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Comment by tpetry | Hacker News Reader

We‘ve got a problem in germany with anything spent for by tax money. If something is done by tax money and some private company is doing the same with their own money the will go to court because the other one has an unfair advantage.

For example we have some tv channels being run by tax money (not absolutely correct, its a forced pay for everyone not included in taxes but its basically the same) without any ads. Any many free private channels fiddled with ad pauses. The tax ones wanted to put their movies online in a netflix style for free long before netflix but the private ones wonnin court because it would be unfair. Nowadays they are allowed to put them online but only for 30 days after airing in tv, everything else would be unfair to the real low-quality free channels...

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If that is the argument, then I think the priority now for the DWD is to offer a cheaper and better product.

I think this also means that the DWD can now be more business orientated and perhaps grow their income?

I am not German, but I am trying to see whether this can be to the DWD's advantage.

Maybe. Not legal expert, but if I remember well, they public broadcasting services were sued (?) for having to many paid commercials.

So I could at least imagine the DWD being attacked if they sell their app for 10 cents or so.

> DWD is to offer a cheaper and better product.

How? Their product is "free", unless you count taxes. They could make it "cheaper" by keeping it free and not using taxes.

Well if they do it for cheaper, won't it as well open them up to the same 'unfair advantage' accusations?

Lets say that the government and DWD developed equivalent apps but DWD did it at half the cost. If the government app has to charge users based on its costs, then it will be twice as expensive, and lose out to the more efficient private company. But if they are just allowed to give it out to consumers for free (which a private company can't do) then it will dominate the market even though it is not the best use of resources. I assume that is the rationale for this law.

If you meant DWD (=government) did it at double the cost, then this makes sense.

I believe travisoneill1 was confusing the government weather service DWD with the firm filing the suit, WetterOnline.

There is another analogy to this: Meteoblue. [1]

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

But couldn't this same argument be applied to healthcare and education? Why is healthcare and education exempt but some other industry not?

They are not. They are being slowly dismantled, but they are very popular so they have to do it slowly to not cause too much protest.

This is in Germany or the U.S.?

Western Europe, actually. Germany, UK and Netherlands in particular but I'm sure the trend is the same in other countries.

I can see how this can have sense. But it doesn't.

would be unfair to the real low-quality free channels...

There are German comedy channels?

Hey! There is nothing funny about German humour!

Where would we be without humor?

Germany

It's shit like this that gets people to go from "Capitalism needs tweaks" to "It is rotten to the core".

It should be completely obvious that the government has an interest in providing weather details to its citizens as a whole for planning and safety. Private citizens and companies are not entitled to markets, especially when it comes to public knowledge and safety!

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