Is Amazon Playing Fair?

In the online world, it's hard to remember a time before Amazon. Today, it dominates the ecommerce space, and is rapidly becoming equally dominant in the ebook world. Against that background, a story that broke yesterday is rather worrying.

On Open Enterprise blog.

BSA Wants Business Software Licences To Be Checked in VAT Audits

In my last post, I wrote about my Freedom of Information request to find out how Microsoft had been lobbying against true open standards that mandated RF licensing. In fact, I made another at the same time, asking a similar question about the Business Software Alliance's contacts with the Cabinet Office. There turned out to be only two meetings, and one email, so clearly the BSA played less of a role than Microsoft in this area.

On Open Enterprise blog.

Planting the Bulb of a Good Idea

News that Australia plans to ban incandescent light bulbs and replace them with more energy efficient fluorescent bulbs led to me this site: Ban the Bulb, whose campaign goals are to

Increase the cost of incandescent light bulbs
Reduce the sales tax (VAT) on CFLs [compact fluorescent lights] from 17.5% to 5%
Ban the sale of incandescents by a specific date
Help the poor to replace their incandescents
Help the poor to save money on their bills
Encourage the responsible recycling of CFLs
Include light bulbs in the EU's Eco Directive
Explain the benefits of greater energy efficiency
Accelerate the uptake of available technologies

Banning incandescent light bulbs it would...Save the UK 3.6 Million tonnes of CO2 per year

This is an idea that has occurred to me (and to millions of others, I suspect), so it's good to see someone doing something about it.

As Matt Prescott, the founder of the campaign, explains:

If we cannot deny ourselves incandescent light bulbs, which would require minimal sacrifice, how are we ever going to do the really difficult things such as cutting our reliance on fossil fuels, buying smaller cars or reducing our use of finite natural resources?

Ending the life of this inefficient and obsolete technology is not enough to prevent damaging climate change; but it is an easy first step, and one the world should not hesitate to take.

This needs to be done now. We can all contribute - I've now replaced about 95% of the bulbs I use, with the others scheduled to disappear soon - but governments must get involved too.

Carousel Fraud: Virtually Virtual

I'm always amazed when people raise their eyebrows over the money involved in virtual worlds, because it's obviously not "real", and so doesn't count (ever stopped to consider how valuable that piece of paper you call a banknote really is?). But when I read things like this, I have to shake my head:

Missing trader or carousel fraud cost Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs £3bn in the last financial year.

...

Carousel fraud involves importing, or claiming to import, goods from another EU country without paying VAT, then selling them on and pocketing the tax. The same goods will often go from country to country earning fraudulent tax at every stage.

Increasingly, the goods don't even physically move.

So, this is fraud to the tune of billions of pounds per year, "increasingly" involving goods that don't move - and that presumably only exist as disembodied numbers passing through the UK government's IT system: and they're telling me that virtual money doesn't count?