Court outlaws German Weather Service's free weather app

Maybe they can similarly spin off the weather app into a company with some kind of status that retains some of its original purpose (which I guess is supplying weather information to German nationals).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meteoblue

Germany

But as long as it's only a few unheard voices complaining about it and no broad law stating 'public money, public data, public access" it's pretty hard to turn it back in to a real public service.

Some needs are worth putting it in a public baseline. And sometimes grey areas work (i.e. a public service fulfilled by a private entity but then checked by a public instance). Some stuff may not need to be public, i.e. kegs of beer. It's great when you want one, but it's not a base public need and not a shared need (unlike infrastructure, health, security, for general survival in places packed with too many people like big cities). But then a commercial entity might see an opportunity to sell things as a public baseline (why have basic weather forecasts when you can add 'bbq weather compatibility forecasts' or 'can I play golf tomorrow' functionality. But now that company has a hard time getting people to pay for it because that extra stuff that you didn't need anyway isn't attractive to anyone who just wants to know if they need to bring an umbrella. So ban the simple stuff and now your complex stuff has a place in the market. It's practically setting yourself up not to win on your own merit but 'removing' any opposition. Or so it seems to us bystanders. I don't actually know why they thought this was a good idea to have a lawsuit about.

It's tricky.

Why not? Does every minor thing that any government funded organisation or employee wants to do need to be approved three-fold by layers and layers of bureaucracy?

That seems absolutely ridiculous. We are talking about something very minor here: making an app that displays regular weather information, where they already had an app that displayed extreme weather information. This is not some immense initiative they are undertaking here. This was likely done by a single person that thought "hey, we are gathering this data, why not display it in our app".

I am working as a scientist on government funding, should I require approval in three-fold by congress before I publish a paper, open-source any code or do any research at all, because a private entity might want to monetise something similar to that research and I might negatively impact their profitability by putting that in the public domain?

Then the market has spoken about where it's priorities lie.

I guess that's just the same question again. Does society benefit enough from everyone having access to free cars, outweigh the harm done by businesses risking bancrupcy because their product is now something that should be free? And also that other businesses start to wonder if it's their product that will be "should be free" in the future?

I wouldn't consider it inconsequent to say "yes" on the first question but "no" on the other...

i have a similar theory about public TV

First time I heard that. The generally accepted explanation over here is that they couldn't match prices of established chains that had well optimized supply chains, and that they absolutely failed to account for cultural differences regarding how to deal with customers and employees.

Edit: https://youtube.com/watch?v=58_BZjnbMyw

Do you have a source for that? My impression was that Walmart couldn't beat the already low prices of the German market.

I don't disagree, but that's de facto. Nominally, they're independent and Germany doesn't rely on judge's guesstimates as much, they are supposed to apply the laws, not create them, which is why the German Constitutional Court has been criticized for becoming politically activist instead of remaining neutral.

Since they're de facto appointed by the political establishment, you can't expect them to not be carefully selected for "obedience by accident" (they're independent, they just happen to think the same way), but you can also not do it too obviously if you don't want to shake the cage too much or people might disregard the courts completely.

Government institutions with mission creep issues that start to grow is a common problem in Germany, and the courts regularly tell them to stop, this isn't a new development.

I regularly use tagesschau.de, I regularly listen to their radio stations, via apps.

I personally think the ARD/ZDF are important to have, and also keep the commercial players on their feet a little. And provide a lot of programming, like documentaries and information shows that are good to have but that commercial players wouldn't touch (or if e.g. RTL did their own versions, I would dread the outcome).

I also think the GEZ fees are a little too high, and they waste a ton of money in their bureaucracy. I'd rather have the BBC (which Boris wants to dismantle) than the ARD/ZDF, but this is the next best thing.

Oh boy, you are not gonna like it when you hear about the "military industrial complex".

>The economy would collapse because the incentive to outperform would be gone.

You speak as if huge chunks of our society haven't been socialized with great results. You want to re-privatize the fire department, so they have more incentive to put out fires? Privatize the police force, so they have more incentive to stop crimes? It's not so straightforward as "private enterprise = proper incentive structure" - it's possible to engineer incentive structures with better outcomes than the free market.