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posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday January 31 2017, @11:36PM   Printer-friendly
from the any-excuse dept.

The VideoLAN project, which is based in France, was contacted by a French tax authority due to a torrent site linking to the VLC Media Player:

A few hours ago, Next INpact reported that VideoLAN had received a letter from the [National Tax Investigation Branch of the French Ministry for the Economy and Finance], asking for detailed information on Torrent9.biz. The reason for the inquiry is that the site in question, also accessible via Torrent9.me, has a help section that explains how people can download torrents. This guide ends with a link to the VLC Media Player, as can be seen below [image].

While the Internet is full of links, the National Tax Investigation Branch suspected that VideoLAN was closely involved with the torrent site, asking the organization to hand over all sorts of documentation. Specifically, they requested "complete customer details," "bank details," "payment methods of the customer and date of last payment," and a copy of the "referencing contract" for the Torrent9.biz and Torrent9.me domains.

When confronted with the usual request by a reporter, the Ministry of Economy and Finance didn't give in. Instead, it reportedly stated that "if they have a link to your website, it's because you pay them: SEO is not free..," suggesting some kind of active cooperation. VideoLAN received quite a bit of support after the news broke as many people had trouble wrapping their head around the absurd situation. After a storm of protests, the authorities eventually decided to back down. In a response on Twitter, the ministry described the situation as an 'error of judgment,' adding that failures like this can always happen.


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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by mr_mischief on Tuesday January 31 2017, @11:52PM

    by mr_mischief (4884) on Tuesday January 31 2017, @11:52PM (#461487)

    Idiocy and insistence outside of domain knowledge can always cause a governmental failure. It's true.

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  • (Score: 5, Touché) by qzm on Wednesday February 01 2017, @01:04AM

    by qzm (3260) on Wednesday February 01 2017, @01:04AM (#461510)

    I suggest ALL torrent sites put a link to this particular government offices website.
    Then they can investigate themselves.

    Perhaps, just perhaps, the link is there as VLC is a very good and free video players?

    Someone is grinding an axe.

    • (Score: 2) by FakeBeldin on Wednesday February 01 2017, @09:13AM

      by FakeBeldin (3360) on Wednesday February 01 2017, @09:13AM (#461595) Journal

      How this is playing out:
      1. Dumb executive decision by some government official.
      [...oh no here we go again...]
      2. Wide protests by folks affected by this, by folks not affected by this, even by folks living in other countries and not affected by this
      [... okay we know what the next step will be...sigh...]
      3. Government back pedals.
      [...wait - WHAT?! Is that even allowed???]

    • (Score: 2) by Bot on Wednesday February 01 2017, @12:05PM

      by Bot (3902) on Wednesday February 01 2017, @12:05PM (#461620) Journal

      The tax men have probably had copies of vlc installed in their home pc for years, so likely it is not idiocy, but terrorism.

      Or, as the classic definition of "terrorism by the ones already in charge" goes, terror.

      --
      Account abandoned.