Slashdot Mirror
New Fee For Internet-Capable PCs In Germany
An anonymous reader writes "German online news sites heise.de and spiegel.de has stories, that from April 2005 on a fee of about 17 to 18 EUR per month must be paid to the national broadcasters in Germany for personal computers in private households, which have possible access to the internet. The fee must not be paid, if it is already paid for a TV set. Companies are said to be obliged to pay that fee from 2007 on." Those who don't read German should make use of the Fish.
I'm so happy to see the German broadcasters finally making money off of their value-added services.
...is one of my very favorite things.
I feel the urge to put as much mass between me and this land as possible.
That's more than I paid for my machine, each year!
subj...
Sometimes even other country's have piss-poor bureaucratic governments. Nevermind in the U.S. the government has actively helped keep anything above 56K from becoming inexpensive.
the internet is so nineties
soo...ok.. oh, GUT! you have to pay more money... for a whole lot of... nothing? yeah, thats right, a whole lot of nothing. its sad how governments and buissness are trying to captatalize the internet, to make it into a selling tool.
-ND
I was unaware of the "TV Tax" in Europe, so I checked with my friend google and came up with the following:
Official website for the UK: http://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/
I'd like to propose a new pay TV service to you.It will provide you with 5 broadcast channels. Yes, broadcast channels--cable or satellite will cost substantially extra. These are not specialty or niche channels. They just contain your usual mix of re-runs, soap operas, sitcoms, and miniseries; you will love some of these programs, dislike others, and ignore many of them. And, yes, there will commercials.
Subscribing to this service will cost you $15 a month. Not subscribing will cost you $1600. Those are your only choices. Take your pick.
Doesn't sound like a good deal? Welcome to England.
That's right: England--home of the Magna Carta, birthplace of modern civil liberties, cradle of the freedom of the press--does not allow a citizen to so much as own a television unless he pays £112 per year for a license. And don't try to fool TV Licensing. If you live in a flat with no TV license, you will receive a series of ominous letters warning you that agents of the government could drive down your block at any moment, hunting for contraband picture tubes, ready to fine you £1000 if they find one. (How do I know about these letters? Don't ask.) Stores cannot so much as sell you a VCR without reporting your name and address to the Powers That Be.
And if your TV purchase somehow slips through the net, TV Licensing's website warns, "the fact that our enquiry officers are now so well equipped with the latest technology means that there is virtually no way to avoid detection... We can detect a TV in use, in any area. That's because every TV contains a component called the 'local oscillator', which emits a signal when the television is switched on. It's this signal that the equipment on our vans picks up." The websight also contains anecdotes that are presumably meant to humanize the inspectors, but which come across as rather chilling. Witness, for example, the one about the husband and wife who refuse the inspector entry, hurriedly shut their curtains, attempt to sneak the TV into the trunk of their car, and drive off.
So, which branch of the government has such terrifying powers as to send grown men and women scurrying into the night like common criminals? Is such mighty authority vested in the hands of Scotland Yard, or MI5? Nope: the men hunting through the mean streets of London for rogue local oscillators are employees of the BBC, which may be the only pay network in the world with the authority to forcibly acquire customers. And you thought HBO had a brilliant business model.
TV Licensing is merciful, though. Blind people who own colour TV's need only pay £56 a year. If that sounds generous, reflect that fully sighted people who own black and white tellies pay only £37.50. According to the wisdom of TV Licensing, it is a greater hardship to see a program in black and white than not to see it at all.
And in case you're wondering: blind people with black and white TV's only pay £18.72 a year. I'd ask why being unable to see a colour television costs more than being unable to see a black and white one, but an unmarked van just drove slowly by my flat, and I think I need to go hide.
The one thing I'm sure of, after reading the article, is that the Germans are grumpy about it. After all, the 'fish says: ``Against the Pl? the Ministerpr?denten had moved violent resistance from economics and politics. Of course, since that's a Bablefish translation, I'm probably completely wrong.
How about some of you German slashdotters filling us in?
See what I've been reading.
More regulation and more arbitrary fees for something people don't use.
Now I don't only pay the fscking music industry money for the cds I do my backups on (a certain amount of every blank cd you buy goes to the music industry, can you believe it), I'll also have to pay for my computer I certainly don't use to watch public broadcasting tv. On top of that, not only do I have to pay, but every frigging company with a internet connection will have to pay the fee for every computer connected to the net, this is just insane.
The number of people in Germany without a TV set but with a "internet-capable" PC (RS 232? :) ) is incredible low and only for these people there will be any change to notice.
If your income is below a certain line, you can be freed to have to pay anything.
In toto, this is not an Internet tax but just a closure of a gap for those people who have abolished their TV set in order to get the TV stream via http.
In Italy, you have to pay a fee for TV broadcasting. Most people refuse to pay it, since it a no-sense and moreover it is difficult to check if you own a TV set. But it is much more easy to check if you subscribed an Internet contract.
M.
Not many people will be hurt by this:
- if you already have a TV set, you already pay this fee. (Most households already have a TV set and pay 48.45 EUR every three months to the GEZ.)
- it's per household, not per computer
I have four machines connected to the net at home, and I can ignore this new regulation, cause I registered with GEZ as a TV owner. So who cares?(BTW, the point that public broadcasting should be financed from taxes and not have a special authority for this is IMHO very valid. Would mean less bureaucracy, and a more fair distribution of burden.)
Would you still have to pay? That seems incredibly unfair, unless the broadcasters provide content that can't be found anywhere else. No, wait. It's still unfair no matter how you slice it.
US businesses that currently accept chip and PIN/signature
Will we see Streaming TV shows through our 'net connection? After all, the money goes to the TV companies.
The GEZ (see other post) is collecting is you "keep a functional" TV set. Even if you put glue in the Antenna-IN because you only need a SCART-IN for you Nintendo, you have to pay. This has been tested before court.
An international hotel with English-only audience tried to get exempted from these fees because all they wanted to show was CNN. They failed.
This is actually a boomerang for the GEZ, because if you watch TV through a http stream, your computer still lacks any capacity to receive TV signals and therefore, you don't have to pay (unless there is an additional TV set next to your PC).
Yeah, it is.
Well, atleast thank god that it's not in the US - atleast not yet. But I think it would be too hard to enact something like this here, and not to mention the repurcussions.
But you never know.
~m
This really is a bad thing. They try to apply an aged system to the internet.
;-).
The good thing is: If you don't tell them you have a PC, you don't have to pay. So I'll not pay. I know I have a DSL connection, but fortunately they are not allowed to use such data, due to privacy restrictions. Even if they know: You can have an Internet Connection, as long as you don't have an Internet capable PC. And I only have a VoIP phone, of course
Anyway, this law is plain stupid. Also, the so called GEZ, who collects the money, is almost Stasi-like. Well that maybe is a bit exaggerated, but they have nasty tricks to make you pay, and to find out if you have a TV set or not (which I don't have). So from next year on, I can't trust anyone coming to my door, it maybe is the GEZ. Some common tricks:
- Someone asks you if you could answer them some questions, for marketing or whatever. They'll ask you if for example you've seen some TV show yesterday. If you say yes, you'll hear from them again for sure.
- Someone says he needs to come in to read the water/electricity/etc. meter. When inside, they'll look around for TV sets or radios.
- There have been cases where they rent an apartment for example on the other side of the street and take photos of your TV !
So, I'll not pay because I don't use their f*cking TV service, and I don't want to pay this Stasi-like apparatus.
BTW, american copyright and patent laws are coming to Europe ! Hurray !
The UK has also recently amended the rules so that NTSC TVs and PCs fall under the list of devices that require the tax to be paid.
The very people this would be taxing are those least likely to benefit: people who don't have a television. Those who have a television---and therefore can watch the channels---are already paying the fee. So why extend it to people with no TVs?
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Valid TV users must have accounts, if they wanted to charge some amount to have an account that would let you access online streams in case you did not want a TV licence, that would make sense.
But a random tax on any computer than can be hooked to the internet? Fifteen pounds per web server?
If they just have wide open streaming TV, point me at it!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I have no TV set, because the TV shows are getting worse and worse. I'd like to read books etc. instead of watching TV. Also, I don't want to pay that fee.
I don't watch TV via Internet, I just don't use their service. Why do I have to pay ? It's like VW drives a new Golf in front of my house, rings and says I've got to pay although I didn't order any new car.
Here are links to Google-translated versions of the aforementioned articles at heise.de and spiegel.de. They don't translate very well, but you can kind of get the idea...
They're effectively redefining a Broadband connection as a "TV receiver", and therefore because you've got a "TV receiver", you have to pay this tax whether you use it for that purpose or not... It's the same with Video recorders, because they've got TV signal demodulators in them, they are classed as "TV receivers" for the purposes of licensing fee recovery... therefore, even though you don't have a TV antenna and only watch pre-recorded video cassettes using it, you still have to pay the licence fee.
This proposal of theirs sucks... big time...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
What do you want to bet that it does no such thing?
See what I've been reading.
Sometimes, I feel like I'm in the bloo bloo world: the world that looks Just Like The Real World, but somehow, I'm not in it. I think the transition started with the hoax of an election that put the Bush junta in office, was nailed down when those assholes flew into the WTC, and the door was shut and locked when Bush went into Iraq.
It's like every little bit of news that's coming up just seems completely fraught with evil Evil EVIL, and now the freakin Germans are going to tax their people for owning a damn computer hooked to the Net, just 'cuz.
It's fucking bullshit, and I feel like it's just more evidence for the world having gone off the rails and into the weeds.
I am hoping that someday soon, I will wake up and things will be better - Bush will be retired to his ranch, the US will renounce Empire, the Germans will let their people buy a damn computer and hook it up to the net to read email, and we'll all be at least trying to act like we get along together.
Is it so much to ask?
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
The german public broadcasters were bashed for their large web-content by private content-providers. One of the large TV news mags made a joint venture with a large national ISP. announcing the URL several times a day.
I don't want to miss public broadcasting thats financed by a fee on TV and radio sets. Or even computers. Those TV stations fill a small niche for content thats omitted by the private TV stations. The public broadcasting stations usually don't need to care that much about TV quotes and market share. That makes some interesting programs possible.
However, the large TV stations ARD (Das Erste) and the ZDF usually produce a shitload of crappy series and shows. With a soft family touch. Shows that will never make it to other countries. That draws younger viewers away, because hit-TV-shows like CSI, 24, Sex and the City, Ally McBeal, King of Queens,... are all shown by the private stations that can afford to buy them (with a much lower budget). From time to time they do show a top-movie or even an old blockbuster. After 10:00pm. A few years ago, the ZDF canceled The Sopranos after two seasons due to low quotes. It has never been in german TV ever since. IIRC, it was shown rediculous late on sundays around 11:00pm.
