QuoTW The EU's digital office has warned this week that Hungary's proposed tax on ISPs can't become a precedent in Europe. Ryan Heath, spokesperson for digital czar Steelie Neelie Kroes, told El Reg:

This must be seen in a wider context as part of a pattern to limit media and internet freedom. That is why it is so important to tackle this now before a law is enacted. We have seen the pattern in Hungary where they announce a very tough law and then they moderate it in an effort to seem reasonable. But we cannot allow this issue to fade away.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban plans to impose a tax on internet service providers of around 0.50 per gigabyte of data that travels over their networks, capping it at about 2.26 a month for individuals. Heath said that the tax was wrong and could force folk off the 'net:

It wont work, because you cannot tax a global common resource like the internet unilaterally. Furthermore, by targeting data they are getting it doubly wrong, because its impossible to predict data flows!

Thousands of protestors took to the streets in peaceful protest over the tax this week. One protestor told The Reg:

As a symbol of independence and importance of the media, we were holding our cellphones in the air, emphasising that we will remain connected, no matter what law they to put in place.

Meanwhile, ex-Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has lost none of his outspoken ways now that he's left Redmond. In an interview with Charlie Rose, Ballmer said that Amazon wasn't a real company because it had failed to make any profit in two decades:

They make no money, Charlie. In my world, you're not a real business until you make some money. I have a hard time with businesses that don't make money at some point.

I get it if you don't make money for two or three years, but Amazon's what 21 years old and not making money.

If I was a share owner, it's an expensive company market cap of $150bn almost eventually, if you're worth $150bn, eventually somebody thinks you're gonna make $15bn pre-tax and they make about zero, and there's a big gap between zero and 15.

Link:

'I get it if you don't make money for 2 or 3 years, but Amazon's 21'