Slashdot Mirror
Germany's New Internet License Fee
PapayaSF writes "Beginning January 1st, Germany will require payment of a license fee of 5.52 euros a month on computers and mobile phones that can access TV and radio programs over the Internet. Like the current TV and radio license fees, the money will support national and local public TV and radio stations. German companies with many computers are predictably upset." I'm not sure if this is the same story we discussed in 2004. Did this original fee go through, and this is another fee on top of the original?
Unfortunately not. With TVs, you still have to pay even if you remove the
tuner, because you could theoretically solder it back in..
Note: This is a flat fee. Every corporation has to pay it only once, regardless of the number of computers.
There's a similar update of the laws in Sweden. This may very well spread to a lot of countries.
Will the next big thing be an ISP which doesn't give access to the website's of the nations public TV and radio stations' websites?
Or will even The Pirate Bay and Google Video be recognized as sites where you can access TV and radio programs, thus making any such attempts from the ISPs worthless?
.. as in the story from 2004, they just reduced it a bit after a truckload of protests during the last 2 years.
Maybe a bit more background info from Germany here: this fee is used to support the state-owned radio and TV stations, the privately owned stations don't see a cent. This is supposedly to guarantee the higher-quality broadcasts from the state stations as opposed to the low-quality, market-driven programs from the private stations.. but as somebody who doesn't watch state TV as a principle, I won't pay this s**t.
In germany,
...
if you own a device that is capable of receiving public tv or radio than you must
pay a fee of 17.52 Euro/Month (for tv and radio) or 5.x for radio.
But you have to pay only for one device even if you own more.
This money is used to fund the state owned public tv and radio stations across the country
To my knowledge, we have the worlds most expensive public tv with a annual budget of
8.2 Billion Euro where 6.5 Billion Euro are coming from the fee (2004 data).
In 2004 the ingenious people of the public broadcasting sector realized that there are
now some people watching tv using their computer and thus are not required to pay.
They got politics to define computers, mobile phones etc. with internet connections as "novel tv devices"
with the intention of getting the people to pay that dumped their regular tvs for
computers.
For some reason this legislation was postponed until 2007 and is now coming into effect.
Particularly annoying is this new fee for companies. Especially small companies as you
have to pay for tv devices used by the company an extra time. This means that if you
work from home and have payed already for your private tv you will have to pay again for
your business computer with an internet connection.
This created some offroar now because since around 2005 a company is mandatorily
required to do the tax stuff via internet, and therefore by law must have a computer
with an internet connection.
The offroar was ongoing and recently the public broadcasting people have agreed to lower the
fee for internet computers from 17.52 (the tv and radio fee) to only 5.x which is the
fee if you have only one radio.
For me, running a small business from home, that means I will have to pay about 23 Euro
a month for public broadcasting
It is called "GEZ Gebühr" (fee for the GEZ, the Gebühreneinzugszentrale - Central for fee collecting, a divison of the public broadcast services ARD and ZDF), everyone in Germany has to pay the GEZ fee to receive radio broadcasts (reduced fee, about 5 Euro per month) or TV and radio broadcasts (full fee, about 15 Euro per month). It does not depend on the number of devices, you have to pay 15 Euro no matter if you own one TV set or 10.000. Some group of persons may apply for exemption.
The original idea of the "internet fee" was that you could receive internet streams from the websites of the public broadcast services with an internet capable device (not only PCs, but also UMTS mobile phones), so a PC would be equal to a TV set (yes, that's how german politicans think) and you have to pay the full GEZ fee. It simply does not matter if you actually do receive those streams, all that counts is that you are able to recevie them.
After lots of complaints from nearly every organisation, the "internet fee" was changed to the reduced radio fee. This does not affect common households, because they usually already pay for receiving radio and TV broadcasts, so the PC is "just another TV set". But each and every company that uses even only one PC now has to pay 5 Euro per month for the ability(!) to receive TV and radio broadcasts via internet. A related information: The german tax authorities force you to use an internet capable PC for your monthly tax declaration, so nearly every company now has to pay the GEZ fee.
Tux2000, nearly becoming mad during the attempt to translate this nonsense into english
Denken hilft.
Beginning January 1st, Germany will require payment of a license fee of 5.52 euros a month on computers and mobile phones that can access TV and radio programs over the Internet. They're working on something like that in America. Except instead of the fee going to the government, you pay it to Verizon corporation.
Push Button, Receive Bacon
And how about other types of computers?
Officer: I'm here to collect the public TV tax.
Joe: I've already paid for my TV and personal computer.
Officer: But you haven't paid for your other computers.
Joe: I only own one computer!