The public contract requires them to produce a programme that suited for all types of age groups. The problem is, that its mainly watched by people of 40+ years of age. Those that are not that much into stuff coming over from the states.
Every once in a while the public broadcasting cries for more money and wants to raise the fees.
... only in America ! No, wait...
First of all, taxing television users is really stupid and wrong. You end up paying for TV AND you must look at advertisements. The channels you pay for (the state-owned ones) generally don't give programs worth watching except occasionally. That's not too often, thus you end up watching commercial channels 80 or 90 % of the time, ergo you pay for the privilege of seeing commercials.
Second, why should computer users pay in the first place? Because television usage has gone lower because of the Internet? Hah. Television is an old medium, it's phasing out to give room to new things. Live with it.
I dumped my television and I'm happy without it. I hope this stupid idea from Germany will not spread to other European countries!
This new rule is an example of how such an overly bureaucratic system costs. Here in The Netherlands we had the same system until 5 years ago where you had to pay to some special authority if you own a tv. That licensing stems from the ages when only few people had a TV and it was unfair to tax everyone for the broadcasts. Since 5 years, this whole separate authority has been ditched and the public channels are just paid out of the general tax budget. A lot easier and a lot more cost-effective. And no need for special rules when some people use only a computer to watch tv.
If you own a TV or radio set, then you are benefiting from this service. If you benefit, you have to cough up some dough. They now added computers into the equation because you might visit the stations web pages or receive life broadcasts. Typical red tape thinking.
The networks owned by the public are heavily restricted when it comes to broadcasting commercials and they HAVE to fulfill educational duties. But they shove the same crap to your screen that you'd expect from Murdoch/Saban/Berlusconi owned companies. Quality leaves much to be desired for. The Beeb at least managed to provide true quality programmes like HHGTG, Red Dwarf, Monty Python and such. German broadcasting seems to fancy endless music shows for the elderly, romantic, yet shallow TV plays, game shows and so on. Nobody under the age of 50 would even remotely consider watching that utter crap. Only true benefit they offer are well balanced news broadcasts and quality investigational journalism.
Now comes the brilliant part. They will charge even companies for their internet PCs. Plain silly.
There is a dubious aspect of this fee for PeeCees. The official broadcasting system wanted a substantial raise for this fee. They did get a miniscule one with a net amount of 350.000.000. Been bitching ever since. The new computer tax won't give them much more cash from the households since nearly all of them already pay the fee(don't have to pay double). But the new rule gives them a way to extort cash from companies who weren't paying thru the nose, yet. Let's see. My company has to pay a fee for something I shouldn't do as per company policy. Love that one.
I haven't paid that silly fee in years since I don't own neither radio nor TV. Even if I did, I wouldn't have to let their investigators into my flat. Tho they are known to be real bullies.
My tip for any Germany resident is, if one of these bullies shows up at your door and won't go away, call the police. They haven't bothered me ever since. Still get their extortion letters, tho.
20 minutes into the future
GEZ-fee for internet-PCs comes
Violent protests became loud after first plans of the Prime Ministers were confessed to raise the GEZ-fee in the course of the increase of the broadcast fee and tv fee also for PCs with internet connection from 2007. Now a fee increase comes around 88 cents -and the GEZ-duty for internet-PCs in private households already as of 1 April 2005. Solely for firms, GEZ-fees should planned raised become how originally first as of 1 January 2007, reports the Frankfurt general newspaper. Abgesegnet will must the decisions of the Prime Ministers yet of the respective parliaments of the states.
Would indicate
IX-conference Eclipse 3.0! Now book!
The fee should confessed raised become after that previously become plans for each PC, with which the user can go into the internet. A special connection for a tv reception or broadcast reception, about a TV- or DVB-T-card, is not necessary so that a PC becomes GEZ-compulsory. Who already GEZ-fees berappt, that doesn't have to pay for its internet-PC again -who to be sure no radio or tv set, for that however a PC with internet connection possesses, is asked future to the cash register. For firms, it was named already in the design of the decision, is supposed to be raised would become the fee grundstücksbezogen -business therewith per firms building payment compulsory if they do not pay already GEZ-fees for possibly available tv devices or radio devices, that colleagues in the business use.
Against the plans of the Prime Ministers, violent resistance had moved out of economy and politics. The foreseeable effects of the compulsory fees unique "worldwide for computer" would stand in "evident contradiction" to that by the Federal Government proklamierten and also of the opposition parliamentary groups carried economic objectives, emphasized about Hans-Joachim Otto, media political speaker of the FDP-parliamentary group in the Bundestag. Martina Krogmann, internet-delegated of the Christian Democratic Union/Christian Socialist Union-Bundestag parliamentary group, feared above all negative effects on the economy and expressed itself for that to abandon the plans as quickly as possible again. End the rows of the countries-Prime Ministers was to be heard however already that the economy would be burdened on the basis of already paid GEZ-fees and the grundstücksbezogenen regulations only negligibly in addition. Business associations not so however wanted to stand let that: "business with an additional duty to burden, only because it internet suitable PCs use, is simple and seizing a joke", meant about Friederike Behrends, leader of the team media politics in the BVDW (national association digital economy).
Grietje bed, speaker of media political the green in the Bundestag, brought on the other hand another proposal into the discussion: around with the distribution of UMTS-Mobiltelefonen with radio and TV-Empfangsmöglichkeiten again a delicate debate around the expansion of the GEZ-fee to not to start, would prefer it the introduction of a lump sum "media fee" per household. At the same time it should however also social releases and exceptions for households without digital media devices give. Such proposals emerged are final in the past years again and again, the plans for a GEZ-fee on PCs by bodies nothing new: broadcast fee and tv fee for computer are proposed are already for some years again and again also GEZ-fees about for UMTS-mobile phone again and again in the conversation. The earlier intention to a GEZ-fee on computer, that knocked at all political parties actually on approval, were stopped however in view of the resistance above all out of the economy until now again and again. (jk/c't)
Online backup with Mozy, sounds like Ozzie, but more!
Ain't this a little early to start planning an april fools joke???
In Germany, we have two state-owned TV stations, ARD (which is a conglomerate) and ZDF. These are funded partly by the state, partly (to a small extent) by advertising, and mostly by collecting a monthly fee of about EUR 18 from TV owners. This fee is paid per household, regardless of how many TVs you actually have. If you don't have a TV, you don't have to pay it. (There's a smaller fee paid on radios if you don't have a TV). The point of this regulation is that the stations should be largely independent from the advertisers' whim as well as from the state's. This is, actually, a very valid point, as far as I am concerned. I don't want an American situation over here where TV is controlled by some conservative media czars, and neither do I want an East German situation where the state controls all TV content. Don't forget that state-run broadcasting was an extremely powerful instrument in the hands of the state during the Third Reich, and we've been trying to avoid this from bad experience. Now I don't personally appreciate a lot of the content on ARD and ZDF, but still I think the basic system is OK in itself, as it's the lesser of three evils.
Some time ago, the stations found out that you can watch TV on your computer even if you don't have a TV set. That's why this fee is being introduced. It won't affect many people, as their household is most likely to have a TV already. The only people affected will be those who have a computer, but who don't have a TV. They aren't that many. I don't have a TV, for example, but my flatmate has one, and therefore I don't have to pay extra. (We'll split the fee, however.)
This is a completely different situation from that proposed a fee on computers because one could, technically, copy copyrighted media with it, same as the fee on CD-R media or blank tapes that are collected in some countries. In Germany, for example, you can get special "audio CD-Rs" where this fee is included and where, under present legislation, it is legal to copy copyrighted audio materials for non-commercial purposes. (Of course, apart from the "audio" label that makes them applicable for this fee, they are just normal CD-R media, usually fairly high-quality ones.) Some time ago there was a proposal that the PC should be classified as an instrument of media reproduction as well so that this kind of fee would be imposed on CD burners, for example, but this proposal didn't get through. The TV situation is entirely different.
As a state gets corrupt, its laws multiply; the most corrupt states have the most numerous laws. (Tacitus, Annales 3:27)
I would think it silly for them to tax twice for one set of 'eyeballs'.
Otherwise, imagine a beowulf cluster tax of these!
This TV and radio tax collects money for a few main channels and radio stations that are "independant". They were once formed by the German government (60 years ago) and back then were the only channels. There were no private companies doing this back then.
:-(
Independant from the influence and views of companies and the govermant and they are here to provide a basic TV & radio service for the people.
They also have a good infrastructure of hardware to reach every person in Germany in every location. Back in the black&white days they had the duty to broadcast warnings in case of emergencies and are free of any politic views.
Since this is a free country it is of course allowed to critizise the government and examine the politicians. The major channels have a few good shows about that, where the privately owned TV stations broadcast all kind of dumb stuff.
To maintain this service for all people here we have to pay this tax per household. 1 Radio is a small fee, if you also have a TV you pay a flat per month for all TVs and Radios you own. Companies also pay for Radios and & TVs in their offices, but not per unit.
All other privately owned TV & Radio stations can do what they want. They are financed by commercials which does not make them really independant. They of course might have a tendancy to listen to their advertisement Euros from companies.
Today the lines have vanished. The old major channels broadcast commercials and we complain that they waste our tax money for boring soaps or too expensive productions of bshit.
There are so many private stations reaching everybody that there is no longer a need to maintain that old service.
Taxes for TV rise and rise (like everything else).
The bad thing is that you have to pay that tax even though you never watch the channels you pay for.
All other stations are free to recieve (except pay TV of course), but to see or listen to them you have to pay that generel TV fee
Times will change and that old dinosaur of the GEZ (they collect the money) will die hopefully soon. Until then they will fight for their existance, they pretty know well that they will be jobless one day. Til then they wont stop to rip us off for a (nowadays) bad service.
We used to have a system like that in the Netherlands, where you would have to pay a certain amount of money (~50 Euro??) per year if you owned a TV set. This was in a country where probably 95 percent of the people has a TV. The system involved TV ads that reminded you to pay and an army of inspectors to check if those who didn't pay were not secretly watching.
Occasionally politicians do have common sense, so they got rid of the system a few years ago. Now it's just payed by taxes, regardless if you are watching or not. This was a big win: no more bureaucracy, no more paranoia for the inspectors (we never payed in my student house) and the state saved around 20MEuro instantly on salaries.
karma police: arrest this man, he talks in maths; he buzzes like a fridge, he's like a detuned radio. [radiohead]
Greetz from Flanders (belgium), we too ditched our "Kijk-en-luistergeld", which you had to pay if you had a TV or radio, a few years ago.
it gets even better.
