Ireland on the verge of extending TV licence to cover Internet | Hacker News Reader

Ireland on the verge of extending TV licence to cover Internet

samknows.com

13 pointsnickb16 comments

WTF. If they're not supplying the broadband (which they're not) then they don't get to collect for it. This is so irritating - it's this sort of thing which casued me to leave the country. The Irish government figures that since it's an island, they can just use the geography to squeeze people for anything, especially when times are tough.

Be interesting to see how this would stack up against the recent EU decision to make internet access a legal right (not free as in beer). I'm guessing EU law would trump this transparent attempt at a shakedown.

Like it or not, I think this will be common in countries that have publicly funded programming. Germany (where I live) has had this for a while.

A TV license, or the need to buy one for having your computer connected to the internet? Being Irish, I have a particular problem with the way it's implemented at home because the license fee is onerous but you have to put up with ads as well, so you get the worst of both worlds. I'm in favor of public broadcasting but I feel it should offer value for money.

I lived without television for quite a long time, and would be quite happy to do so again, since the main benefit of a large screen to me is the ability to watch movies (on DVD). So I am rather hostile to the idea of having someone come to the house and insist on looking around to see whether I have a television or the not. Collecting a license even if I don't own a TV is just insufferable.

The German version:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gebühreneinzugszentrale#Charges...

I don't like it because I don't watch any TV programming, but it makes perfect sense to me. People that were watching things on TV are now watching them online. Many young people don't have televisions. So either public programming goes or it gets collected based on internet usage.

In Tokyo, they hire an army of people to canvas houses and apartments and collect a modest fee (about 10-20 dollars) per household to support public TV. The general population just pays, but many expats make up some excuse or feign ignorance until they go away.

If Ireland really needs the TV license revenue, they will have to start charging per head, rather than per device. Per device sales, just mean that companies will stop selling neat things in your country and the black/grey market will thrive, at the expense of consumers.

Irish TV licenses are charged per address, at least for domestic TVs: http://www.citizensinformation.ie/categories/consumer-affair...

Certainly that's how it's done in the UK: one TV licence covers up to 7 (I think) TVs at one domestic address.

"Last month the BBC Internet Blog said that if, in the future, 'some people stopped receiving live broadcasts at all, stopped paying their licence fee, but continued to consume television programmes, solely on-demand' then they would consider having the Government extend its TV licence fee to cover Internet access too."

This is basically what's behind the iPlayer, IMO. It's not wildly useful for TV (I use it for radio mostly) because the quality and speed are often flaky. But it does give the BBC the opportunity to say "people are receiving our shows without paying the licence fee, and that's not fair, etc". It just won't wash to say "people are using YouTube and we're not getting a cut" or "more people are using online video rental in preference to our output and refusing to get a licence" so this gives them the "in" they require.

I wouldn't mind if the BBC's output wasn't so poor. They have nothing of the quality of The Wire, The Sopranos, BSG, etc. Cheesy soap operas and reality shows seem to be the kind of "high quality original output" the BBC aspires to. I'd almost prefer to do without broadband than pay them for that crap.

The contentious point will come if/when people start being charged for TV content for using a device that can receive streamed TV - eg businesses being charged a licence fee for each pc/blackberry/ipod. I'll be interested to see how this goes.

Mobile phones are thankfully not included.

http://www.independent.ie/business/irish/mobiles-exempt-from...

That makes sense - thanks for the clarification. Assuming there is a similar exclusion for business pcs then it might not be too bad. I suspect the end result will focus on residential homes with a TV or internet access.

As a person from Ireland, I feel sick at how much we're being taken for every single day. This is just another scam that we will accept and pay for if approved. UK here I come

You have no idea how good you have it. I spent a week on vacation in Ireland last year and spent some time studying your politics and listening to your talk radio. The political astuteness of your median Irishman is lightyears beyond the norm here in the States. The things that still pass as an outrage in Ireland wouldn't even be worth a mention here or in most of the world.

Hey man, got any examples? This seems to me a pretty interesting topic.

What the hell? Is the RTE part of the government? If so, why don't they just be honest and raise taxes?

a) Duplicate post and b) Completely incorrect anyway

I hoped we'd put this one to rest last time - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=598513

Denmark did that recently. It is really just a poll tax.

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