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Comment by undreren | Hacker News Reader

I just wanted it to be financed through taxes as it used to be.

It was completely ridiculous; after switching to a licensing model, DR’s costs for raking in money went up by about 15 million DKK just in fees to lawyers, if memory serves correctly.

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We have the same scheme in Germany. The reason given for the fee vs. taxes I think is the independence of public broadcasting from the government. Imagine a bully as the head of government that can threaten to defund public broadcasting, if it doesn't report favorably for him.

Yes, the question is (and I won't pretend to know the answer), do the people have the need to be forced to pay to have independent journalism? Is there any country in the world, where free press works just as a product of a free market?

I'm living in Germany and I'm not super happy about the TV tax but I suppose we haven't got a better solution.

I think there are good examples, where the press operating in a free market can give good results. But the more important question is, if it is equal or better at its worst (which is exactly, when this is important).

Having a mix between private free press and publicly funded broadcasting probably creates some balance between the two worlds. I would expect the quality of the private press to decline (further), if we wouldn't have public broadcasting anymore.

Reuters does a pretty good job.

Well, in Denmark, government officials are part of the board of directors, so it's not independent either way.

Doesn't the parliament set spending? And if you're worried about the parliament not funding it, then why wouldn't you be worried about parliament just changing the law that set up the public broadcaster in the first place?

It isn't so simple. I think the federal government/parliament has to agree with the 16 state governments or so. There is a so called 'Rundfunkstaatsvertrag' (a treaty between states) governing the rules.

One reason might be that it's much easier to take a law changing the structure of the public broadcasting financing infront of the supreme court than it is to do so with regular budgeting.

This is what's happening in Australia to the ABC right now.

ive always thought this is a very moot argument. if the government decides to remove their backing from this scheme they still can. it really should be a tax, dependent on income. this whole apparatus for hunting people costs millions for nothing really...

Norway switched back to a tax-based model this year, where everybody above a certain income gets deducted between 150€ and 300€ more yearly. The cost to the average person went down, I assume that is mostly because there will be more total payers now. They also closed a 70-people office previously responsible for collecting the license fee.

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