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Philadelphia taxes blogs with $300.00 business license fee.

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TuringAI

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It's all in this article. I got this from a libertarian social network but that doesn't matter, since this is a true case of government abuse and we need all the help we can get.

http://citypaper.net/articles/2010/08/19/blogging-business-privilege-tax-philadelphia

Personally, while I believe all taxation is theft, it's especially wrong to tax blogs because it stifles the free speech of those who may have no other outlet.

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Taxes on newspapers are a historic problem. It is ironic that this comes from Philadelphia. What would Benjamin Franklin say? Taxes on newspapers, magazines, and books have been weakly defended, at best and been generally unpopular for those very First Amendment reasons. Now we have new media. But the principles are constant.

There was a time when "cold type" meant handset and "hot type" meant linotype. But in the last generation, those took on almost opposite meanings, as almost nothing is set by hand. (Artworks and such are the exception.) So, "hot type" was the old-fashioned method and "cold type" meant photographic typesetting (Quadrigraphic; Compugraphic; competing makers including Mergenthaler). Now, that has almost no meaning as so little is done with light on film everything in a newspaper up to the inking on the paper is the result of the same computering that we use here. So, it comes down to laserjet versus inkjet versus rollers and pans. When they can laserjet a newspaper, then what? And what about the fact that newspapers offer online content, some of them as their main line of delivery.

Here in SE Michigan, local papers hit the sidewalk once or twice a week and change their websites several times a day -- which is how they used to have Bulldog Editions, Three- and Four-star Editions, and the Five Star Final in the evening.

So, what is a website or a blog that a newspaper is not?

(Apart from the wider problem of taxation, of course.)

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Complete violation of the First Amendment.
There's no question that taxation is immoral. I don't understand the logic of claiming that this, specifically, violates the First Amendment. Are you claiming that there are some forms of taxation or regulation that are not violations of the First Amendment?
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