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 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.
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.)
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 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!
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)
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]
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.
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.
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!
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.
from the if-it-moves-tax-it-dept.
What if it doesn't move?
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.
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...
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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?)
Hmm, you don't tell us where you are coming from, but assuming you are from the US: So you want to tell me that people are either not forced to pay taxes in the US, or, if they have to pay taxes, they all agree on how their money is spend? What a lucky country (if you are not from the US, please replace US with your country, I'm sure my statement maintains it's validity).
No wonder Germans boast that they never have political scandels like the US - there is nobody to expose and communicate them!
Germany has its political scandals, and it's not Germanys problem if they don't make it into your non-state sponsored media.
While I think the idea to extend the media fee for pupblic broadcasting is ridiculous, I think the system to have some TV stations who don't have to think all the time about their revenue stream from commercials has also its benefits: If I compare the news on public and private TV stations, the public news are more about information, while the private news are more infotainment, designed to entertain the consumer for the time inbetween the "consumer informations" that frame the news show. BTW, apart from private TV stations, there are also alot of other non-"state fee" sponsored media (radio stations, newspapers, internet sites...)
I'll just uninstall Internet Explorer...
oh wait... fuck...
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
That's a shame. If I were to head into the living room and flip on the TV right now, I'd have my choice of the following intelligent, informative, and entertaining channels:
9 channels devoted exclusively to news; ;
11 channels devoted to science, nature, or history;
5 channels devoted to education or public affairs;
6 channels devoted to children's programming;
6 channels devoted to religion and religious affairs
3 channels devoted exclusively to providing "family friendly" entertainment;
2 channels that show nothing but classic old movies;
7 channels devoted to various genres of music;
9 sports channels;
a host of specialty channels, including one with nothing but cooking and food-related shows, one channel about home maintenance and improvement, one for fitness and exercise, one for computers and technology, and one entire channel devoted to nothing but golf.
But hey, quantity isn't everything, I'm told ;)
ABSURDITY, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.
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...
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...
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
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