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New Irish Internet Tax?
MarkDennehy writes "The Broadcasting Bill 2009 (currently in the last stages of becoming the Broadcasting Act 2009 and then being commenced into law in Ireland) has thrown up a rather unpleasant little nugget for broadband users in Ireland. It now defines a television set as being an electronic apparatus able to receive TV signals or 'any software or assembly comprising such apparatus' which would mean that even if you haven't got a television set, even if you don't watch streaming content from RTE.ie (the state broadcaster's website), you'd still have to pay 160 euro a year for a television license for your iPhone, or netbook, or laptop or desktop if you have fixed or mobile broadband."
So what you're saying is that since the state provides a service, if you could use that service you should pay for it?
How is this different from, oh, say EVERY OTHER STATE SPONSORED SYSTEM IN EXISTENCE for broadcasting.
Yes, you may not use it, but most people don't use all the roads either.
I applaud them for making the technological leap to being able to provide it online and REALIZE that online is the same effective use.
Now, i do have two questions.
Is the cost to distribute online around the same as the TV cost? If so, sure go nuts with it.
Is the license per household like a lot of other state TV licenses. If it's not, i see an issue with it.
IF it's per household and it reflects the cost to run it, i say more power to them.
We should be applauding efforts like this to adapt technologically and that are put forth by people who apparently have a grip on the actual issue.
Not just getting mad because it's a tax. Taxes have purposes. I return to my earlier car analogy of driving on all roads.
You never realize how much manually made unmanaged "linked" lists suck, till you have src.link.link.link.link...
Everything green? Double taxed.
People paying taxes for things they don't want, need, or use is nothing new.
Mine is Good
"broadcasting service" means a service which comprises a compilation of programme material of any description and which is transmitted, relayed or distributed by means of an electronic communications network, directly or indirectly for simultaneous or near- 20 simultaneous reception by the general public, whether that material is actually received or not, and where the programmes are provided in a pre-scheduled and linear order, but does not include:
(a) a service provided for viewing in a non-linear manner where each viewer chooses a programme from a cata- 25 logue of programmes, or
(b) other audio and audiovisual services provided by way of the Internet;
I don't even watch TV, I have a TV to use as a display device for my Wii and SNES. What cock sucker thought this tax up?!
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The temper of residents in Ireland has just gotten as fiery as their pubes
It's Taxation 2.0. the public generate the income and the government utilises it for profit.
Even since the 1988 bill and earlier, a "television set" is defined as any apparatus for wireless telegraphy capable of receiving and exhibiting television programmes broadcast for general reception (whether or not its use for that purpose is dependent on the use of anything else in conjunction therewith)...
Therefore, a piece of wire (antenna) is a "television set", even though it is dependent on adding various radio and display devices to it to function properly.
"any software or assembly comprising such apparatus" most likely refers only to equipment and software designed to receive VHF and UHF transmissions on a computer.
Under this, you are no longer, using their own definition, "stealing" when using p2p networks. You pay their licenses.
I can't wait to see this come up in court cases initiated by the IFPI
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
But instead of being at the end of the rainbow, it's at the RTE offices.
have they figured out a way to internet enable beer glasses yet... that would be the utmost experience ... beer & net browsing combined. would they be covered by the current law or would they need to make amendments?
Never antropomorphize computers, they do not like that
Last I checked Desktops and Laptops can't receive tv signals without a tv tuner card of some sort. Most desktops don't have these cards. From the sound of things they would tie the tax to software pvr programs that would use the tuner.
What does that mean, you have to pour a shot of whiskey into your computer before you can connect?
Well, not quite. A wire may be capable of receiving television programmes, but it isn't capable of exhibiting them. The conjunction used here is 'and' not 'or.'
I thought the subject was leading me into a joke...like waterproof matches.
Very disappointed /.
It now defines a television set as being an electronic apparatus able to receive TV signals or "any software or assembly comprising such apparatus"
An internet-connected multimedia computer (pretty much anything nowadays) counts as a TV+radio set.
Which means that even if you do not have any other apparatus (no TV...), you have to pay quarterly fee of CHF 115.50 - about 300 Euros per year.
And yes, this is to sponsor contents and broadcasts from the Swiss television and radio stations.
Allows us to have less advertisement time than in the USA, and to have some "quality programs" that are not always maket-/audience-driven.
Not always a bad thing... like all taxes ... although one might disagree with how the money is used.
