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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.
Subscribing to this service will cost you $15 a month. Not subscribing will cost you $1600. Those are your only choices. Take your pick.
Uh, not entirely correct. You can choose not to have a TV at all, and therefore pay nothing...
I think the UK's TV-licensing system is quite sensible - we pay a fee once per year, which goes to the bbc, and in turn we are able to recieve both the BBC's terrestrial channels, it's digital channels (around 6 more, I believe), and the license fee also funds the BBC's 6 national radio channels, and all the local radio stations around the country. All advert free, 24/7. That doesn't sound like such a bad deal to me...
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]
I care. A lot.
See, I don't have a TV. Or a radio. Simply because not only are they exclusively full of trash, they're also full of advertising, which I detest deeply (it's aimed at the lowest common denominator - which I am *not* part of).
So, I don't pay the GEZ.
Now, suddenly I have to pay the GEZ to fund some broadcasting agency I couldn't give a flying rats fart for? Yes? Because my PC could - could! - be upgraded easily and used to actually see TV.
That's the reason.
That's the only reason the powerful tool on my desk is going to cost me money every month, and not just a couple of cents. And without me getting anything at all in return, mind you.
Bah.
Free PC version of ChipWits at http://www.breueronline.de/klaus/chipwits/
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!
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Toby
if the government does not interfere with broadcasting at all, you get a media environment like the US
The government doesn't interfere with broadcasting in the US? Where can I get what you're smoking?! Ever heard of the FCC? How about the ol' digital broadcast mandate? or the 550k fine to Viacom over the superbowl incident? or the limits on broadcast ownership? or licensing of the broadcast spectrum?
Okay, so sometimes the BBC does show crap, but it also produces high quality drama, comedy, news, documentaries, education (including school and university courses) and more. It has two channels devoted to advert-free kids viewing. It has regional TV and radio. It has terrestrial digital broadcasting. They even have shows where tit appears or a profanity is uttered without the screaming moral minority being able to do a damned thing about it.
Okay, so the tax is compulsary for TV owners. But how much does *your* TV subscription cost? How much advertising must you put up with (despite subscribing)? How many products do you subconsciously buy because of that advertising? Who are your TV stations accountable to? Whose agenda is driving their news and politics? What remit do they use when producing programming for - advertising, ratings, or what?
It wouldn't surprise me if you were directly or indirectly paying several factors higher for considerably worse quality programming.
Quantity of channels isn't everything. In Britain a majority of people have only five channels of TV. Two of those are BBC channels paid for by the license fee, one (Channel 4) is mostly owned by the government and the other two are entirely privately owned but have government controls that limit their advertising and control minimum levels of news and public service broadcasts. The programmes available on these channels is largely intelligent, informative, entertaining, and not repeated too often. We also can go for longer than five minutes without getting the attention span beaten out of us with advertising.
We also have Cable, Satellite and Digital Terrestrial TV available, with huge numbers of channels. With the exception of Digital Terestrial, it's nearly* all crap. It's filled wall to wall with American sitcoms, reality TV, and endless repeats.
Freeview (Digital Terestrial) TV looks like it might be a way out of this largely because it is limited in the broadcase bandwidth available but it still has quite a large number of repeats.
Given the choice between US style programmes repeated endlessly on hundreds of channels, or a few channels of quality programmes paid for through the BBC and other state-mandated (not controlled) expenses, I will go for what we have.
*Note that I said nearly. Sky One happens to show some things I want to watch, like Buffy, the Simpsons and Stargate Atlantis and it doesn't put too much advertising in it's frontline shows. It does however repeat them each about 8 times across two channels, with much more advertising.
A latent existence
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.
How about people growing up with the idea that if they're not constantly buying shit, that there is something wrong with them? That's how us North Americans get raised these days. Looking back on my own life and how I developed, I have no doubt that there would be certain improvements (in the family I grew up in as well) if we had never seen or heard of TV.
Oh and the "filth" comment was very likely sarcasm, which much of the post was dripping with.
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