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Your tax dollars helped pay for the development of the Internet and many of the technologies that those sites and services use today.
by yantz 8y ago
Your tax dollars helped pay for the development of the Internet and many of the technologies that those sites and services use today.
- rootusrootus 8y agoSure, the development of the technology, but not the actual services themselves. The difference with the local ISP is that my tax dollars actually helped pay for the physical plant. And through my gov't I give them actual physical right-of-way to lay cables and maintain them. This is a very important distinction that does not apply to a soft service on the 'net somewhere. Now, if my tax dollars helped pay for Twitter's datacenter, then now we have something to talk about. And perhaps in the state where Twitter is, they got tax breaks which amount to effectively a subsidy from the citizenry. In that case I think it's time to take the case to court.
- yantz 8y agoThe physical plant was made a long time ago and was a one-time investment, like arpanet back in the day, or for example investigation made by universities using public grants that helped develop video codecs that are now in use by sites like youtube. So yes, it's the same.