New Irish Internet Tax?
The more you look at legislation in this country, the nastier an opinion you develop about it. You’d be able to forgive minor errors, small awkwardnesses, even larger problems so long as the common good was served, but the more I look at statute law in Ireland and more critically, at how it is drafted, the less charitable I feel about the drafters. Much of the stuff I see, I see through the Firearms Acts – that stuff I talk about elsewhere.
This time, though, it’s more apropos to here. The new Broadcasting Bill 2009, currently on it’s last stages in the Oireachtas and about to become the Broadcasting Act 2009, has a lovely little sting in it.
In section 140 (the definitions), it defines “television set” to mean:
any electronic apparatus capable of receiving and exhibiting television broadcasting services broadcast for general reception (whether or not its use for that purpose is dependent on the use of anything else in conjunction with it) and any software or assembly comprising such apparatus and other apparatus;
Nice little bit there.… Read the rest
