Major online search providers may face a tax on advertising revenue in France under proposals being examined by French president Nicolas Sarkozy to help save creative industries from a “free-for-all” Internet culture. Under the proposals, made in a government-commissioned report, money from the tax would go to the cultural sphere.

Jacques Toubon, a former culture minister and one of the report’s authors, told the Libération newspaper that the aim was to curb “the limitless enrichment” of the world’s leading internet players. The revenue would “go straight into the state budget”.

The tax would be expected to raise between E10 million and E20 million a year. An array of cultural ventures, from newspaper subscriptions to expanded online publishing platforms, would be helped by the money.

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