(Most) TV-owning Danes are used to paying the biannual TV License Fee, which pays for the ability to receive public TV and radio broadcasts[1] from DR (Danmarks Radio). But now, in an attempt to rake in some more money, they have decided, that since they put up some of their shows (far from all of them and none of the syndicated shows/movies), everybody with access to the internet from their homes will have to pay up.
Up to now you only had to pay if you owned some sort of TV tuner and/or a radio receiver (the TV license fee and Radio license fee, respectively), but from Jan. 1, 2007 everyone owning an internet capable device and a connection as fast as or faster than 256 kbps will have to pay the TV license fee.
Seriously… I’d probably use it a little every now and then if I was able to, but they do not even support Linux! I am actually able to watch the shows with a some human interaction with the sources of the pages that embeds the video stream and a little going through the ASF playlist files manually to copy/paste the actual stream URLs to my media player of choice. I am not sure that my dad would be able to do that though — or for that case, nor would most of my Linux- (and Mac-)using friends.
OK, great, so I am actually able to watch the shows… Good, because their FAQ specifically states, that even if you use Linux or Mac (and are thus (in most cases) unable to watch the programs) you still have to pay. And as far as I know, this also goes for game consoles with internet access and cell phones that are capable of WAP, GPRS etc… I guess, even my Nintendo DS is enough, since I am able to buy a browser for it and use it to access the web. Same goes for all the PSPs out there.
Another problem presents itself…
Until very recently I was on a 256/256 kbps connection and that was definitely not fast enough to even watch the low-quality streams from DR without major hiccups or buffering half the show before pressing start. I would say that a 1 mbps pipe would be the slowest possible, to watch their streams — and the quality would still be questionable at best. (Especially the sound, they are really doing a bad job compressing that.)
To lay down some facts now… I own an old Thinkpad R32 running Debian Linux (unstable) on what is now a 1024/128 kbps[2] connection, I don’t own neither a TV or a radio (and I am getting along just fine, thanks). Until now, I have not been paying the license fees, which is perfectly legal, because I am not able to watch or listen to their programming, nor do I have any desire to. But, from Jan. 1, 2007, where nothing in my life changes — except for the calendar year — I will have to cough up 2000 DKK (~355 USD / ~270 EUR) a year just because I have a computer (and a Nintendo DS) and an internet connection. That is half a month’s income for a student such as me — it doubles the cost of my internet connection!
Now, the question is: is this fair?
I say NO!, not by a long shot! If DR wants people to pay for the content they access over the internet, then they will have to put some access control on their website, which can easily be done[3] — that is the only sensible way to do this; not force everyone with an internet capable device to cough up. This is the government forcing people to pay DR (a public service TV network, for crying out loud!) for having an internet connection!
By this logic, I should start lobbying for the government, so they can make everyone pay for being able to access lillesvin.net. That’s public service too! I’m telling you all the things you didn’t know you wanted to know… And all the things you didn’t know you didn’t care to know.
This reminds me so much about when Jubii.dk (a danish search engine that started out as a ripoff of Yahoo!) started talking about making the ISPs pay for their costumers being able to access the search engine — and take my word for it if you have not tried it out, it is nothing special. In fact, it is quite the opposite. Not surprisingly, that idea did not quite get the support that Jubii.dk had hoped for.
- 1
- This is not to be confused with the likes of the American public access channels. DR actually run some decent programs every now and then.
- 2
- The good people at Tele2 upped my downstream from 256 kbps to 1024 kbps! Wow, that’s a friggin’ 400% increase!!! OMG!!!1 … And, well, they downed my upstream from the lousy 256 kbps to an even lousier 128 kbps… They were even kind enough to give me notice 5 days after… Can they do that?!? I mean, decrease my upstream… I’ve got a server running on this line — 256 kbps was bad enough!
- 3
- Hire me to do it — I would love to!
that sucks indeed! Maybe there is some European law that can prevent this, as they have some laws regulating the income of the public broadcasting organizations, or are you danes not a real part of the European union?
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Ok, I’ll add it. But it would be nice if the text I typed in wasn’t wasted.
What i wanted to say was basically: I didn’t even know about this. And it pisses me off.
@ Datadevil >>
I think we’re as much in the EU as you guys, but I’m afraid there’s nothing much to do… I’m pretty sure someone would have discovered that.
@ Stfi >>
Hmm, it _should_ leave the text as is, if you use your back button. (I think that’s standard behavior in all browsers.)
On topic, I forgot some links: http://dr.dk/medielicens and http://stopcomputerlicens.dk — it blows so hard. Does any student have 2000 DKK to spare?
OT: it doesn’t in firefox (2). Dunno why. Might be a setting of mine?
Hmm… Weird… It doesn’t in mine either… I’ll look into it after exams and stuff… Probably…
The tax is per household. It’s 1075 twice a year. Compared to the previous 1200,- I welcome this.
Having a.. I don’t know.. a zillion apparatuses (is that a word?) that carry media in question I’m getting off cheap.
I do concur that this hurts the smaller ones. And as they say in the ads (on ad-free TV/radio) you pretty much cannot avoid it – then why the heck isn’t it charged as usual tax such as for the hospitals (you pretty much cannot avoid those either)..
On a DSL-related note. Slow upstream blows. My sad 256 kbps annoys me too :-)
Was ready to submit.. but ohh, no. I’m not quite finished :-) As for playing these streams here and there well hidden in their HTML. Try out MediaPlayer Connectivity Plugin for Firefox ( http://membres.lycos.fr/sethnakht/ ) – it really eases the task. Also it let’s you playback content in native VLC (or whatever) rather than inside you browser (does wonders for stability in FF2).
The old TV license fee was on a per household basis too… Once you paid the color TV fee, you were free to have as many receivers you desired.
And, yeah, as their commercials say, “Now we’ve got you all by the balls. How do you like us now?”
Seriously… They’re actually just showing how far you have to go to avoid paying up for something you should never have forced down your throat from the beginning…
I’ve set up an entry in my /etc/hosts that looks like this:
62.79.53.147 dr.dk http://www.dr.dk
DR won’t get another hit from this IP.
Fee:
1075 twice a year = 2150 per year ~= 2150 Søborg. Hmm.. Will that mean that when they move from amager the tax will be 2300 per year = 1150 twice a year?
But i agree too, that i should be tax as the rest of the tax.
Bjarke:
DR1: http://simulcast.dr.dk/index.php?url=mms://drcluster.jay.net/dr1&bitrate=high
DR2: http://simulcast.dr.dk/index.php?url=mms://drcluster.jay.net/dr2&bitrate=high
works with VLC.
Madsen: Do you think that equals getting the tv-tuner cut out of a (coulor) tv, in the sense of not having to pay the fee?
No, it doesn’t, but that way I won’t make any accidental hits on dr.dk.
In my opinion, they can’t claim payment for something I’m not using – and their log files won’t show a single hit from my IP. I mean, you don’t pay for all the things you DON’T buy in the super market…
I don’t think oaying the fee through the taxes is any better. I think the only reasonable way for DR to go, is access control. If you pay your license fee, then you get access to the online material, otherwise you don’t. Can that really be so hard? I mean, NFL does it to some degree – and it seems to be going just fine.
Seems my automagical text-to-link converter messed up your links – sorry about that.