I am orginally from Germany and here what finally drove me out 7 years ago:
I had a TV hooked up to a satellite receiver, no terrestrial antenna and no cable. No German public broadcast receiption possible.
A GEZ inspector walked through my patio door some afternoon uninvited, pointed at my TV and told me I have to pay a fee regardless and I'll be fined too.
After contemplating for second if I could get away with killing the bastard, I packed my stuff,
my wife and kid and moved to California.
I realized it's not the single Gestapo guy, it is the system.
I guess taxation without representation doesn't apply in Europe. Maybe you Europeans should do a "Bosston Tea Boycott" and see what happens.
If the big-screen TV does not have a (working) tuner, you don't have to pay fees. If you really don't want to watch TV, you can buy a screen without tuner or have the tuner disabled.
Claus
Lacking a picture tube that emanates detectable RF, can an LCD TV avoid detection from these roving vans?
being a legal alien in Sweden has it's downsides and one of them is the fact that Sweden has had a very similar law since the birth of public television-
So far nothing for the computers, but trust me when I say that I'm counting the days until some smartass brings that one up.
I _HATE_ these laws. I hardly watch any television at all, yet I still have to pay just as much money as the guy who never turns his set off. If I watch three hours of TV in a month then that's a new record. If I watch TV then it's from a DVD - I have no use for the R/F-tuner.
Sure, Sweden has two government-funded channels that show somewhat decent-quality content, but being public channels they have to cater to every demographic and that means that maybe 5% of the offerings are interesting to me.
I grudgingly pay this tax, but I'm trying to find any loophole I can in the law. I'd be happy to pay for my use (which would amount to something along the lines of US$0.03/month) but taxing it like this is FASCISM in my opinion.
What's next? They put an "ear-tax" on anyone who's born with earlobes? You have to pay 15 bucks a month for the use of your ears - and if you object you have the option of cutting them off or paying!
Ah, there's nothing like good old hidden fascism!
I enjoy large posteriors and I cannot prevaricate.
As I understand it, doesn't Germany already tax modem usage? Googling around I found that they purposely transmit line noise over the phone lines so you have to buy a filter to be able to use dial-up. I'm not from Germany though; can someone with more knowledge of that country clarify?
I realize this new proposal is a 'broadcast' tax as opposed to an 'internet' tax, but it still seems a bit redundant to me if in fact the German government is already collecting revenue for modem usage.
there is a thing called social contract. you are required to abide by certain rules to live in society. otherwise, you should be in prison!!!!!
I find commercial satellite TV completely unwatchable. Sky One is particularly bad - it has five minute ad breaks about once every 10 minutes *at best*, and they can be longer and more frequent. If I'm paying a horrific amount of money for satellite (around £400 a year, or so) then I don't expect to be bothered by adverts.
Oh and quality TV. Oh I forget the free station HBO in america makes quality tv as well. Oh you gotta pay for it?
The BBC as well as the dutch belgian and german public tv stations are totally alien to the american consumer. Quality programs (and a load of crap one) uninterupted by commercials and without business control.
Over here in holland I get to watch them all. The american stations are by far the worst. The HBO programs I rather watch on a license fee payed european channel without any bloody commericals then on the couple of commercial channels.
But hey, some people like the stuff the commericial channels offer. Go live in america. Me I like it. Although I am glad that in holland they shifted the license fee to the general tax. No need for a seperate collection agency when everyone owns a tv anyway. Those freaks who don't, well who cares eh? I pay taxes for maternity wards and I am a geek dammit!
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Not many people will be hurt by this:
Everybody will get hurt by that because companies will have to pay the fee, too. Those costs will make goods and services more expensive, they will make German exports less competitive, and they will increase prices for German consumers. The money doesn't even get transferred just to any other industry, it gets transferred to an industry (German public broadcasting) that creates products with very little potential for export.
And if those fees will have to be paid by educational institutions for their Internet-connected PCs, as seems likely, it will put a further strain on already tight educational budgets.
And for what? How many people with Internet-connected PCs are watching German public television at work? Employers generally don't permit this, and, be honest, licking envelopes is probably more fun than daytime German public television.
if you already have a TV set, you already pay this fee. (Most households already have a TV set and pay 48.45 EUR every three months to the GEZ.)
But the households that don't have a TV set probably don't have one because they just don't want television at all. Since the GEZ fee is ostensibly a user fee, it makes little sense to charge these people.
(BTW, the point that public broadcasting should be financed from taxes and not have a special authority for this is IMHO very valid. Would mean less bureaucracy, and a more fair distribution of burden.)
This, I fully agree with. Public broadcasting should be supported through taxes--tax support means lower expenses (compared to having a separate billing apparatus) and it automatically makes contributions progressive. And I think that tax-supported public broadcasting is very valuable; it just has to serve a public purpose. The German "public" broadcasters, however, are just behavving like heavily subsidized private broadcasters.
Mr German government man, why are you taxing the internet?
Shut up! Vee ask all zee kvestions!
n. A political and economic system of Europe from the 9th to about the 15th century, based on the holding of all land [intellectual property] in fief or fee and the resulting relation of lord to vassal and characterized by homage, legal and military service of tenants, and forfeiture.
It's baaaaack!
Cthulhu for President! Why settle for the lesser evil?
When I was living there, I learned about the license fee for having a TV. One up-side is they have fewer commercials. Think about how many hours you spend every year being told what to think about such things as trash bags and breakfast cereal.
Because programming wasn't entirely funded by ads, it was a little different. Sitcoms, etc. were fewer in number and had small budgets. A lot of shows were brought in from the U.S. and dubbed into French (imagine Bill Cosby with a deep, throaty French voice). There were also some awful talk shows.
But some of the television was better than in the United States. News, documentaries, and movies all seemed less driven by commercial glitz and more driven by a sense of quality.
Donate background CPU time to fight cancer.
Great. Like I asked them to put their crap on the web. Like I ever watched their crap on the web. Like it's their web. Like they produce anything that's not crap. I like the internet because it's not TV. It makes it so much easier to not give in and watch TV. Yep, I should really pay for the privilege of being potentially capable to watch TV where I don't want it, and where they could easily restrict access to their GEZ-paying customers. But that'd make sense, can't let that happen now can we.
This is crazy, I hate having to pay 152 (euro) for a tv licence for a TV that I hardly ever watch and if I wans't living with my girlfriend I'd have got rid of it ages ok just to piss off the license inspector.
Now there trying to screw us over with a computer tax wtf like, ok its not in Ireland yet but this is aload of shit!
"WebTV: bringing the Internet into the shallow end of the gene pool since 1995" - Martin Bishop
Decades ago, television was the only mass-market way of distributing multimedia content. It was expensive to create television stations and the medium allowed only a small amount of total content to be distributed every day, so content needed to be selected. In order to keep television from being taken over by political or corporate interests, it made sense to create publicly supported television stations.
But that's not the situation anymore. In 2004, anybody can get their information on-line and anybody else can access it. More and more people get all their information from the Internet. There is little need for public support of television anymore. The money would be better spent on creating publicly accessible Internet archives of all legislative sessions, debates, and other political interactions.
What this is really about now is that powerful but obsolete institutions don't want to go away. German public television knows that they are threatened by the Internet and are losing viewers. That's why they are so desparate to put content on-line and claim that people have to pay for those offerings.
Yes, the BBC creates high-quality programming, but German public television, for the most part, does not.
I'm starting to wonder whether it wouldn't just be more efficient to pay the ARD and ZDF out of general taxes. I would guess that a large proportion of households in Germany have either a TV or a computer. Money could be saved which is currently paid to enforce the payment of the fees.
"ou get a media environment like the US"
Yeah, that would be awful. I mean, on my cable TV, I have a choice of 250 channels, and another 150 that I can pay extra "on demand". On radio, I have a choice of approxaimtely 50-100 broadcast stations (depending on time of day), and another 100 on my satellite radio receiver.
Yes, its really just AWFUL here in the US.
Oh, German TV sucks, BTW.
from the if-it-moves-tax-it-dept.
What if it doesn't move?
And I don't own a TV/pay any TV-tax/fee .... as I literally don't have time to spend my _time_ on watching "insert whatever is broadcasted"
/* ...and as I've grown up with this, I'm quit confident I won't lator in life switch/change my mind ... and sure I may be 'one of the exceptions', but what about my rights? do they come 2nd to ${THIS/These types of schemes}? .. I mean, just because ${SOME} do ${WHATEVER} doesn't mean ${EVERYONE ELSE} does so to ....*/
for about 10 EUR/month or so, I rent DVDs of the couple of movies that lure me.... /* ditto on music and other "type" of entertainment[s] */
So, paying 18 EUR/month to sombody (who is in the business for something I don't use), is out of the question. - Rationale:Why the *fuck* would one pay A BROADCASTER[S], TO USE the internet? why? ... doesn't make *logical* sense if you are 100% aware of what you are paying for/use when using the internet ..... unless you start to bring in the "pirates of the internet"-argument[s] into the rationale (followed/added by that/the propositus "everyone/body on the internet does this"-argument[s] by the 'resp. Industry Lobbyists')
Thankfully, I'm not living in germany
The licence fee in the UK actually only pays for the BBC, which is two channels. These channels have NO COMMERCIALS. They are also free of pressure from advertisers and political groups. They're even free from pressure from ratings. (The other three channels are free-to-air, but aren't involved in the licence fee and make money through advertising.)
The BBC, therefore, can concentrate on one thing: QUALITY. Not only is it the best news source in the world, but it provides the most eclectic mix of prgrammes on TV. BBC1 is also the most watched TV channel in the country - so clearly whatever it is they're doing is working.
Given the option of the rubbish we get on our pay-extra-for sattelite channels (which is invariably American), or quality BBC progamming, I'm happy to pay the few quid a year to maintain an independent TV company.
I love the quaint response to the TV detector vans too. We've had them here since the 70's, but they're more of a PR excercise than anything else. Think about it: if it means spending half a million pounds on a detector van, or hiring an intern to take a look through the licence register address list, which do you think is easier? They've blown and blustered about the vans for at least 25 years, but you ask most people and they've never encountered one.
Of course, this will all seem very odd to Americans, because you're not used to the idea of TV that has no political or advertising association. I was appalled at how bad things like FOX news really is when I went to NY a couple of years ago. It's not so much news as a Republican campaign instrument. Most people in the UK (according to the polls they do every few years) like the fact we can have quality and independent news.
the Germans are grumpy about it.
You can be sure about it. The GEZ-fee is like "the British pay for their TVs, to pay for German equivalent of the BBC." Thats not the main problem. The main problem is this should be a flat tax for everyone. Right now, you only have to pay for each TV/radio set.. Of cause, if someone moves out of his parents home he doesnt file his request to pay the fee (maybe they forget about it and in addition students are poor). To get the money the GEZ has some guys running around town, ringing the bell of appartments to "check for a TV". It gets expensive if you open the door and a TV is running in your living room. These "supervision state methods" are making the GEZ unpopular.
