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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.
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.
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 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.
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.
- if the government does not interfere with broadcasting at all, you get a media environment like the US, with lots of channels competing for consumers' and sponsors' attention. The result? Ads targeted at kids, news coverage that imposes the sponsors' opinion upon everyone. Thanks a lot! As an American, this is what you should be upset about.
- the German system is designed in this way specifically to give the government less power over broadcasting. If the government doesn't fund broadcasting themselves, they don't have a say in what's getting broadcast.
The whole point of the German system is to have a TV station that can afford to produce a high-quality program with balanced news coverage, without being influenced either by the state or by private sponsors.As a state gets corrupt, its laws multiply; the most corrupt states have the most numerous laws. (Tacitus, Annales 3:27)
- Even if it doesn't have a TV tuner, it's easy to hook up a satellite receiver or VCR to the computer via video-in. With digital VCRs becoming popular, it's even easier to do so via FireWire.
- You can watch ARD and ZDF broadcasts over the Internet.
This way, the only people "unjustly" affected are the very small crowd of people who don't watch TV at all, but who do have a computer, albeit one incapable of watching Internet broadcast streams. It would have been possible to impose the fee on VCRs and TV tuner cards instead. As far as I'm concerned, this would have been the best solution, but I don't have much of a say in the legislation over here. It was probably too complicated for the average Joe, and it doesn't account for the internet streams. Most people don't get affected by this anyway, as they have a TV already.Copying broadcast material is legal already in Germany, as long as you clearly see it's from a broadcast (i.e. the station's logo in one of the corners). This led to an awkwardly complicated situation once where, basically, one guy was forbidden to sell a device that removes the logo from a broadcast, because that could have been used to make illegal copies of broadcast material. Not the best ruling, as far as I'm concerned.
As a state gets corrupt, its laws multiply; the most corrupt states have the most numerous laws. (Tacitus, Annales 3:27)
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.
Ahem... so, shouldn't I be able to choose if I want to pay for a public channel or not? Does government consider that I am not smart enough when I watch TV? Moreover, what is the percentage of Internet connected PCs which are used to watch german TV in Germany?
Here, in Spain, public TV and radio channels (three radio stations, two TV channels plus one satellite open channel, supported by taxes, and amounting a -1 Billon Eur deficit) are, by far, the worst available. Sponsor's aren't out of them, and most visible sponsor is always the governing party.
I don't know what 18 Eur represent compared to the German average salary, but as far as I can tell, that's 90% of the monthly fee of some ADSL connections in Spain. If public TV was to be paid by Internet users, I'm sure most people would drop their home connections and use office's bandwidth.
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
It's not an issue of an over-large government government - it stems from an excess of power vested in Corporate Interests. Think about it. Where do you reckon the impetus for this came from?
Screw you all! I'm off to the pub
from the if-it-moves-tax-it-dept.
What if it doesn't move?
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...
As a state gets corrupt, its laws multiply; the most corrupt states have the most numerous laws. (Tacitus, Annales 3:27)
Why should I pay for TV that I don't watch!?
Because for social/political reasons, you want public (= not financed by advertising) TV broadcasting stations. You want those because you want to have someone who broadcasts stuff that is considered important for the education of the public, but ignored by private stations because it does not offer enough advertising profit (if any at all).
> No. I can see why this is hard to understand for
> an American,
I'm a Brit.
> The program of the public broadcasters is not
> determined by the Government. It is determined
> by special councils ('Rundfunkraete') in which
> the various state governments are represented,
> but also the current parliamental opposition.
Okay, so it's determined by the Government and the Opposition. But the State sets the funding levels, and will have a good deal of background influence, and the Opposition will one day be in power again.
The State and the Opposition will find they have a great deal in common, and the State run stations will reflect this.
Moreover, the people running the TV station are going to be more influenced by the views of those currently in power, since they control the budget. Like it or not, they will know what the State thinks, and they will, more or less, be biased by that, regardless of the existance of the council.
Contrast all this to a privately run TV station. They can say what they damn well *please*. No politicians, no vested interests represented on the council, *no council*.
*That* is independence.
If an enterprise is ever beheld to the State for anything, let alone it's *budget*, it is not truely independent.
--
Toby
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?
I'm a Brit.
Sorry.
You are right with what you say about public stations, and I definately agree for exactly those reasons that having public stations *only* would be a very bad thing.
But:
Contrast all this to a privately run TV station. They can say what they damn well *please*. No politicians, no vested interests represented on the council, *no council*.
This is the point where you are wrong. Private stations may be (mostly) independent from the state, but they are *not* independent from 'vested interests' (these interests are not represented on some council, but this is irrelevant IMO). They are totally dependent on market interests. Public stations on the other hand are dependent on the state, but their advantage is that they are, to a certain degree, independent from market interests.
This is exactly why we have the 'dual system' in Germany: Both public and private stations. Making fees for public stations mandatory is necessary IMO, because otherwise they would die because not enough people were willing to pay them. Unfortunately, people are that stupid.
This dual system puts very useful mechanisms in power. For example, even if government and opposition can agree to supress a certain news, they can be sure that private TV would report about it. Since almost everyone in Germany watches both private *and* public TV, such a coup would most likely fail. On the other hand, public TV has the freedom to report news that get ignored by private TV because they are not 'market relevant'. Again, checks and balances.
I think that 5 decades of experience with German TV broadcasting, and comparisons with the TV programs in other countries, simply tell us that changing our TV system would be a bad idea.
you're putting your finger onto one of the bigger stupididties involved...
Giving false information about the number of radios and tvs in your house can be fined up to 1000EUR.
But the organization set up to collect those fees never found a judge who issued a warrant just on the suspiscion that s/o watches TV without paying tv fees...
bickerdyke
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.
Their argumentation was that all PCs can 'easily' be upgraded into receiving TV and/or Radio. It holds no water because it's equally easy to go out and buy a TV set or a radio.
Their license fees stem from times when there was only terrestric TV broadcast - there is no way to control who receives and watches them, and thus the general public is paying. I can give them *that*, but there's no way they should be allowed to extend it to internet broadcasts, simply for the reason that those *can* be controlled. No one is forcing the public stations to offer web sites and video/radio streams. They came on the internet, and it's their choice. Either they introduce restrictions on that content, so only those who paid the license fee can watch the streams (because they ultimately pay for the production), or they decide to make it public, but cannot in turn demand everyone pay a fee, no matter whether they use their site or not.
There's public protests starting. Let's hope they succeed.
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