page=contact L.S.Caine Electronic Services - http://lsces.co.uk EnquirySolve - http://enquirysolve.com/ Model Engineers Digital Workshop - http://medw.co.uk Rainbow Digital Media - http://rainbowdigitalmedia.co.uk -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php This sounds more like a business annoyance than an internet freedom problem, but okay. Technically, in the US, I thought it is the end-consumer that needs to pay a sales tax to the state where they live. Consumer retail businesses are required to tack them on at the point of sale as a convenience for both the consumer and the government, then pass the money on. The seller only pays taxes, to the municipality(s) where their business is physically located, based on their net profit. So the sales tax itself does not come out of the company's pocket. The company bears the cost of tracking, processing, and forwarding the taxes to the government(s) involved, but that is a deductible expense. Sales taxes are a tedious, but not costly, normal business expense. Really, how hard is it for computer savvy people to sort their sales transactions by customer's state and sum up the sales tax amounts paid so they can write a check every quarter. Many businesses would be happy to have to mail 50 checks every quarter, one to each state. That means they are making sales in every state! That sounds like a profitable business to me. And as far as filling out 50 sales and use tax forms each quarter, they have these things called computers now that make pulling in data and printing forms happen at the touch of a button. Maybe some enterprising programmer could write software to do just that and sell it on the internet. We need to stop playing idealistic revolutionary and help shape real solutions. The fact that you are allowed to run a business on the internet is the internet freedom you are looking for. You have won the revolution! Now, deal with the realities of running a business. Putting your business on the internet should not be a magic pass to avoid the costs of doing business. We need to admit we are part of the system and figure out a streamlined way for internet businesses to pay their fair share. The Free in free economy does not mean it doesn't cost money, time, effort, etc. to do business. The internet is not a magic cloud run by fairy dust. The internet was created by military and higher educational systems, both tax supported entities. Corporations and governments maintain the infrastructure that keeps the internet working. Without governments and corporations there would be no internet. They are the internet. The alternative is to go back to ham radios. Sorry for the rant, this is a hot button topic for me. Jeff Burcher - IT Dept Allred Metal Stamping PO Box 2566 High Point, NC 27261 (336)886-5221 x229 j...@allredmetal.com -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] Re: [PHP-WEBMASTER] Re: [PHP] The Cat Signal
Paul M Foster wrote: There are two sides to every problem and simply fighting for one side is as bad. What is needed is a reasoned debate rather than things like 'The Cat Signal' which personally I find as objectionable as the laws it's complaining about! The real problem is the VAT tax itself. In my opinion, VAT is worse than direct income tax. The only good thing about VAT is that you (presumably) don't have to file returns with every state/province involved. The EU does have VAT sorted nicely across all the states of Europe, and I simply fill in a VAT return each quarter in the UK. For VAT registered European customers we simply bill them 0% rated, so there is no need for cross border paperwork at all. But European customers who are not VAT registered pay the rate of of the country the supplier is based in, which gives some small plus and minus advantages. Anything that comes into Europe through proper channels will also have VAT added as part of 'customs charges' and businesses simply claim it back, hence the irritation at supply channels bypassing the normal trade routes :( In theory those goods should have had VAT paid when they came into a European warehouse, so it would be nice to know what loophole they use to avoid it ;) And at least VAT only applies when I spend money, higher income tax would hit everything I earn ... but this is getting very much off topic for the list, as 'The Cat Signal' is anyway in my book. -- Lester Caine - G8HFL - Contact - http://lsces.co.uk/wiki/?page=contact L.S.Caine Electronic Services - http://lsces.co.uk EnquirySolve - http://enquirysolve.com/ Model Engineers Digital Workshop - http://medw.co.uk Rainbow Digital Media - http://rainbowdigitalmedia.co.uk -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
RE: [PHP] Re: [PHP-WEBMASTER] Re: [PHP] The Cat Signal
Hi, I have been out of the loop and just did some quick skimming of SOPA/PIPA to see what all the fuss was about. PIPA seems a little vague, but SOPA seems pretty straight forward, stop piracy of copyrighted materials. I don't understand what is wrong with that? Thanks, Jeff Burcher - IT Dept Allred Metal Stamping PO Box 2566 High Point, NC 27261 (336)886-5221 x229 j...@allredmetal.com -Original Message- From: Kris Craig [mailto:kris.cr...@gmail.com] Sent: Thursday, July 19, 2012 3:40 PM To: Ferenc Kovacs Cc: Daniel Brown; php-webmas...@lists.php.net; php-general@lists.php.net Subject: [PHP] Re: [PHP-WEBMASTER] Re: [PHP] The Cat Signal On Thu, Jul 19, 2012 at 12:36 PM, Ferenc Kovacs tyr...@gmail.com wrote: 2012.07.19. 20:21, Daniel Brown danbr...@php.net ezt írta: Forwarding to php-webmas...@lists.php.net, as it's not a general user issue where it pertains to php.net. On Thu, Jul 19, 2012 at 2:02 PM, Kris Craig kris.cr...