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Comment by jb775 | Hacker News Reader

> The ACCC considers that consumers effectively pay for Google’s services with their data, so this change introduced by Google increased the “price” of Google’s services

It's interesting to think about a privacy policy tweak as a "price increase". I wonder if data will become regulated to the point where monetary value is transferred away from large companies and towards individual users so countries can tax their citizens on it.

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It seems to be an extension of the idea of Consideration in contract law. That makes sense to me. You can't change the agreement to extract more value without giving something back in return.

Simple: increase free Drive space by 500MB, or even 1MB, each time it's updated.

The value in that scenario is being removed from the consumers not the companies, the consumer is the source and they exchange their data for services that would otherwise cost money. So in effect such a law would make the people poorer. Europe will probably like the idea because they've given up on fostering a competitive software industry but for nations that want to matter in cyber space like the US, China, Japan, and Korea, it's hard to imagine such a tax (essentially a production tax) actually benefitting consumers wallets.

Bartering for individuals tend to not be a taxable event.

It's muddy when it involves a business and an individual tho - very hard to say if it's fair to tax bartering. But it's certainly not fair (imho) to tax the individual just because it's hard to tax the business for it.

This isn't true in Australia, you are meant to pay tax on barter, even individuals - I could even see the tax office pursuing it for big ticket items like heavy machinery

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