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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 !
- 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)
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.
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?
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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