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Cities sue Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, claim they owe cable “franchise fees”

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Re: Cities sue Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, claim they owe cable “franchise fees”

#41

Post by deanclatworthy »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #11

This reminds me of the DR (Denmarks Radio - which is also a Public TV sort of like the BBC) license, you used to have to pay it for TV. I didn't have a tv so I stopped paying. Then a year or two later they passed a law that if you had a computer you had to pay. I guess lots of European countries have a similar license. They are phasing the license out in the next couple years, but it used to really piss me off becaus…

In Finland there is a media tax that is taken out of everyone's salary. I don't think it's optional. I've never paid close enough attention to care. I think it subsidises our state broadcaster YLE and perhaps some other things. Maybe a Finn can chip in and explain...

> The public broadcasting tax, also known as the Yle tax, replaced the license fee in 2013. The tax ranges from 50 euros to 140 euros per person and per year, depending on income. Minors and persons with low income are exempt from the tax.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yle#:~:text=Yle%20tax,-Main%20....

Re: Cities sue Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, claim they owe cable “franchise fees”

#42

Post by RcouF1uZ4gsC »

It seems on HN, that a lot of people are in favor of municipal owned last mile fiber as opposed to ISPs. However, this case makes me wonder if that becomes the case, would we eventually see more shenanigans like this with cities and towns trying to charge internet services for access to their citizens. Without competition, I could see them becoming even worse than AT&T and Comcast.

Re: Cities sue Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, claim they owe cable “franchise fees”

#43

Post by Mirioron »

stkdump wrote: post #33
undreren wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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?

Re: Cities sue Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, claim they owe cable “franchise fees”

#44

Post by Thervicarl »

aikah wrote: post #37
bryanrasmussen wrote: post #11

This reminds me of the DR (Denmarks Radio - which is also a Public TV sort of like the BBC) license, you used to have to pay it for TV. I didn't have a tv so I stopped paying. Then a year or two later they passed a law that if you had a computer you had to pay. I guess lots of European countries have a similar license. They are phasing the license out in the next couple years, but it used to really piss me off becaus…

Yeah, France has the "redevance télé". You have to explicitly refuse any cable service from your ISP in order not to pay it. Otherwise you're screwed. And its cost is significant, I will never pay for such thing.

> You have to explicitly refuse any cable service from your ISP in order not to pay it

Legally, you have to pay if you have a television in you home and you are subject to paying the residence tax (which will soon be applicable to less than 20% of homes anyway).

> And it's significant

No, it's not. It's like less than 0.5% of the tax you are paying (considering income tax, social tax, residence/homeowning tax, VAT...). They just keep it because they can rile up /distract people when they increase the TV tax by 5 euros.

And it is a way for the government to pressure public TV/radio into some obedience (since the government can basically cut a large part of their funding of these TV/radio by removing this tax).

Re: Cities sue Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, claim they owe cable “franchise fees”

#45

Post by smabie »

Legogris wrote: post #39
pankajdoharey wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, what next Spotify tax for music broadcast? Freaking city mafias and the politicians running them, tax anything that has revenues. A political upheaval is impending.

Several countries have a mandated tariff on any kind of digital media storage (HDDs, memory cards, etc) and yes, there have been lobbying and talks on imposing this on cloud services as well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_copying_levy

So nice to see companies offload their dirty work onto government. Crony capitalism at its finest.

Re: Cities sue Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, claim they owe cable “franchise fees”

#46

Post by Mirioron »

kchoudhu wrote: post #26
boring_twenties wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you turn them off? Just make their prices 5% higher than other regions.

I don't think most people will notice an extra 48 cents on their bill every month.

You could outline it in red with a note.

Re: Cities sue Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, claim they owe cable “franchise fees”

#47

Post by alfiedotwtf »

eric4smith wrote: post #5

By that reasoning, I'm using the "Public right of way" to make this comment. Therefore, I'm a defendant. Listen, I get it. They want some compensation from Netflix, Hulu and Disney+ eating up all their local bandwidth. But that's where the money was. They need to skate where the money is going, not where it was. The money was in broadcast TV and cable. And most of it is still there. But it's rapidly being sucked away…

> And at some point advertisers are going to wake up and realize the premium that broadcast and cable operators are charging per 1000 viewers is not really worth that much more than what YouTube pays Jake Paul.

Tangential: I was watching free to air last night with my 7 year old (we both never watch TV) and she innocently asked “does everyone watching this show see the same ad”. I said yes and the look on her face said it all. Even at 7 she knew that non-targeted ads are stupid

Re: Cities sue Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, claim they owe cable “franchise fees”

#48

Post by mercora »

stkdump wrote: post #33
undreren wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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...

Re: Cities sue Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, claim they owe cable “franchise fees”

#49

Post by seventh-chord »

undreren wrote: post #17
bryanrasmussen wrote: post #11

This reminds me of the DR (Denmarks Radio - which is also a Public TV sort of like the BBC) license, you used to have to pay it for TV. I didn't have a tv so I stopped paying. Then a year or two later they passed a law that if you had a computer you had to pay. I guess lots of European countries have a similar license. They are phasing the license out in the next couple years, but it used to really piss me off becaus…

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.

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.

Re: Cities sue Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, claim they owe cable “franchise fees”

#50

Post by patates »

stkdump wrote: post #33
undreren wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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