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 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.
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.)
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)
The fee on CD burners, recordable media, fotocopiers, etc is compensation for "fair use" copies which the people create with them. It is distributed to registered copyright holders. The fee on TV and radio receivers finances the public broadcasters ("Oeffentlich-rechtlicher Rundfunk"). It is not related to copyright issues in any way.
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)