Votebuying = taxes = government services in exchange for votes.
money exchanged for votes.
Democracy and money can not coexist.
When you get older than 5 you may not be so fascinated by your toilet habits.
Still, I always enjoy watching the bigots fume at Mr Obama, it is very funny and satisfying to see.
In Denmark, all owners of any device that is able to connect to the Internet with more than 256 kbps (and is able to display graphics) are supposed to pay an annual "media license fee" that amounts to EUR 300 (USD 400). :(
Unselfish actions pay back better
In Denmark : Multimedia taxation.
If you own one or more of the following you are to pay up :
1. 3G Phone
2. PC with TV card
3. TV
4. Internet connection >= 256 kb/s
Never buy Sony CDs - they will open up your computer to anyone..
This is what Germany has at the moment, with the GEZ. It's complete crap. I don't speak german, and will never watch their continent. I am here on a work visa, and pay taxes.., there is no reason for me to be double taxed. Sadly, this is the way most countries will go probably.
Pay about $29 a month. Rip Off, but that's the way it is.
Hi all. I live in Denmark, and we have a similar thing.
Until "the Internet counted as a TV", the rules were:
If you have a TV, you have to pay $n DKK per year. That included 98% of the people.
After: If you have a TV or a 256 kilobit/s (or faster) internet connection, you have to pay $n DKK per year. This includes 99% of the people.
The license-paid station (dr.dk, "Denmark's Radio") streams some microsoft video format over mms://.
At 256 kb/s, it can't be particularly great quality; yet if they stream in greater quality, they essentially charging people who can't get a good viewing experience.
But---they're being quite fair about it. A fellow student of mine who owns no TV but has an internet connection had to pay, until he phoned them up and said "I don't have the necessary codec to play your videos, and I won't install it" (He's on Linux). They exempted him from paying, and even paid him back what he had paid so far (because he paid under a false pretext).
They are testing something which will reach Linux users as well (and presumably other OS users too). Then he'll have to pay.
Note that DR sometimes shows infomercials on their channels, encouraging illegal viewers to pay license fees. That is: they spend money on it.
If 99% of the people have to pay already, why not just charge everyone via the Plain Old Taxation system? The remaining 1% can go to a public library and view DR on the web, so they're getting something for their money too. That'll save the money spent on the "please pay up" campaigns.
And then of course there's an argument to be had about the pros and cons of Public Service and Public Access, but let's leave that for later...
We have had this tax for a couple years here in france. AFAIK any device that could possibly display a TV program makes you elligible for the tax.
Most people try to get away with "I don't own nor watch TV I swear!" though.
The best entertainment related tax in france is still the tax on blank media. Whenever you buy a CD, DVD, Hard drive or whatnot you get to pay a Tax to support the recording industry. Because we KNOW you are going to pirate stuff, you thief!
I don't mind paying for state sponsored television if it gets rid of the adverts but the fact is that RTE takes the money from the people for programming and also makes money from adverts every 10 mins. to be a legitimate state television station it should not have any adverts on it at all. Im not paying a television licence just so i can watch bloody adverts all day
In Turkiye, the state owned channels are free for everyone and they are known to be reached anywhere on the country.
So in UK and Ireland, because they charge money they have zero commercial? Our state channels have commercial but compared to private networks not so much.
... you've got to pay if you own at least one devices that is capable or receiving public radio or tv. Thats ~8â/month for radio only or ~17â/month for "the full service".
this has some nice tweeks:
- even in areas where they switched to digital over the air broadcast of tv, you still have to pay if you got a tv set that is only capable of receiving anaolg tv (which you are using for watching DVDs only)
- they extended the term "capable to receive" to "capable to access the internet". Now companies and private households have to pay if they have at least on computer.
- if you work from home office, they charge you twice. once for your private tv or computer und twice for you business computer and maybe even a third time for your car
Hah! It's been like that in Croatia (Yugoslavia) since the World War Two :) There is a law stating that owner of any device capable of receiving signals brodcasted by Croatian National Television must pay monthly fee for having such device. The law clearly states that PC with RealPlayer (Croatian Television used to stream their programme via RealVideo) IS such a device. (Of course, the law doesn't mention RealPlayer, but the formulation is such that there be no confusion!)
Big deal, yes? :)
The underlying problem is, these state broadcasters are offering services which lots of people would not subscribe to if they had a choice. Lots of people do not think they are worth having at all, lots do not think they are value.
