Angry Hungarians hit the streets to protest Internet tax

BUDAPEST, Hungary, Oct. 30 (UPI) -- Nearly 100,000 Hungarians surged through the streets of Budapest this week to demonstrate against a proposed tax on Internet usage in a protest that was organized ... online.

The angry spark was triggered by a Facebook page set up by activist and former Socialist Party member Balazs Gulyas, 27, who called the tax an attempt to create "a digital iron curtain around Hungary."

In the face of the protests, the government from earlier plans to charge everyone 62 cents per gigabyte. Now officials have offered to cap the use tax at $2.89 a month for individuals, $20.62 for corporations.

But the digital pandora is out of the box now, and the protest is threatening to become a burgeoning referendum against the government of Prime Minister Viktor Orban, whose efforts to strangle the Internet, say critics, smacks of authoritarianism.

Orban's government has imposed taxes on the banking, retail, energy and telecommunications sectors to trim Hungary's deficit. But outrage over the Internet tax is the biggest outpouring of criticism since his center-right government took power in 2010.