Maybe it is possible to watch TV on a PC. However as a user that does not have a TV but only internet because I do not support the concept of forced television fees... nor do I like sponsored television mind you.
However if you pollute the airwaves with your electromagnetic waves unless you take preventive measures to ensure only people who have paid can watch it is your own fault. Same goes for putting content on a server without any restrictions.
I do not want to watch news or any other stuff freely via my internet connection.
I want to pay for each item that I watch as in pay per view.
The proper solution for any government based station who is concerned about "paying customers" - is to encode their content and then give those who have paid their fee decoder keys (hard/soft) - that way those with an interest can view while the rest of us can go about our business without being bothered.
The concept has been working for private satelite broadcasters for years (yes there are a few problems) however such problems will surely become overcome as quantum encryption etc. becomes feasible on the web.
The introduction of broadband tax is a typical move made by technically inept people hellbent on securing a monetary flow that'll keep them employed and the politicians are acting like mere sheep when somebody whispers in their ears.
I recognize that some state controlled TV stations make quality TV - However if I don't watch, I should'nt be forced to buy in regardless if this is the easy way to do it, just because I have a broadband connection.
I am not German but living in another European country where this levy was talked about a few years back - Now it seems it must be fought again...
IMHO such legislation ough to send considerable amounts of shame en route to the politicians that put forth such solutions without regard for their citizens, albeit we might be a minority that do not want to be lulled into the televised haze.
"Fox News anyone"
Sure, its sucks, but here what adults do:
"WE DON'T WATCH IT"
And oh, I don't have to pay for it.
That's how it works in here in the US.
Weird concept, eh?
This is absoulutely INSANE.
The German State has, to a greater or lesser extent, discouraged ownership of Internet access.
Free dialup no longer exists in Germany. By setting the minimum possible cost of Internet access to 17 Euros per month, the very poorest have been excluded from the Internet.
What's worse is that this tax does not even fall upon those who consume the material the tax money funds - it falls upon everyone, indiscriminately.
And this has been done in the name of supporting a State run enterprise!
--
Toby
In Sweden, the TV license is mandatory if you are in possession of any sort of TV tuner, owned, rented or loaned. This includes tuners in TV sets (duh), VCRs, and - ta-daah - TV tuner cards for computers.
I don't have a TV set. I basically don't feel it's a sensible way to spend my time. However, I do spend a lot of time on the Net -- dialog, not monolog.
So this would upset me somewhat if introduced in Sweden. But I don't see it coming, as Swedes are already obliged to pay the TV license for TV-capable computers...
I can go into the net with my atari... So do i have to pay for it?
So evrybody wo ever had a compute and a modem or anything else to connect to the internet does have to pay.... even if the computer is never used because for example it was from the childrens and the parents never used it and it only stands around in a dark corner...
You pay 180 a year to get to watch 6 TV channels?
Wow.
My HBO costs the same (and I get more HBO channels), but it actually has interesting programs. Oh, HDTV quality, too.
You guys are suckers.
Thanks for the idea friend. I'll work on it as soon as I have some spare time. Mmmmm ...New taxes!
Oh, and since I own all major TV channels in the country things will be even easier.
"Oh I forget the free station HBO in america makes quality tv as well. Oh you gotta pay for it?"
Of course you have to pay for it.
But you get to decide if you pay for it, this leads to a couple important differences:
1) I am not subject to an HBO tax
2) HBO, if they want my money, must be appealing enough to get my money.
3) If HBO's quality slips, I simply stop paying fo r it.
Do you understand why this is a critical difference?
Why doesn't BBC encrypt their programs, and rent you a decoder that could be used for people who actually want it?
Problem solved!
1. Sell a pc without modems or ethernet cards --- thus not being "internet capable"
2. Sell ethernet cards
The GEZ, who collects the monthly fee, is not a government organization (see many of the above comments for details). Therefore, they have no direct power to force you into paying the fees.
If you have not declared to them, how many radios / TVs you have in your home, they will send you a letter each Month, telling you to please do so. The letter's wording gets increasingly aggresive each time, but that's it.
Only after a long time of delaying your answer they will send a guy around to your home, to see for himself. And here comes the great part: Since they are not a government entity, they are not permitted to enter your home unless you allow them to. If you forbid it, bad luck.
This essentially means that you can postpone the fee indefinetely, which most of the people I know do.
www.ard.de
www.tagesschau.de
www.tagesthemen.
www.zdf.de
www.phoenix.de
www.kika.de
www.a
www.heute.de
www.hr-online.de
www.md
and so on.
--if the fee or tax is mandated under law, then it's a governmental mandate,exactly what it is, little different froma direct tax to government. What has occurred is that the third party is now a quasi arm of government, it is no longer independent or private, so it shouldn't really be called that, IMO.
Gets down to semantics, but if it's required by law, it's part of government. if it's purely voluntary and contractural, then it's private business.
Public broadcasting should exist by support of the viewers, if there's no support, then, well, too bad. Perhaps a different model for content would be better. I don't like the slippery slope of forcing the public to fund some private efforts. It's the "force" part that is wrong.
The Netherlands are often more advanced in legislation than Germany. For example in drug legislation and euthanasia.
I think this is due to the smaller size of the country. Ideas spread quicker in the urban areas. And the Netherlands consist mainly of medium sized cities and towns.
I envy you that my little neighbors.
in germany the publich broadcast channels you have to pay for (öffentlich-rechtlich) are showing commercials almost all the time. i think from 8p.m. on they are (as of now) not allowed to show any advertisements anymore...although they always try to expand this. my question on this: why the heck are they forcing people to pay for their program - watching it or not - when they fill it with commercials just like the private stations?
... you get the point... (so you als have to pay for a VCR even if you don't have a TV!)
my second thought on this:
these channels (e.g. ZDF - the second station) also spend huge amounts of money to advertise for themself: driving through the streets around here in germany you will find lots of highly paid celebrities covering one eye and smiling down from road signs and huge advertisements telling you that "you better see on the second" (meaning you should watch ZDF).
so if you think about it they take the money from everybody who owns a TV, produce a commercial or advertisement with this money, just to make you watch their program, which you have to pay for anyways - if you watch it or not. WTF? by the way even the GEZ (the organization knocking on your door trying to peek into your flat to spot a TV set and making you pay for it) also spends a lot of money on commercials urging you to pay...
third thought on this:
there have been some wrong statements on this in different posts. i'll try to clarify the whole thing:
1. you have to pay this fee for every device that is technically able to receive the broadcasts. meaning you have to pay for every TV, VCR (which normally has an own tuner), radio - also car radio, alarm clocks, TV-Tuner-Card
2. if you own 2 TVs, the socond one is free. but only if it's located in the same house/appartment. if you have a second house with a second TV - you have to pay twice (why? idunno - i can only watch one TV at a time right?)
3. if you pay for a TV (about 13,50 $/month) you don't have to pay for a radio - otherwise a radio costs about 4,50 $/month
in my mind the fee is much too high - i pay 13,50$/month whereas i pay about 12,00$ fo rmy cable connection...ok this fee is used to fund about 60 radio stations, 26 orchestras and big bands...but hey, is this the "basic service"??
also consider the print area - there are no "öffentlich-rechtliche" papers out there - still nobody would say that people get misinformed and everybody agrees that there are many good and thrustworthy newpspapers ot there (all private): Spiegel, Die Welt, Die Zeit...
need an appartment or house in bavaria?
We get first class TV for £10 a month.
THat includes hits like "Walking with dinosaurs", "The Blue Planet", the Athens 2004 Olympics broadcast and webcast, critical journalists that keep politicians in check, a classical music only radio station.
All this and more for a meagre £10 a month.
No, it does not bother me.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
The problem is that politics is radicalizing towards the right after the collapse of the soviet union.
It is frankly rich to call the BBC pro-arab when the only think they do is to show the situation of human despair that is the brutal occupation of Palestine.
Just as a token, the BBC is showing tonight a programm called "Jewish Law" that presents the problems and tribulations that the Jewish community faces in Britain when trying to adhere to their religious beliefs. Educational, touching, informative and unbiased.
It is not the fault of the BBC that Israel is lead by a bunch of murderous paranoids, they have to report the facts as they happen in the ground and surely Israel can't come in any way well out of objective journalism relating their occupation.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Here, you're reproducing a common German conspiracy theory. Please stop spreading this myth, it lacks any factual basis. The GEZ man is not allowed to enter your home and check. If you let him in, it's your fault. There are cases where the GEZ man threatened to call in the police, but as far as I know, they never actually did. After all, what is the police supposed to do? "Forcibly enter your home"? Is there any documented case where the police forcibly entered anyone's home without their permission on suspicion of not paying the GEZ fee? After all, you can sue even the GEZ man for "Hausfriedensbruch" (literally, breaking the peace of your home, i.e. trespassing) if he enters your home without your permission.
Under German law, the police is not allowed to enter your home without a warrant. A warrant has to be given by a judge upon evidence or strong suspicion of a crime. Note that by not paying the GEZ fee, under German law you are not committing a crime. German penal law distinguishes between crimes ("Straftaten") and minor offenses ("Ordnungswidrigkeiten"). Not paying the GEZ fee is a minor offense, and warrants aren't issued on a minor offense, let alone the mere suspicion of it. I don't remember even seeing a case where the police got called at all, let alone where they forcibly entered people's homes on a GEZ suspicion. There are cases where the GEZ man entered without being allowed, but then he was in break of law, and the victim could have sued him. (Note that in this particular situation [and only there], the evidence obtained by the GEZ man while under break of law is actually considered valid, even when he's sued, but if he's sued, he will not be employed by the GEZ again, as he's a convict in this case.)
If you kindly tell the GEZ man that you have neither a computer nor a TV set, what's he supposed to do? There are all these myths that they go through your garbage to see if you read TV journals, that they rent the flat opposite your own to spy on you and so on, but they usually lack any supportive evidence. According to 4, paragraph 5 of the Rundfunkgebührenstaatsvertrag (the "law" that regulates public broadcasting), they have an "Auskunftsrecht", but this does not pertain to searching your home, just to asking you for a truthful statement on whether you have a TV set. If you have one while stating that you don't, you obviously are in break of law. The GEZ is a bother, and some of their data is obtained by a questionable treatment of government data, but they are not a secret police of some sort, and if you don't believe this, you've never been out of that peaceful German shell where the GEZ man is the biggest of all troubles. They are allowed to go around and ask if you have a TV, and to look through your door and through your window from outside if you actually have one. This is all they're allowed to do, and even for this they need a special law in place.