In the UK, for instance, lots of people would rather do without the BBC than pay £130 a year for it. But they have no choice. Its a criminal offense to watch any TV at all without subscribing to the BBC.
The difficult intellectual question is, what justifies this compulsion? It is not compulsory to subscribe to any other broadcaster. Why is the BBC not just another subscription TV company? Why do we insist people subscribe to it, whether they want to watch it or not?
It is exactly not like Road Tax, where we pay an annual fee for the privilege of driving a car, which at least nominally goes to pay for the roads. Don't have a car, don't pay. We do not, with Road Tax, pay a fee to one particular car manufacturer every time we buy a car from the competition.
The BBC is nominally independent, but in practice is simply the State TV company. The real reason why we insist everyone subscribes to it is that we want there to be a state broadcaster. We therefore want people to have an incentive to watch it, and making it compulsory to subscribe means that it has a competitive advantage. It is incrementally free. In economic terms it is cheaper than ad funded TV, because it does not have ads. We want this because we are afraid of what a genuinely free broadcasting media could be like.
People argue all the time that this model is justified because they like what the BBC puts out. This is not the point. The fact that I like it, is not a reason why people who neither like nor want it should be forced to buy it. This is the real point of the argument about funding the state channels by compulsory fees on all TV ownership.
There is no justification.
Under this, you are no longer, using their own definition, "stealing" when using p2p networks. You pay their licenses.
I think that's a bit of a reach; the definition says nothing at all about making anything that you can download (on an episode-by-episode basis) legal to access. Instead, I read the clauses as explicitly excluding "on demand" services and sites like YouTube. The tax will instead be applying to the general broadcast model, which is adaptable to the internet (the technology needed is multicast, which is getting better supported than it used to) but is still primarily OTA.
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
Oh yes we warned you over and over not to tax the people of Ireland. First you taxed the food, then the gas, and THEN the whiskey (mother of saints)
And now the the broadband. Whats next tax hookers and the air. haha they'd never tax the ai............
The Germans conveniently define an internet connection as "a new kind of radio device". Since TV and Radio devices are chargable by the GEZ then the definition means you have to grab your ankles and think of England... um... I mean Germany.
As a physicist, I tried to point out that an ADSL connection isn't a radio device, but they were more interested in tracking down all the addresses that I'd ever had and trying to charge me for as much shit as possible. They are still sending me letters now that I live in France, the bastards.
This message was scanned by European governments and contains no terrorism.
From http://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/information/index.jsp
[quote]
Do I need a TV Licence?
You must be covered by a valid TV Licence if you watch or record television programmes as they're being shown on TV. It makes no difference what equipment you use - whether itâ(TM)s a laptop, PC, mobile phone, digital box, DVD recorder or a TV set - you still need a licence.
You do not need a TV Licence to view video clips on the internet, as long as what you are viewing is not being shown on TV at the same time as you are viewing it.
If you use a digital box with a hi-fi system, or another device that can only be used to produce sounds and can't display TV programmes, and you don't install or use any other TV receiving equipment, you don't need a TV Licence.
[/quote]
It's all about receiving LIVE tv broadcasts. That is very different from using for example, the iPlayer and watching old TV programs.
I've not had a TV licence for 2 years now and THEY are perfectly happy about it. I own a TV (to watch DVD's) and a computer with iPlayer on it. The aeriel lead that comes into the house is cut with no plug on it (the reception was terrible when I moved in so I never hooked it up) In the UK they can't currently make you pay for live broadcast TV (read BBC) if you are not using it.
The likelihood of someone having broadband but no TV in their household seems so small that I really don't see many people being caught by this unless they were dodging the TV licence fee in the first place.
I think that this is very important and the bill should be clearer so that there is no doubt:
Pass it on:
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?success=1&id=1325190040#/group.php?gid=178531780626&ref=nf
The managers at the BBC are well aware that the number of viewers on line is increasing rapidly. There is already an obligation to pay for a TV license if you watch live TV over the internet in the UK. The BBC gives no warning on their website that you are about to make yourself liable for the fee by clicking on a 'live' link. Maybe that is intentional; get them used to watching TV in this way, then when everyone is doing it, apply the tax. Don't think they know who or where you are? Think again. What do you think the purpose of the iplayer is. They know what you watched, when you watched it and where you are.