Officer: From my inspection I have noted that you own 5 pocket calculators, a microwave, a CD player, and a car--all of which are operated by computers.
Joe: But you can't connect them to the Internet. And even if you could they still don't have monitors to view TV shows on!
Officer: But theoretically they could, right? I mean if you flip your calculator upside down I can spell 'boobies.'
Joe: No!
Officer: C'mon! Don't be so stubborn. C'mon!
Joe: Well Ok, I'll sell the car so I can pay the fees for my calculators.
Officer: And by the way, why do you own so many calculators?
Joe:: So I can write "I see boobies I see boobies."
Officer: But you only need 4 for that message.
Joe: I use that one to pay the taxes for the other four.
This hysteria is typical of slashdot and a load of rubbish; Here in Switzerland Computers with internet connections have paid the radio/tv tax for years now, and the sun still shines over the alps. The German law is exactly the same as the Swiss one and works like this:
Each household pays a monthly or quarterly bill to the state run TV and Radio stations. They pay the same amount no matter how many computers, TVs or radios they have. The bill is one single price per household.
Each company pays only one bill no matter how many computers or TVs they have. It is NOT based on the number of computers.
Slashdot and its sensationalist attempts to gather hits and therefore drive up ad revenue make their comments on any news event seem very hypocritical.
I recall a couple of years ago the BBC said something along the lines of "if you stream TV clips then you need a TV license". I don't think there was talk of legislating it, however.
Only if it's been broadcasted to the UK at the same (or similar) time. I.E. Downloading an specific episode of "the Simpsons" that's being broadcast on C4 at 6PM, or Sky One at 7PM, is only OK outside of that time.
Note that the UK does have exceptions for TVs owned by businesses and used exclusively for prerecorded video.
No, the UK has exception for any TV's that aren't used to receive broadcast video. The wireless telegraphy act and it's ammendemnts specificaly state it's the USE of euipment to RECEIVE BROADCASTS that needs licensing.
There are various forms to fill in, and it's checked fairly regularly.
The TV License people have no legal right to "check" you. They can gather any evidence that they legally can (look through your window, scan for the IF, etc), and present it to court. To enter your property they need a search warrant.
Something similar should apply to computers, although I'm not sure you can "neuter" a computer in the same way as a TV (unplugging the aerial, usually. Ripping out the tuner is a bit drastic).
Yes, if you have a TV that's not tuned in to the local transmitter and not plugged in, that would be enough to satisfy any court. Of course as long as you don't watch the TV, and don't let the TVL people in, there's little they can do to proove you are or arent watching.
With TV over IP, I suppose they could look at getting the ISP to provide logs, however that would probably break the data protection act. Their only real evidence would come through watching your through a window.
The fee is, in fact, not only the same as the one of 2004, it is also the same as the standard radio fee.
Which means that anyone who already owns a radio won't pay anything in addition.
The fee affects two groups of people:
a) Those who have neither radio nor television, but a PC or mobile.
b) companies, which usually fall into group a) if you want to be nitpicking.
Since I fall in group a) I will be engaging in civil disobedience next year. Many others will, too. It'll be interesting to see how that goes, because despite their advertisement, the GEZ (the company that collects the fees) does not, in fact, have any powers to actually do their job. They can send you nasty letters and that's about it. They can't enter your house if you don't let them in, for example. They can't return with police to force their way in, even if they claim they can.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
That's not possible in Germany because a fee that every citizen has to pay is a tax and only the states can raise taxes - however, the states may not raise the fees for the public broadcasters because if they would they'd be able to influence them, which is not desired. (And I think it's rather obvious why we want the public broadcasters to be as independent as possible.) Thus the public broadcasters have their own organisation, the GEZ (Gebühreneinzugszentrale; "fee collection center"), which attempts to get money for as many kinds of telecommunication as possible to finance them.
Of course by now the entire thing has devolved into a question of semantics as the GEZ can more or less get money out of everyone so the TV fee is more or less a tax.
Oh, and note that while the private broadcasters are usually financed solely through advertisement (pay-per-view and subscription channels are uncommon in Germany) that doesn't mean that the public broadcasters can't show ads in addition to being financed through the GEZ. They are restricted to not showing any ads before 20:00, though, IIRC. But still one onders how much they are independent from their sponsors anymore...
The real hoot, of course, is that while we have to pay a broadcasting fee for our internet access there is actually little broadcasting done by the public broadcasters on the 'net. The only thing that would qualify as broadcasting would be live streams; websites and MP3s are not broadcasting. Live streams, however, are rarely available and when they are they tend to perform poorly as the public broadcasters' servers and pipes can't handle many connections. Thus the internet GEZ fee is mainly for something that doesn't exist.
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