If you have a TV, while you claim that you don't have any for the purpose of not paying, you are committing a minor offense, like it or not. If your TV or your PC is visible from the street or from the door when you open it to the GEZ man, you are admitting to this minor offense. I mean, under German law you are required to pay this fee if you have a TV, like it or not. This is all of the "big trouble" you're in. If you don't like it, join one of the various petitions, but in the meantime, you are still obliged to pay it, whether you watch ARD or not.
If you're German
As a state gets corrupt, its laws multiply; the most corrupt states have the most numerous laws. (Tacitus, Annales 3:27)
The Dutch article is here
You didn't get it. This is not a "tax". It's not collected by a governmental organization subordinate to the ministry of finance (who is responsible for collecting taxes over here). It is a _fee_ for watching public broadcast stations like ARD, ZDF, Deutsche Welle etc, who don't make most of their money by advertising. Want to watch a movie without advertising?
:-(
As far as the PCs, most of it has been said by others.
Nevertheless I consider this a bad idea, regarding the sometimes Gestapo-like behaviour of the GEZ (Gebühreneinzugszentrale, center for collecting TV fees) in the past. People who don't have a TV set or an internet connection but who do have a PC will certainly be queried by the GEZ folks. The point is that you have to pay the TV fees as soon as you have a functionable TV set, even if it is not connected to any antenna or power outlet, because you _could_ use it for watching TV with little additional effort.
open (SIG, "</dev/zero"); $sig = <SIG>; close SIG;
So they make you to pay for a service you don't want by forcibly bundling it with something you do. Why should someone who owns a TV and doesn't watch BBC have any more obligation to pay for the BBC than someone with no TV at all.
Either make the BBC fee a "for-real" tax that applies to everyone, or do what regular companies do and only provide it for those who pay.
Was abolished because it was an INEFFICIENT tax -- costs of administration & policing - it was much easier to lump it in the general (income) tax, never mind it being highly unpopular.
Seems UK and DE are slow learners. OTOH, Australia introduced a myrad of other taxes, then cut state TV funding, so our commercial free ABC now shows commercials. General taxes did not go down to compensate - govt pick-pocketed the difference.
Overall, I wish the TV tax was back - that way is a slow. Prey they don't introduce a toilet tax over here - houses with 2 or more bathrooms get slapped with a luxury tax.
I am an American (not from the USA tough) living in Europe and I pay the "TV tax" in here. Comparing with what I had back home, European TV sucks big time...they have the same ammount of ads, less choice and think their stuff is great..! Go figure.......
...a whole lot more.
That's insane. At TV tax that is being applied to computers?!?! I can at least follow the logic for TVs...I mean, what else you gonna do with a TV? But a computer? What if you do nothing else but show a weather map from noaa.gov?
Secondly, it seems as though the public broadcast plays commercials...don't those commercials pay for the broadcast?
Scary place your Europe.
-- A cat is no trade for integrity!
Is there any group in DE against the GEZ? I heard there was a movement against these people, so I need to find it and join them up. It is totally unjust to pay for a service that I don't use, besides radiowaves are free for all regardless what these creatures believe. Nothing guarantees their broadcasting quality and impartiality (as they love to explain), if they go down nothing would be lost. :). GEZ cannot come inside the houses of people anyway, never let them in. Let's bring the German GEZ DOWN! Brits should start something like that too. We would love to hear from what has been done in other EU countries against this.
GEZ: If you think your content is so hot, put it on cable tv. and see who pays for it. The money that we could save monthly can pay for life insurance. Financed, is worth a car. Not one of my young friends are paying
I've lived here for a decade, and let me point out two things:
1) ITV and Channel 4 advertise. We don't get channel 5 in the area where I live, and there is a huge amount of money spent on advertising here.
2) TV is much more fun to watch in the USA. There programs have to compete for audiences. The BBC does not. What about the former BBC controller's article this week, which points out that too many "dumb lifestyle programs" are ruining the BBC...
Lets face it, a manditory TV charge sucks.
Will they in return receive the TV channels over the net from the authorities?
Many countries are shutting down their analog broadcast, going for pure digital. The good thing about this is that everyone must have a decoder to view the broadcasted signals. This way, one could simply encrypt the signals from these public broadcaster, and only ship decoder cards to people who pay the tax, thus making the "tax" voulentary
...semi-official organizations that have a quasi-monopolistic status enshured by german law and that best be plowed under by a swarm of bulldozers the next week.
This hideous german burocracy is what's forcing geman economy to it's knees. Take for instance german tax law: 70% of all worldwide publications on tax law are written on german tax law.
And for those non-germans here argumenting with "just make your PC not multimedia capable"...that's not how it works. You have a PC? You pay. This law and this organization are so silly it hurts.
I actually wounder what they would say about a C64 though.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Er the Germans have it all backwards - they're supposed to be slowly phasing out TV licensing altogether, not introducing more. In the UK there's a continuous debate about TV licensing, its probably going to slowly stop and its one of those things that would never happen in our time (though obviously Germany has different ideas) but its definitely responsible for some good things. Its obviously not a fair system and its a relic from the past, but consider this - satellite or cable packages you pay for give you 98 more channels of crap and 2 of anything close to decent and they all have adverts and stupid station logos! Now TV licensing makes some very slight sense, not allot, but at least you can get your head around it. Internet licensing however makes so little sense that the only way you could expect it to work is if everyone who pays gets free porn subscriptions, free broadband, and free dope to keep them calm when the bill comes. I think these Germans have probably been talking to the Australian Family First party, now there's a bunch of idiots.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
- it's a very pro-arab and leftist news agency
Don't be absolutely ridiculous. The BBC is one of the least biased news sources on the planet, apart from Fox News and DPRK news. Looking at the latest web rankings, the BBC website is by far the most popular news website in the whole world.Yep - that's us. We know German but we don't read it - all of us.
I don't have a TV licence, I've never had one, so here is some facts.
Yes, stores must take a name and address if you buy a TV, mostly this isn't an issue to people buying 40 inch plasma screens on credit to keep up with the neighbours, they already have your name and address for the credit agreement.
If you pay cash the sales droid has a simple choice, sell the telly to Mr M Jagger (or whoever) and take the commission or lose the sale to the next shop along.
The state simply assumes that the entire population is comprised of mindless assholes who cannot survive without an "idiot's lantern" in the corner of the room, so they simply compare the database of TV licences with the database of all households and send out licence demands to those without one.
TV Detector vans are bullshit, a parlour trick, sure, there are vans with TV Detector written on them, but all detection is done at the database.
If you live in a household that does not have a TV licence (I do) be advised you do not need a licence to own a TV, only to recieve broadcast telly, eg plugged in to the aerial, use it for playing VCR or PS2 and no worries.
TV licencing send you "to the occupier" letters threatening all sorts, wipe your ass with them and throw them in the bin.
Once every year or two some jobsworth asswipe will come around from TV licencing asking why you don't have a licence and can he come in and check. Abuse the asswipe verbally and don't answer any of his questions, he does not have the legal right to demand answers, laugh in his face when he threatens to go off and get a warrant and return, it will never happen.
TV licencing is one of those "crimes" where you can only get done if you shop yourself.
Now, absolutely true story.
I was up in front of the local beak on minor motoring charges.
The case 2 in front of mine was a young woman who was being charged with wasting police time for making a false accusation of rape, she got off scot free, not even a fine.
Case just in front of me was a blind guy being done for no TV licence, as he said in court, any letters not written in braille he just binned as advertising because he is a state registered blind person, the wankers fined him 400 pounds.
I considered myself lucky not to get a death sentence for my motoring transgression.
http://slashdot.org/~GuyFawkes/journal
I challenge you to name any English-language TV news channel which is less biased than the BBC, whereas for many millions of people around the world who tune in to the BBC, it is considered to be a very well-regarded, neutral, objective and factual source of news. Please explain why you think your choice of TV news channel is less biased than the BBC, and please also explain why your choice is not biased by the same problem of "seeing through your own thick cloud of your own bias".
$20USD a month for what? Jesus, I don't pay any stupid tax like that and look at all I get.
Yrg'f ubcr COF qbrfa'g qvr be ryfr jr'er nyy fperjrq. Jrypbzr gb nzrevxn.
Consider the problem at hand: How to fund public broadcasting adequately Notice how our German friend skips right over that without even blinking? One really has to credit the German government for raising such cooperative, unquestioning citizens. Rather than force all people to pay for something they may or may not agree with (which is one definition of tyranny - are the Germans happy they're back on this course again?), quit running state-sponsored media. No wonder Germans boast that they never have political scandels like the US - there is nobody to expose and communicate them!
I'm curious about what sort of TV programs you really like watching. Any examples you care to mention?
So here I am one of the few who has no TV and no radio and I don't watch TV or listen to German radio over the internet. With this new law I would have to pay approx $250 per annum for something I don't want.
Don't get me wrong I am all for publicly funded radio (and possibly TV). While living in the US I was always a member of my local public radio station. But in Germany radio and TV is not just news and good music. It's total waste and bloat. Some examples: Every hour of radio requires 1 moderator, 1music editor, 1 traffic guy, 1 weather guy, 1 news guy and possibly more. The public radio station is the biggest concert promoter in the region. The drive around in party vans to distribute 100000 (their number) stuffed animals.
Public television spends 1 billion (my guess) on sports rights. Here 1/7th of your money goes to high paid soccer players (think NFL) or doped Olympians. Independently funded public radio/TV is a good idea but in Germany it's big bloat and waste. Which now I would have to give $250/year if I choose to pay up. Talk flushing money down the toilet
Does this mean that if you buy a computer without a modem and/or netcard, you don't have to pay the tax? Or does it mean that since it is "possible" to add a modem/netcard later, you have to pay the tax regardless?
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
The agency which collects the fees has a staff of ~2000. And the number above is wrong. It should be
$8,040,000,000. It will increase next year to
$8,400,000,000.
Hi,
:-(
this new (or rather expansion of an existing) law is no problem for most home computer users since they usually already pay TV licence fees and that covers their computer as well.
But from 2007 on this fee will also apply to office computers with internet access, so basically every modern office computer. This is very annoying since to my knowledge rareley anybody uses their computer to connect to the services in question at home, and even less people do it at work.
This "Computer Tax" has been discussed for years and unfortunately the best argument against it - "just don't put any services online, that's not your bloody job, you are responsible for radio and televsion only" - never really caught on.
twm
Seriously. It took about a day of phoning and a couple of letters, but they seem to be happy with just leaving it disconnected.
