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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”

#61

Post by Cthulhu_ »

Keverw wrote: post #36

Kinda reminds me a bit of how Milwaukee wanted money from Pokémon Go because the players was playing in the local park and some even went off the path so they were arguing the app is responsible for plants and stuff being damaged. The city lost but had to pay $83,000 in attorney fees. I think it's a bit of a overreach that a city in Indiana is trying to regulate a company in California. I know Ohio cities can have fr…

That's a BS ruling; it's the people that would be responsible for damages, and only if they moved into areas they're not supposed to.

Parks are public spaces and they should both applaud and put a bit more money into them for what Pokemon Go managed to achieve.

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

#62

Post by Cthulhu_ »

pankajdoharey wrote: post #30
smabie wrote: post #14

So according to them, they should get paid for any video watched in their city? Sounds kind of pathetic, tbh.

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.

Porn tax. They can combine it with cute cat video taxes as well if need be.

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

#63

Post by Cthulhu_ »

amelius wrote: post #12

Funny thing about net neutrality is that even the biggest proponents of laissez-faire capitalism think it's a great idea.

Citation needed; cable / internet companies LOVE the idea of them being able to get money from both consumers and content providers like Netflix. Facebook wanted to make its own internet in areas with low internet penetration where people had to pay for non-Facebook traffic. I'm sure it's the same with a lot of other tech companies.

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

#64

Post by aikah »

Thervicarl wrote: post #44
aikah wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...…

> 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.

You don't know my income,monthly expenses, how many kids I have to feed, whether I have a mortgage, an alimony to pay or not... You have no idea what my budget is.

So less than 0.5% of what disposable income I have exactly? Tell me.

I'm not paying a flat tax (the tax doesn't depend on household income as you are insinuating) for something I have no use for at first place.

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

#65

Post by ketzu »

Mirioron wrote: post #43
stkdump wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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.

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

#66

Post by mvn9 »

shidima wrote: post #57
mvn9 wrote: post #23

This can only be the first step. Since this is a political move, why not change the law and restructure taxes? It's difficult for cities to tax value creation if that value is created globally, in a data centre, somewhere on the planet. Why should the city that just happens to host the data centre be able to tax the profits that are created in that data centre? Or worse, why should a company choose any city for its h…

But if not this way, then should every city in the world get a cut of the tax? Can a tiny place in Holland then get a cut of the taxes?

That's the question. The inhabitants of that place will use global services. Should that tiny place get a cut or should it tax its inhabitants directly?

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

#67

Post by ketzu »

amelius wrote: post #12

Funny thing about net neutrality is that even the biggest proponents of laissez-faire capitalism think it's a great idea.

While I think net neutrality is very popular, I think there are quite a few people not voicing their reservations against it because of that.

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

#68

Post by tallanvor »

alfiedotwtf wrote: post #47
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 sa…

And then you tried to explain how it's even worse to let advertisers know enough information about you to target you specifically, I hope.

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

#69

Post by alfiedotwtf »

tallanvor wrote: post #68
alfiedotwtf wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 sa…

And then you tried to explain how it's even worse to let advertisers know enough information about you to target you specifically, I hope.

I drilled that into my kids from an early age, and they’ve always known to only input fake data... that’s why she only gets ads for health insurance, back medication, and financial investments lol!

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

#70

Post by BLKNSLVR »

alfiedotwtf wrote: post #47
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 sa…

Did you duly educate her as to the privacy concessions she'll have to make to avoid targeted advertising?

Did you duly educate her that she already has a user profile being built within whatever apps and services you allow her to use?

There's surely a middle ground, but where we are ain't it.

Edit: I see you've already answered the similar reply. In that case, you're saying that non-targeted ads are stupid, but you're educating your children to input fake data. That doesn't compute...

Edit 2: First sentence should read "as a result of targeted advertising" rather than "to avoid targeted advertising". Sigh.

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