The Internet Regulation Authority?
Sorry couldn't resist.
As already pointed out, this won't effect most people who already have a TV licence. Though, if I lived in Ireland, it would affect me because I don't have a TV.
But it also affects any business who have PCs on a reasonably fast link - which is a lot, and increasingly fast.
In the UK, hotels and other places with multiple accommodation have to have a TV licence per room. So how will businesses be assessed? Per office? And how is an open-plan office (like mine) or a cube farm assessed?
At E160 pa, for each office or office worker, this is suddenly a nice little revenue boost for government/extra burden on business.
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
I didn't RTFA, but Finnish YLE wants to replace the tv license fee with media fee or "YLE tax". It's supposed to be 175e/year per household and you have to pay it even if you don't have a tv or a computer with tuner card or any other device that can receive tv broadcasts.
I live in Ireland and don't have a TV, so if they're gonna do that they best make all their RTE channels stream like it's TV. Right now all I have is the RTE News stream that repeats every 10 minutes, not exactly worth my 160 euros. It's only fair that they're give us all we're supposed to get for the price.
You just got troll'd!
Here in Switzerland they try to "tax" internet PCs too.
In the olden days the justification for this tax was, that you cannot control the reception of a broadcast unless you monitor every home. The same is not true for internet services. It's not broadcast, it's 1:1 connections and you can easly identify your subscribers. There's no reason (besides greed) to charge non users like me. I've consciously choosen not to have tv or radio. I won't pay just because i have a internet connection.
. . . that make me glad my ancestors were smart enough to get on a boat.
How i love those oranisations who's only porpouse in live is to collect money. Tey dont provide any service at all - they don't need to - the goverment provided them with the right to rob you.
And Germany has a lot of those.
Well, good news is: Once you have prooven beyond unreasonable doupt that you left the country then they might give up on you.
(Smoky Bar Table)
"I'll see yer offer, acceptance, consideration, and raise you Capacity & Legality!"
(/Smoky Bar Table)
Normally those were the elements I ignored when advising bosses, but they're scarily relevant here.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Good thing Northern Ireland is another country something I don't think many people over the world realize Ireland is the South under Irish rule Northern Ireland is under British rule classed as the UK. As many people know this has been the focus of many years of fighting and murder and in recent times been rekindled by murdering scum such as the C-IRA and the like. They fight for the right to have a worse life, worse broadband, fewer human rights and now the right to pay TV license on an Internet connection. Thank God I live in Ulster! perhaps this is the reason they say "for God and Ulster"
If you want to know if your apparatus qualifies as a "television set" then you'll have to ask the Minster for bicycles .. :)
.. set up and ran two businesses, Irish Cycling Safaris and Belfield Bike shop'
' Minister Eamon Ryan
davecb5620@gmail.com
A video recorder is capable of receiving TV programs but not displaying them. It requires a licence.
"If you wanted fair you shouldn't have joined a society. "
I know that seems to a sophomore a very witty retort, but I'll play along. I want to quit society. Where do I go? I suppose you could say the antarctic, but you can't actually go there without permission from society. Even if I go to Siberia, I'm subject to the laws of Russia. I suspect if I earn income, they'll expect taxes. I expect if I buy gasoline, I'll pay a tax.
You're nothing but poorly thought out troll. Nobody joins society. You are born into it, and they do not allow you to leave.
Time to go back to Philosophy 201. Come up with a better argument.
If a broadband connection is the equivalent to a tv then the government must also make ISP's remove fair usage. I can keep my TV on all day should I choose. try streaming all day 24/7 over the tubes and see how fast the service is capped or extra charges incurred. The two services are not equvalent.
No, the licence isn't to view the content, it's to possess the apparatus used to view the content. Copyright of the material isn't affected.
"A goldfish was his muse, eternally amused"
How is this different from, oh, say EVERY OTHER STATE SPONSORED SYSTEM IN EXISTENCE for broadcasting.
Well, it's quite different. In the US, public funding to public broadcasting is much smaller and comes out of taxes. It's also part to the usual budget processes.
Ireland, like some other European nations, has decoupled TV licenses and turned it into a regressive tax. But it's a tax with its own enforcement agency and little oversight on spending.
I have no problem with paying taxes for public television; I have big problem with separate licensing agencies and separate fees outside the tax system.
But this only really effects households with a Net enabled Computer and no TV, cannot imagine a lot of them.