@gmail.com wrote: Hey guys, I just became aware of this: http://internetdefenseleague.org/ It's a site setup by Mozilla, Reddit, and others to defend internet freedom in the wake of recent legislative events in the U.S. and elsewhere (full members list here: http://www.internetdefenseleague.org/members). They've setup what they're calling the cat signal, an invisible bit of embeddable code you can put in your website that will activate (and display the afore-mentioned signal/link/etc) if/when the next SOPA/PIPA/etc comes along that threatens the open internet. I'd like to propose that we integrate this into the PHP website. This issue directly affects our community and we already staked a claim in this fight when we participated in the last great blackout. In addition, I'd also l ike to propose that we officially join this group as a member. I'm not sure if we'd do this by vote or something similar to the RFC process etc, but if you'll grant me permission, I'd be happy to do the legwork on this myself (make the HTML edits, contact the organization on PHP's behalf, etc). Thoughts? --Kris -- /Daniel P. Brown Network Infrastructure Manager http://www.php.net/ -- PHP Webmaster List Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php Btw. we were asked by the to join the league as we were a big traffic source on the black out day. I don't know if Rasmus is on the webmaster list or not, but we should cc him, as he was the driving force behind us joining the anti SOPA movement. I heard back from the webmaster saying that we're already participating with the cat signal on our website. Given this and no objections, I went ahead and contacted them and asked that they list us on their participating members page. --Kris -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] Re: [PHP-WEBMASTER] Re: [PHP] The Cat Signal
Jeff Burcher wrote: I have been out of the loop and just did some quick skimming of SOPA/PIPA to see what all the fuss was about. PIPA seems a little vague, but SOPA seems pretty straight forward, stop piracy of copyrighted materials. I don't understand what is wrong with that? It depends on how heavy handed the solution is ... Currently I can't get torrent downloads of Linux distribution DVD's because torrent is blocked. Just because some people abuse a technology is no reason to kill that technology for legitimate uses? Action groups that just target one country are a little irritating to the rest of us ... a world wide solution is needed. -- Lester Caine - G8HFL - Contact - http://lsces.co.uk/wiki/?page=contact L.S.Caine Electronic Services - http://lsces.co.uk EnquirySolve - http://enquirysolve.com/ Model Engineers Digital Workshop - http://medw.co.uk Rainbow Digital Media - http://rainbowdigitalmedia.co.uk -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
RE: [PHP] Re: [PHP-WEBMASTER] Re: [PHP] The Cat Signal
Hi, I agree. My wife is from China and both copyright issues and government enforcement of things have a whole new meaning there, so I understand the concerns on both sides. Thanks, Jeff Burcher - IT Dept Allred Metal Stamping PO Box 2566 High Point, NC 27261 (336)886-5221 x229 j...@allredmetal.com -Original Message- From: Lester Caine [mailto:les...@lsces.co.uk] Sent: Thursday, July 19, 2012 4:10 PM To: php-general@lists.php.net Subject: Re: [PHP] Re: [PHP-WEBMASTER] Re: [PHP] The Cat Signal Jeff Burcher wrote: I have been out of the loop and just did some quick skimming of SOPA/PIPA to see what all the fuss was about. PIPA seems a little vague, but SOPA seems pretty straight forward, stop piracy of copyrighted materials. I don't understand what is wrong with that? It depends on how heavy handed the solution is ... Currently I can't get torrent downloads of Linux distribution DVD's because torrent is blocked. Just because some people abuse a technology is no reason to kill that technology for legitimate uses? Action groups that just target one country are a little irritating to the rest of us ... a world wide solution is needed. -- Lester Caine - G8HFL - Contact - http://lsces.co.uk/wiki/?page=contact L.S.Caine Electronic Services - http://lsces.co.uk EnquirySolve - http://enquirysolve.com/ Model Engineers Digital Workshop - http://medw.co.uk Rainbow Digital Media - http://rainbowdigitalmedia.co.uk -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] Re: [PHP-WEBMASTER] Re: [PHP] The Cat Signal
On Thu, Jul 19, 2012 at 03:45:46PM -0400, Jeff Burcher wrote: Hi, I have been out of the loop and just did some quick skimming of SOPA/PIPA to see what all the fuss was about. PIPA seems a little vague, but SOPA seems pretty straight forward, stop piracy of copyrighted materials. I don't understand what is wrong with that? Here's another one: There are currently discussions in the U.S. Congress in favor of forcing internet vendors to charge sales tax on *all* sales, regardless of whether the vendor has a presence in that state or not. Imagine having to file state sales tax returns in 50 states. This effort has rather significant bipartisan support. Now ask yourself what large corporation with brick and mortar stores *wouldn't* sign on to support this one? That's what you're up against. You've got Amazon.com on your side. Yay. You might want to get busy on that one. Governments and large corporations are about power and *control*. The internet is the antithesis of this. So expect their efforts to control some or all of the internet to continue until they succeed. Paul -- Paul M. Foster http://noferblatz.com http://quillandmouse.com -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
