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Comment by lloeki | Hacker News Reader

In France the difference is that you pay a broadcast tax every year for owning a TV. Even if the tuner is unplugged. Even if the TV is covered with dust in a basement. Even if you rip the tuner apart and use it as a screen only (this specific case has been lawyered to death right up to the last court of Cassation).

Because computers and smartphones, the law has since been extended to also include the case where you own no TV but either a PCI or USB tuner, or any internet access that includes TV streaming (e.g those that come with a set-top box, or those extra options on mobile plans).

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Sweden used to have it like this. You had to pay a license for owning a TV receiver. But then the public broadcaster also started offering streaming over the internet. Then they declared "also a computer is a TV receiver" and required everyone with a computer to pay TV license. If you refused, you were taken to court. The court agreed with the broadcaster. Only in the highest court was it thrown out. Had it not, there would have been an explicit tax on owning a computer in Sweden.

This was a despicable period and since then the law has changed. Now there is no license fee on owning a TV receiver. Instead everyone pays a tax whether they own a TV, a computer, whatever and no matter if they watch TV or not.

Same with Finland. TV licensing fees were replaced with public radio tax.

There is still a tax on computers (or rather storage) in Sweden. We pay an extra fee for private copying set on the number of megabytes you can store on harddrives, CD's, DVD's or flash drives. But at least that means it's legal for you to copy your friends DVD's and music collection, no matter what the license says in the box.

Yes, not on computers, but on storage as you say. And it is a one time tax on top of the price, not a recurring yearly tax as the license fee would have been.

There's something odd about the logic here.

"Once upon a time, the government tried to impose a tax you had to pay if you had a TV or a computer, which was bad because even people who never watched TV would have had to pay it. But it's better now, because instead there's a tax that literally everyone pays, even if they don't watch TV and even if they don't have a computer."

I'm struggling to see what principles would make the first situation bad without also making the second one bad.

The second one is more just in the context of public TV being a public service: society pays as a whole, instead of having some unenforceable, incomplete, broken kludge to make only people that watch it pay, like for a commercial service.

Ideally the individual cost is very low, so it’s not outlandish to have everyone pay, especially as even if you don’t watch it, you benefit from the diffusion of qualitative culture and news in society.

By not making everyone pay, this public service has to compete for attention with commercial ones and risks drifting away in quality.

The counterpoint is that such a state-owned channel could become a propaganda tool.

Because it is less hypocritic and more fair. The license fee was per household, the tax is per person. Many dodged the fee while still having a TV. Cannot do that now

But both are bad, the former more so than the current, at least.

I like Australia's system better. You pay a very minor tax yearly regardless of tv ownership and it funds a few government run TV channels and radio stations as well as a news site. Despite the current governments best efforts, the ABC is still the only worthwhile news site in the country.

Same in Germany but the tax is a fixed price of EUR 17.50 each month per household and no escape from it except for very few special cases (e.g. university students receiving financial support from the state).

Personally I agree with a mandatory monthly cost but it is way too high, should be in proportion to household income and the people in the upper ranks of the broadcasting companies shouldn't earn absurdly high wages and pensions.

Despite that I like to support proper journalism that is accessible to everyone and content that is often ad-free to watch/listen/read.

It’s 138eu here

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_licence#France

The issue for me is mostly that I refuse to pay for the bucketloads of despicably low quality content they put out. A shame, because there’s Arte (TV) and FIP (radio) which have quality stuff, but they only get a fraction of it.

I guess that‘s always the case with the preferred content. I don‘t care about Schlager clap-along shows with enormous budgets but it‘s what a lot of people like. On the other hand most of the people won‘t care about my beloved Arte and late night shows.

The TV tax is a great idea, but it's twice as expensive as netflix. On the bright side, you get decent news channels, and Arte.

I would say the tax makes no sense. It‘s a reminiscence of some times that are long gone. People pay a tax for a bloated system and TV channels that mostly pensioners use. The quality of the programs is very low. Also, few people know that the tax is also paid by companies, based on the number of employees and cars.

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