Even for your tv, the government shouldnt be charging a 'media fee'.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Want to have a TV? Then expect to contribute a small amount toward the running of 8 TV and 9 national (plus dozens of local) radio stations from the BBC.
I don't want to have a TV. Really, I don't.
But I do want to have a PC, and a car, and a DVD player, and all sorts of other devices. Some of those, unavoidably, include radio and/or television receivers. Furthermore, even if they don't include a receiver, these people are trying to redefine everything from PCs to cellphones as "receivers".
So, it's disingenuous to portray this as a choice. It's a tax. And it's an inefficiently administered tax that operates outside the usual budgeting process. Public broadcasting should be funded out of government funds, and, frankly, it should be scaled back considerably in Germany because it has grown far beyond its original purpose.
I am German, but I have lived in the US and UK.
* the BBC is one of the best public broadcasters out there. The Brits can complain as much as they want, but mother BBC still rulez.
* ARD/ZDF have some of the highest budgets in europe, but produce hardly any acclaimed programms
* the ARD is not one single big station, but a conglomerat of smaller staate specific broadcasters
* according to the law the public broadcasters have to inform and educate the public. But in recent years they are showing more and more 'commercial' stuff and try to get around the advertising ban after 8:00pm (product placement etc.)
* neither ZDF nor ARD offer internet live streams on a daily basis, only small snippets, no archives of old programms or series
* every public broadcaster and every staate channel has it's internet presence. They are usually not very well done and offer the usual boring mixture of news and show announcements
* commerical broadcasters have been complaining for a long time that they are at a disadvantage, since they are based solely on advertising revenue and the public broadcasters are trying to hard to produce similar content
* most germans get their broadband connection from german Telekom (the pure hardware and connectivity) and their flatfee for access by T-Online (which is an offspin of Telekom - like T-Mobile). The government owns large parts of Telekom. The usual combined costs for telephone, DSL connection and flat rate is about 40 to 90 Euro (depending on the options you choose).
So overall is costs a lot of euros to be connected (I haven't included any cell phone prices). IMHO there is hardly any value for my money, since both public broadcasters and Telekom were build/supported with tax money.
I am not a fan of privatising everything, since BT in the UK was extremely slow to adapt broadband and still is very expensive.
ARD/ZDF need to be trimmed to be more efficient and lean, they have grown too fat and lazy to fullfill their mission to serve the public.
If you are being truthful, please would you try to describe your own choice of news stories on the BBC which you think were biased and/or unfair. Can you even give just one example in detail? If you cannot, you must be distorting the truth about the BBC, which is that it is surely the one of the least biased news-sources.
As an example of your choice of allegedly better broadcasting, can you give the name of one US TV news channel that you think is less biased than the BBC?
I'll just uninstall Internet Explorer...
oh wait... fuck...
In principle I can understand what they are doing, the protection of objective media, making sure the government doesn't have any political influence in the media, blah, blah.
The main problem I have is that the fees are too much. 18Euros a month for mostly shit programming? That's slightly more than $22. I refuse to pay to watch television. I refuse even more to pay fees in addition to the ones I pay to my ISP in order to surf the Internet. Most people I know here do not pay because it is too expensive. The less fees are payed, the more fees go up to cover the costs incurred but not payed due to peopl not paying their fees. It's an endless circle just like software prices.
German radio is even worse that TV. I thought American radio was bad. German radio is a million times worse. I have a stereo with a tuner and CD player. I use the CD player only of course and for that I'm supposed to pay? I have a cd player in my car and I am supposed to pay for that as well. Fuck that.
If the fees were cheaper and the quality of programming was better I would reconsider.
I love living in Germany and I like the people and the culture but the whole GEZ Quatsch and their sending some lazy eyed troll to my door to hassle and threaten me into paying pisses me off.
Whew! Thanks I needed to vent.
Reading about what a complete shithole the rest of the world is makes me very proud to be an American.
In Finland we also have to pay for owning TV. I hereby announce that if Finland introduces TV fee for PC's without TV-tuner, I will not pay nor do I deny that I own a PC.
it is a fee per PC but if you already pay a household-TV-fee you don't have to pay the 17 euros per month per PC. For companies it's the same but they have to pay per building and are also excluded if they already pay a TV/Radio-fee (cable or radio).
Now for holland and companies (sigh) you have the http://www.sena.nl where you pay per square-meter company-restaurant and per fulltime-employee (around 100 to 500 euros a year) for not to big companies and for just having the radio on or playing a CD!
(you pay rights when you or the radio station buys the CD, you pay rights when you buy apparatus to receive radio/tv signals, the radio-stations pay right to broadcast music and companies pay rights to listen to music and probably i forget some other places/parts where even more rigthts/fees have to be paid)
I must correct myself - apparently the 'loophole' I refer to above when I say that the licence is only required for reception of broadcasts that originate from within the UK has now been closed due to the Communications Act 2003.
Bugger.
Mose VCRs have tuners in them. Do they also have the fee applied? If not, can I connect a VCR to a monitor (with no internet access or tuner) and not have to pay the fee?
it is only after a long journey that you know the strength of the horse.
From May 2004 onwards all DSL home consumers in the US now are paying a federal fee called "FUSF Recovery Fee" of $2.40/month, which is 8% of the basic of $30/month. And there are always tons of federal charges in the regular phone bill.
If you ever try this stunt in the US, you're on the short track impeachment.
..." If people start to "get smart" and filter their media content from advertisements and choose alternate news and information sources, they may actually become smarter people rather than consumer drones. I think the government enjoys the current status quo regarding the masses' perceptions and habits. Those who control the banks, the corporations, and the government are all wealthy people who benefit in some way by every dollar we spend.
Conspiracy theorist rant to follow:
Alot of what alot of people know or think is driven by the ads and programming on television (cable & broadcast). Think about it. How many times has someone said, "Hey, have you see that commercial about...." or "Hey, do you remember than episode of
Well...I could just be paranoid. But legislation like this in Germany is kind of an Orwellian way to keep people programmed.
I might know what I'm talkin' about, but then again, this is Slashdot...
Any internet device capable of viewing tv video could come under the new GEZ license "Fee".
...ooops I mean fee.
No tv, no radio, no pc but have a "handy" mobile phone then budget for this tax
Lets face it this IS A TAX on the internet.
They could authenticate users, with a license code login type system to restrict access to only GEZ paid users but that would be too easy wouldn't it?
More of the same will happen across the EU, bas***ds.
Lately some representatives from the discographic industry declared that they are considering on taxing the food as "Most of the pirates eat food too".
Rimember: Jappi Pipol In Da Jaus
If the European Union were anything like the United States, this would have been a Federal law and every family in every European nation would have had to ante up to pay for a Political Broadcast System portraying the evils of "right-wing extremists" who want their own country back.
Seastead this.
There are two problems with your rant. The first is that part of the cost goes towards things like ensuring you get good reception and the second is that surveys show most UK people *like* and consider the TV license funding the BBC to be a good thing. In the UK a TV capture card requires a TV license (the license covers several things so its not one per device). The arrangement we have now (which goes back about 70 years) is reviewed regularly to see if it is still the right model.
Secondly the US does precisely the same thing with other services. The UK places most taxes for funding roads on fuel, so those who use it pay for it. The US near enough arbitarily charges all its citizens for road use however much they use it and however much damage they do. And I'm sure US folks are happy with that side of it.
Not to say we don't have a current problem case - if you want commercial satellite TV but not digital/analogue broadcast and the BBC you can't opt out as you can't opt out by not having a TV.
I can see the UK eventually extending TV licensing but not to PC's rather to broadband connections - which makes a lot more sense.
PS: One amusing side story is that 90% of TV license offences are not the result of their magic vans (most of which are fake and empty) but neighbours reporting people they don't like.
Or is it basically a fine for owning a computer?
Actually a backdoor tax for the government-controlled tv and radio media.
The really problematic part is the totally unrelated taxing of businesses. Up to now, businesses must only pay such a fee if they have TV or radio used on the business premises. (Most bigger companies pay this already because company cars that have a radio installed are included). However, most small companies do not. Since most of them have computers that are connected to the Internet, what really happens is the additional tax of those small businesses, in turn making it even more difficult climate to start and sustain such small businesses that make up a big percentage of employment, and especially new employment.
The German Goverment(s) (since it must be approved by the German states) shows again their insensitivity for overregulation and backdoor taxes, which are a big factor to Germany's bad economic situation and high unemployment. No wonder, more and more highly qualified Germans are leaving their country in order to live and work somewhere else...
Yeah, how evil is that? You have to pay to have a radio. You have to pay to have a TV. You have to pay to go on the Internet. I mean, you already pay the costs to go on the Internet to the ISP.
Man, if I ever go back to Germany, the first thing I'm doing is demonstrating to get rid of that GEZ. It's evil and stupid and useless. At least there is some kind of rule of law there that means that you can always prevent the GEZ people checking that you're doing alright in your new home. And you do have Fundamental Rights, and you are aloud to access information for free. Course if you want to go all legal on it, you may as well just escape over the border. Then, it's even more legal to access publicly broadcasted totally free information without paying. (of course in a couple of generations you might not speak the language anymore, but hey, you won't live for a couple of generations anyway!)
Note to self: If return, buy new locks.
You get someone liek this on your doorstep:
http://www.tvlicensing.biz/
Incredibly, quite sensible people can be brainwashed into defending this system.
Fox News anyone?
Coming up on Fox News - Do Democrats cause Cancer?
"You lied to me! There is a Swansea!"
(Bush and Kerry excepted, of course). You can always decide to not have a TV, as I did until I was in my mid-30s. Then you can change and have cable, as I did. Then, later, you can decide to get rid of cable, like my wife and I just did, and watch movies and get our 'regular' news off the internet, newspapers (also on the internet by the way), and editorials off of blogs. (I almost forgot: you have Mother Jones, the Atlantic Monthly, the National Review...)
Half of the secret here is recognizing that you do indeed have options. Of course, Fox, the Washington Post, and many others would like you to believe they are absolutely essential to your life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness...
"The government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it." - [i]Ronald Reagan, 1986[/i]
Circumcision is child abuse.
If you don't pay your insurance premium, the insurance company will cut you off, and the government will stop you from driving your car. If caught, you'll be sentenced in a government court, attended by government lawyers (including a government lawyer for you, if you can't pay your own). The fines are enforced by government cops, with government guns, and refusals to comply are met with government jails. The US has all kinds of mandatory government fees for private corporations. This German fee happens to support their private/public broadcasters.
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make install -not war
for April-fool stories...?
