Sarkozy wants Google tax to support music and publishing industry

If Sarkozy has his way, France will tax Google and other search engines, Web portals, and Internet service providers and turn that revenue over to the music and publishing industries, according to reports in multiple French newspapers and news services. Under the plan, the government would also partially subsidize "music cards" that the country's youth could use to buy songs online and France would require the music industry to release song files that "play on all platforms." (It wasn't clear exactly what this meant, but presumably Sarkozy was referring to digital music files stripped of anticopying software).

France's head of state made the statements at the Cite de la Musique in Paris, as part of an annual tradition where the president offers his list of New Year's "wishes" for content creators. Sarkozy said high on his list will be to ask the country's "Competition Authority," which guards against antitrust violations, to investigate Google for possible "abuse of its dominant position" in the online ad market.