--Black holes are where God divided by zero--
One reason they're dumb is because they're not reached by media connecting them to anyone different from them. The Red/Blue State map shows that the coasts are Blue, because we're in contact with diversity, and can understand it from familiar experience. While Red States fear diversity, because they're ignorant of it. It looks like national media have a complete footprint, but that's as illusory as cellphone coverage maps. Many of the Red Staters are busy at monster truck mudpulls, hunting small animals, highschool football games, and even the healthy hiking and canoeing, rather than immersed in the mediasphere. Combine the isolated, homogenous experience of the Red States with the braindrain of their most intellectually ambitious to the coasts, and you have a huge region which can be fed any propaganda through their parallel media channels of talk radio and church mimeographs. Since their smart people are busy challenging the coastal propaganda as consumers, raising it to both enlightening accuracy and sophisticated distortions, the stuff working its way through their deserted hometowns is sentimental, ignorant, and inbred. The greatest challenge to thinkers in this country is to include these intellectual barrens in the mediasphere. That will both improve their access to diverse ideas by reducing their alienation, and improve the sophisticated media content by exposing it to to a new population of Americans who haven't yet bought into the media paradigm.
I think that it's too late for broadcast media. I think the arrival of multimedia mobile devices is right on time to fill this void, especially when someone delivers a UI that works as well in a semiliterate's pickup truck as alongside the Sunday crossword puzzle.
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make install -not war
When I went in Munich I was surprise that there is no one that ask for a ticket when you take the metro, or the bus.
Just walk in.
However you have to by a pass valid for your use of it (daily weekly, monthly), and there is sometimes controls.
It's based on an honour system. You use it, so you pay fot it, no one has to check you because you as a responsible person understand that. (And you can enter by both bus door, speeding the process. Get cost down for public transportation by not having mindless ticket looking job at the gates.)
I suppose that Tv fees are the same thing. People understand the value of it and pay... As everywhere in the world some people try to get away with it. Enforcing it just makes sure that the society as a whole is working (yes they arrest people for not playing by the rules in the us as well)
Don't tell me everyone you know pay for their satellite service. Figure out who pays for it. Not as if digital TV was a basic human right...
It is a strange way of raising tax in any case, and one immediate effect might be that people living near the border might drive over it to use an untaxed internet cafe because it might be slightly cheaper, as there are no real borders within the EC now.
But thinking about it some more, it seems to me that there would be a good case for getting this law thrown out under European human rights legislation, which seems to get used for almost anything these days, especially where there is a degree of unfairness, as there may be here.
But I wonder if a large site with lots of PCs is covered by one TV licence, same as a household would be? In which case the cost to a large site would be negligible, and it would be very unfair to small businesses.
Must be the most stupid bit of legislation ever.
On the one hand, a lot of people pay for a Tivo so they can watch things without the commercials. On the other hand, it would be nice to just be able to pay a fee to some regulatory commission for commercial free viewing.
But that kind of salary doesn't allow for CNN journalists to be paying $25,000 per month to be able to "report" in places like Iran and Iraq. Or to bribe Chinese officals so they can roam the countryside at will, recruiting CIA agents and seeding revolution.
There's a couple of sides to it. Maybe the Tivo solution isn't so bad, after all...
The american system is the best possible. Ultimately, the viewers decide what crap goes on TV. If ratings are low, the programs change. You can't criticize the suppliers for our: "... Ads targeted at kids, news coverage that imposes the sponsors' opinion upon everyone." Because when we vote with our wallets and remote controls, that's exactly the sort of crap we love to watch. So really when people criticize the quality of american broadcasting, they're simply admitting that they're embarassed about their preferred level of intellectual stimulation. Boycott the tv, man. Hit the industry where it hurts. If you pledge to only watch high-brow programming, that's what they'll have to provide. Keep the government out of my life.
That's what it is.
I don't particularly like the "tv tax" (we have it here in Finland too), but I can, somewhat, understand the reasoning behind it when it comes to old everyone-can-receive analog broadcasts.
Applying it to the Internet because the state tv companies _CHOSE_ to give away free 'net streams however does not have any excuses. It's trivially simple to implement a system whereas only people who have paid the fee can access those online shows. Looks like a calculated move to milk more money from people who DO NOT WATCH the fee sponsored channels to me, instead of trying to get "freeloaders" to pay.
It would also trivially simple to do the same for digital tv, just encrypt it and give cards to people who pay. These taxes for owning something should be going away now that they can easily control whether or not you can watch the channels in question with that something, but instead they are being expanded...
Governement Health Officials want to impose a stiff tax on milk, because nearly 100 percent of hard drug abusers got their start on milk...
If you disagree with me on social issues, then it's pretty clear that you are a narrow-minded bigot.
A quick, truely unscientific check on WDR, which is part of ARD, reveals that they are streaming in Real.
I'm not sure that Ogg Theora is quite there yet, and the BBC format, which is supposed to be fully open is in development.
I totally agree though, that state run telly and radio oughta use open formats.
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
Watch more TV until you are getting your money's worth.
I challenge you to name any English-language TV news channel which is less biased than the BBC, whereas for many millions of people around the world who tune in to the BBC, it is considered to be a very well-regarded, neutral, objective and factual source of news. Please explain why you think your choice of TV news channel is less biased than the BBC, and please also explain why your choice is not biased by the same problem of "seeing through your own thick cloud of your own bias".
PBS and C-span are the equal of BBC. I know cause PBS has BBC on it and C-span is live uncommented coverage of things like the floor of the senate as debates occur.
SOME of what I can see on PBS:
# Election 2004: Debate Overview (September 24, 2004)
# Presidential Debate History: Before Television (September 24, 2004)
# Presidential Debate History: The Televised Years (September 24, 2004)
# ABC's Michel Martin (September 24, 2004)
# The LA WEEKLY's John Powers (September 24, 2004)
# Covering the Republican National Convention (September 3, 2004)
# Campaign Analyst Kathleen Hall Jamieson (August 20, 2004)
# Covering the Conventions: The Democrats (July 30, 2004)
# America Votes (July 30, 2004)
# Protecting Voters' Rights (July 30, 2004)
# The Roots of Conservatism (July 23, 2004)
# Defining Liberalism (July 23, 2004)
# Professor George Lakoff on Framing Politics (July 23, 2004)
# Resources for Local Election News (July 23, 2004)
# Fox's Cal Thomas (July 16, 2004)
# What Oil Buys (July 16, 2004)
# Charles Lewis of the Center for Public Integrity (July 16, 2004)
# Thomas Frank on WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH KANSAS? (July 9, 2004)
# Election 2004 and the Culture Wars (July 9, 2004)
# Congressional Benefits and Pensions (July 2, 2004)
# Pollster Frank Luntz (July 2, 2004)
# The Center for Constitutional Rights' Ron Daniels (June 11, 2004)
# The AP's Tom Curley on Government Secrecy (June 11, 2004)
# House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (June 11, 2004)
# Election 2004: Battleground States (May 28, 2004)
# State Reproductive Health Legislation (April 30, 2004)
# Federal Legislation on Women's Health (April 30, 2004)
# The Sierra Club's Carl Pope (April 23, 2004)
# Supreme Court Case: In re Richard Cheney (April 23, 2004)
# Watergate Veteran John Dean on White House Secrecy (March 5, 2004)
# COINTELPRO Again? Domestic War on Terror (March 5, 2004)
# Protest in America (February 27, 2004)
# NAFTA, FTAA, and the Free Trade Debate (February 27, 2004)
# Election 2004: Courting the Hispanic Vote (February 27, 2004)
# The Advancement Project's Connie Rice (February 20, 2004)
# The Evolution of Campaign Ads (February 6, 2004)
# The Rolling Thunder Down Home Democracy Tour (February 6, 2004)
# Election Watch Tools (January 30, 2004)
# Voices from South Carolina: Rev. Joseph A. Darby and Harris L. Raynor on the Democratic Primary (January 30, 2004)
# The Solid South? A History of the Southern Vote (January 30, 2004)
# Historian Dan T. Carter (January 30, 2004)
# American Conservative Union's David Keene (January 23, 2004)
# Chuck Lewis on the Buying of the Presidency (January 9, 2004)
# Former Maine Governor Angus King (December 19, 2003)
# The Case of the Toxics Release Inventory (December 12, 2003)
# History of the Freedom of Information Act(December 12, 2003)
# State by State Freedom of Information Map (December 12, 2003)
# State Attorney Generals Map (December 12, 2003)
# Defense Accountability (November 14, 2003)
# Reconstruction Resources (November 14, 2003)
# Former Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall (November 14, 2003)
# What Now? Moyers and Brancaccio on the News (November 14, 2003)
# Moyers and Brancaccio on News You May Have Missed (November 7, 2003)
# Judgement Call: Justice Janice Rogers Brown's Record (October 31, 2003)
# Commentator John Ridley on Hollywood Politics (October 10, 2003)
# Exploring Compassionate Conservatism (October 10, 2003)
# Locke v. Davey
Given the history of behvior of the United States, where "authorities" claim that abolation of slavery was not the sole justification for defeating the Confederacy, ANY country that enters the European Union without a clear means of secession is in serious danger of tyranny from the European Union central government.
Self determination is the primoridal human right. Without it all other rights are worthless. You don't have to have been sold into slavery by West African slave traders to have the right to self determination.
Seastead this.
I can smell the bullshit from here.
Are you too stupid to realize that this is just another way for the government to take your money? You don't really have a choice do you? Watch no TV or pay a fee for TV, even if you don't watch the channels the fee goes toward.
What's wrong with the BBC simply charging for its services, like HBO? Or encryping thier broadcast and having people pay for a key to unlock the content? Works for HBO. They have great shows, and seem to be doing fine.
If the BBC suddenly had a ratings drop and people didn't feel like paying for it to watch it anymore, then they would go out of buisness. Under your fuck-up tax model they will get paid anyway, regardless if anyone uses their service or not. There is no accountablity. They could charge and show whatever they want. What are you going to do, throw out your TV and have no connection to any media at all?
And now they impose a tax on computers because someone might get news from thier website?!? Haven't they ever seen any of the hundreds of other sites that charge a small subscription fee?
Sounds like PBS or NPR in the US, only instead of the government taking your money to pay for it, the stations themselves can take your money to pay for it.
It blows my mind that anyone would think this is a good thing.
Where is PBS (and Cspan) in this discussion???
:
Does NO ONE know America has government paid TV and radio in America (and in the rest of the world too
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Free_Europe ).
Google PBS.
And those who think America is not the place it was check out : http://prairiehome.publicradio.org/
Garrison Keillor reveals the soul of America in the heartland.
The art of modern taxation is best understood by examining the words of U.S. Sen. Russell Long, D-La. who served from 1948-86, and for 16 years as powerful chairman of the Senate Finance Committee: "Tax reform means, 'Don't tax you, don't tax me. Tax that fellow behind the tree.'"
However, you have your choice of insurance companies. You don't have to have insurance if you don't drive. Some states allow you to escrow funds equal to insurance liabilities if you have the cash, instead of insurance.
I view it as being more along the lines of building codes. A standard is being set. It's like being required to have a smoke detecter. They don't say who you get it from.
Now a question, is this a per-building/home fee that isn't required if you don't own a radio/TV, and now a computer, or is it a per-unit fee? I have 1 TV (DVDs only, I'd be pissed if I was being charged for broadcast TV that I never watch). I probably would of ended up getting a projector or something w/o a tuner and just using my computer to watch my movies. The extra $20-25 a month would pay for a cheaper projector very quickly.
I don't read AC A human right
I'd like a mandatory subscription to broadcasters in a competitive market of suppliers. An interesting model would be PBS as a "virtual network", supplying programming to the commercial networks subsidized by taxes. Commercial networks would be required to send some percentage of that official content, selected at their marketers' discretion; and send representatives to the national programming board. Until we are sophisticated enough to manage such consensus among such fractious and divergent interests, the US Corporation for Public Broadcasting seems adequate.
BTW, the US mandatory insurance laws are largely a "job security" law for insurance companies. They created a niche market for fly-by-night insurers who sell a pricey premium to a driver to satisfy the law at registration time, when it's required, then drop the driver when they fail to pay the next premium installment, after the check has been passed. It's bad enough for driving liability - the information liability would be an even worse disaster.
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make install -not war
And, this is why we in the US don't care what the Europeans think...
Consistently overtaxing your people, perpetually high (15%+) unemployment, and poor health care are all reasons not to be socialist. a 18 euro a month tax because your computer has a NIC or modem in it???!!! WTF?! My uncle lived for 3 years in Europe, and although in monetary terms he got a 300% raise, in real terms he made less than he did in the US after all of the taxes, and fees, and he had a lower standard of living.
Yeah, this post is probably flamebait, but it seems to me that Europe is much worse at taking from the common person and giving to lazy people who refuse to work, or to huge gov't run programs that provide crappy service.
In my state the insurance company has to inform the state if you drop/don't pay for your insurance. They then have the option of deregistrating your vehicle if you don't obtain new insurance. Had a friend once who had some trouble when changing insurers. The new company was a bit late sending notice of coverage, or the DMV didn't properly do the first notice.
I carry uninsured/underinsured coverage for this exact reason. If I get hit and the driver of the other vehicle doesn't have the coverage, my insurance will take over and help make up the difference.
I don't read AC A human right
I have a fairly simple explanation for this. Market saturation. I view it like clone radio stations: You get Pop, Rock, and Country. In my area country is the most popular. There's like 8 stations of it. There are only two each pop and rock stations, so they actually end up with more listeners than the country stations. One owner didn't check the market saturation and tried to convert one of the rock stations to country, but it didn't last, as he couldn't get much in the way of listeners. 1/9 of 10 isn't as much as 1/2 of 4.
I don't read AC A human right
As a person who's suffered different European types of public TV broadcasting and as of late the continental US system: I have come to the conclusion that it time for all parties involved to see the opportunities of the future! Today I bet you can find most of the TV/Cabel/Satelite/Big screen (Hence referred as just 'media') material on the web, downloaded by the masses globally. TV-series episodes in neat ~400Mb packets, distributed via different p2p nets and the BitTorrent-tracker sites (NO! it is NOT p2p software, just the most effective file transfer protocol out there, used just because of that very reason). And they do get legally harassed for it, but of course since it is an infraction of the law. I personally use Netflix, a PC TV-tuner card (TIVO is such a knockoff and expensive at that) and Sirius satellite radio to avoid those letters. Yes I do applaud the joint effort of Netflix and TIVO for on demand media, I personally think they are taking the wrong technological approach. Why not just make it all attainable legally? I mean any media producing company, just form a website. Cooperate with others or go independent, should encourage individualism in media provided as well. Encode the next episode of 'Pinch/Cover' in 2-3 different quality variants Low 150Mb, Medium 450Mb and High DVD standard, this just suggestive. Then offer it for a fee. Here you could have some differing options. Small production houses by the episode or season fee, bigger could add an all media produced in house option. Or best picks. Then make use of best present day technology uploading it via the BitTorrent protocol. Ok first and by far the biggest outcry I hear all ready is how not to lose the commercial revenue? Guess what, the industry has made the solution already: embedded commercials! Same exact way some medias are viewed as 'commercial free'. Crap I say, like you could miss the huge amount of certain brand name brewery brands throughout the show. Sorry I am not that blind or stupid. Or you could have the traditional commercials. The risk running high that skipping the all together would be high, then just look at what happens in the living room while the commercials start, channel surfing or get more food or other needs. Yes and the next big thing is the never-ending dilemma of copyright violations. Well first of, if you make it legally available it will, to a certain degree, reduce illegal downloading. We are talking about media, not drugs or WMD's crying out loud! Second, so whished a simple discreet serial code could be added to the file for possible backtracking. Yes there is a simple way to have individual files 'Torrented' while still utilizing its vast potential. Third and probably most important: Illegal distribution will always occur, as soon as you block one venue others will emerge. (Ref. Napster, IRC-bots, VHS copying just to name a few) So why waste huge assets on legal battles with little result to show for? Time to see the awesome potential of this renegade technology people! Thinking like a business person lets see the basics of this: What is the potential market? Well where does the internet reach and to how many? GLOBALY! Not just one country or continent, tens of millions of people and growing each day. Incentive for purchase? On demand media, not when it's showing on some midnight hour when I don't have the time for it. What do we need to make this happen? Nothing! The technology is in place. Every computer sold today with mainstream OS installed come with media players of some kind. Well you up for the next evolution guys?
It's not tyranny as much as a collective action problem. Good TV is a public good that has to be paid for somehow; a small flat tax is not unreasonable IMHO.
And if Fox News is your idea of free media, give me tyranny.
Yea, but what if The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is on?
Don't you pee your pants?
Who the fuck are we as the public to decide how the government can take our money from us? Same in the US with that National Endowment for the Arts. Every whackjob who throws dog crap onto a canvas is hailed as a genius and given money. And when the public protests the art liberals accuse them of censorship. If PBS wanted the gay mans buttfucking hour and the public said no it would be accused of gay bashing. The government has deemed us too stupid to decide for ourselves what we can do and decide on. So they tack on extra taxes and fees all the time so they can hire some hippy liberal faggot to tell us how we should live and what we should like and appreciate.
I think it might be useful and instructive to ring them up or email them, and ask for confirmation.
The comments posted here show that some points have been missed:
Companies are really annoyed about this whole thing. So far, the comments have been about home users. Companies would be required to pay per site.
There is a lot of opposition to the whole plan anyway, even from other politicians. It was stated that this "worldwide unique computer fee" would be in contradiction to the economic goals proclaimed by the government (and supported by the opposition).
It's not law yet! It still has to be ratified by all of the local parliaments (there is one for each German "state").
Of course, the whole thing does suck. While I can understand the fee for TV/radio, I think imposing a fee on computers just because they can connect to the internet is quite unjust.
-- Steve
That licensing TV's and Internet capable PC's is just the first step to taking them away. In the world wars, who took away everyone's radios? Uh huh. Allowing the government to put price controls on reception of media effectively gives them the right to regulate WHO receives that media. What if the government decides that you shouldn't hear the news on the western front? "Sorry... The price for Joooooos to own TV's or radios, or internet capable PC's, is ten million marks, and our list shows that you own a TV and a PC that may connect to the internet. Give them up now." Commercials are a small price to pay for freedom.
xyzzy - operation overload.
The parent comment is clearly a troll and does not deserve its current score of "+2 Insightful". Please moderate it down.
The United States is becoming increasingly stupid, but Germany has just taken a bound ahead. I don't watch TV, don't care about TV shows, and wouldn't care if all TV stations shut down. I had considered moving to Germany, but in light of this ruling I probably won't. I have too many computers, and would end up paying more per month in fees for them than I would receive in a salary.
This is plain stupid. Germans should rise up and have this law crushed. Is suggesting civil disobedience illegal for me to do under german law, or eu law, or any other law that I should be concerned about (i.e. US law apparently extends to the U.K. Does it extend to germany in the same way?) ?
Hey, I'm an American, and you know what? Our TV sucks huge swine ass. I OFFICIALLY give all Europeans the right to make fun of American TV, not just because the BBC is way the fuck better, but because there is no possible way for any serialized sequence of broadcast images coupled with sound to be worse than what is broadcast over our airwaves. I encourage Europe to start jamming our signals with "Radio Free America" broadcasts of cult BBC hits and French pornography. An Iron Curtain has fallen over the Atlantic Ocean, and I come begging to our friends still living in the free world to help us tear it down!
RIAA was having trouble, what a sad, sad story
Needed some money to restore its former glory
Where oh where was the fee?
Where could that cash be?
We looked around and then we found the tax for you and me
Aaaaand now it's:
Springtime for Valenti and Germany!
Winter for Poland and France!
We're profiting at a faster pace!
Look out, here comes the master race!
I have gas, but my car uses petrol.
All men in Sweden will be assessed a tax, which will be used to compensate women injured through acts of violence and discrimination. Still unclear is wether castration or sex-reassignement surgery will be considered acceptable excuse for not paying the tax.
this is an April Fool's: has noone else thought that this sounds like a joke?
The shameful crys of people who want to censor it is even worse! It seems that Slashdot is becoming a place where unpopular viewpoints cannot be tolerated which is especially hypocritical when we discuss and decry censorship when it comes into our own personal lives.
When you have a political argument amongst friends or other people and someone states an opinion you do not like, do you try to silence the person or do you try to have a reasoned discussion?
The poster, haggar, of the comment at the top of this thread is trolling because he is deliberately provoking outrage by being posting outrageous comments. He is making ad-hominem attacks against other posters in this thread and is pointedly ignoring the several reasonable questions which others here have asked him. Moderating that type of comment down as Troll or Flamebait is necessary. The founder of the Slashdot website has written an excellent FAQ about moderation, which you need to re-read, if you haven't read it already. Notice in particular the official Slashdot moderation scheme . The moderation process is fundamental to Slashdot. If you don't like it, you should leave Slashdot now.
OK, sounds like we got a deal. You keep Fox News, I get my Eurotrash BBC along with the tyranny of a $15 or so broadcasting tax per month and everybody's happy.
Yeah, Slashdot is run by folks who are americans, and more power to them. Thanks goodness american American Zealot.
That last sentence should have been "Thanks goodness american (not equal) American Zealot."
Sorry - did not preview enough.
It's funny how if one party claims something enough times about another, people start believing it.