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| Europe |
| Germany To Tax All Internet PCs |
| 2004-10-21 |
| Germany has become the first country in the world to tax private personal computers that are deemed to be "Internet-capable". The plan, long in the offing, was agreed in Berlin by the Conference of Prime Ministers of the Federal States of Germany on October 8. It is being billed as part of the expansion of the television and radio public services fee, which is administered by Germany's Radio and Television Licensing Authority and enforced by the universally despised GebÃŒhreneinzugszentrale (GEZ), which often resorts to controversial and illegal Gestapo-like methods of gathering information on private citizens. The new tax was originally planned to come into effect on January 1, 2007. That date still holds for businesses and large corporations, but private households will be forced to register their PCs before the deadline of March 31, 2005. Owners must then pay 17.03 euros a month for their PC unless they are already complying with the full GEZ tax for a registered television and radio... |
| Posted by:Anonymoose |
| #26 I wonder if German hacker community will take this as a direct challenge If not, there's already a "fix" in the works somewhere in Taiwan. |
| Posted by: Rafael 2004-10-21 9:47:08 PM |
| #25 With Asedwich, and I'll bet Jackal was being rantish. |
| Posted by: Shipman 2004-10-21 8:20:24 PM |
| #24 11A5S: Please stick around--you've got some good stuff and I for one would like to hear it. |
| Posted by: Asedwich 2004-10-21 8:17:37 PM |
| #23 The deal is the only people that these folks are going after are business which don't even come close to fooling around and watching state funded TV or listening to state funded radio on their computers. The people in Germany who go and and try to "catch cheaters" are not very popular and use all kinds of underhanded methods to get onto peoples homes to see how many and what kinds of recivers are there. It's a total byzantine organization. They even try to bill people who move out of the country for use it's reported. Thank god we don't have that kind of electronic media system here in the US. We would be paying hundreds a month. |
| Posted by: Sock Puppet of Doom 2004-10-21 7:39:42 PM |
| #22 Socialists getting hards on about redistributionism. |
| Posted by: BigEd 2004-10-21 7:16:38 PM |
| #21 "There is nothing worng with your television set.." |
| Posted by: Frank G 2004-10-21 5:48:25 PM |
| #20 I wonder if German hacker community will take this as a direct challenge. |
| Posted by: Stephen 2004-10-21 5:31:10 PM |
| #19 Jackal: You pipe in the signal from the antenna using shielded coax. You solder the coax shielding to the hole you make in the faraday cage to minimize leakage. If you were really anal, you could filter out the IF radiation from the antenna circuit by means of a high pass filter. Thanks for the gratuitous insult about the tinfoil, though! I'll go back to lurking now. |
| Posted by: 11A5S 2004-10-21 3:59:44 PM |
| #18 11A5S: "If I lived there, I think that I'd put a faraday cage around my den just to spite the bastards." Or how about tinfoil? Of course, a Faraday cage would make reception rather difficult. No, what you need is a TRF receiver. No LO, no radiation. Of course, for FM or TV it won't be very good, but you can't have everything. Or maybe a direct-conversion jobber would work. But the whole thing is just bizarre. I made crystal sets and 1- and 2-transistor radios when I was 11 years old. If I lived there, I would have had to have spent My allowance to get a license for them. Anyway, with the increase in the number of licensees, has the rate ever gone down? Of course not. No government revenue stream ever shrinks or goes away. |
| Posted by: jackal 2004-10-21 3:30:26 PM |
| #17 Germany funds Deutsche Welle with a tax on TVs and radios just like the Brits fund the BBC. This is just a widening of the net to catch internet savvy would-be "tax cheats." In order to obtain funding, the BBC requires that anyone using its services must pay for them. So, if you own a TV set and live in the UK, you could conceivably turn on the BBC broadcasts, so therefore you better pay. A colour television licence is £116 a year (around $192 US) and a black and white TV licence costs £38.50 a year (around $64 US) |
| Posted by: RWV 2004-10-21 3:07:50 PM |
| #16 I find the tax offensive because it is statist. What is far worse than the tax is the methods used to enforce it. I know that for a fact the in the UK, vans prowl around with direction finding equipment to find unregistered TVs and radios. Every TV and radio has secondary emissions at certain well known frequencies (455 KHz is the IF stage freq)that can be captured by a sufficiently sensitive receiver. If you get caught with an unregistered TV or radio, you are cited and pay an enormous fine. I don't know about you guys, but I really don't want the state engaging in eavesdropping like this. Fron the article, it seems that the Germans are doing the same kind of spying as the Brits. If I lived there, I think that I'd put a faraday cage around my den just to spite the bastards. |
| Posted by: 11A5S 2004-10-21 3:00:19 PM |
| #15 How many PC owners don't already have a TV and/or a radio? So what have you got? A list of everybody? Big deal. You already have near about everybody on other lists anyway. This is about taxes, not about totalitarian conspiracy. |
| Posted by: Tom 2004-10-21 2:41:06 PM |
| #14 Owners must then pay 17.03 euros a month for their PC unless they are already complying with the full GEZ tax for a registered television and radio... is there currently a tax on the use of tv's and radios? is there a sales tax in germany? if there is why should a person have to keep paying taxes? i am sure they are already paying taxes for the cable/satelite connections. |
| Posted by: Dan 2004-10-21 2:35:14 PM |
| #13 The article is disingenuous. Germans pay a tax for TVs and radios not unlike the levy on Brits for the BBC. Recognizing that PCs can receive audio and video bitstreams, the Germans just want to make sure that no one can escape the tax by listening to the radio or watching TV on their computer. If you already pay the TV/radio tax, then your PC is exempt. From Der Spiegel:Schon seit Jahren schielen die öffentlich-rechtlichen auf Computer, die dank Internetzugang voll funktionsfähige Radios beziehungsweise Fernseher sind. Bislang gelten PCs ohne TV-Karte nicht als Empfangsgeräte und müssen somit bei der GEZ nicht angemeldet werden. Wer über den PC Video- oder Audiostreams anschaut oder hört und kein Radio besitzt, konnte so bisher die 16 Euro Gebühr pro Monat sparen. |
| Posted by: RWV 2004-10-21 2:29:37 PM |
| #12 Lists of owners of (TV's, radios, websites, etc.) can be an awfully handy thing for a government to have. No doubt the UN wing of the Democratic party is watching this carefully... |
| Posted by: Seafarious 2004-10-21 2:10:04 PM |
| #11 Groth's comments, among others, have had lawyers frantically scanning the German Constitution for loopholes (notwithstanding the fact that the constitution, along with the Federal Republic of Germany itself, technically ceased to exist as a legal document on July 17, 1990) Haaahahahahahahaaaahahahahaaahahaaaaaa.... |
| Posted by: Bomb-a-rama 2004-10-21 1:51:04 PM |
| #10 "With the same argument, the public broadcast services can demand from me a fee for the existence of my briefcase, because in principle it may contain an ARD television magazine that provides free viewing tips," says Arndt Groth, President of the Federal Association of Digital Businesses (BVDW). Groth's comments, among others, have had lawyers frantically scanning the German Constitution for loopholes (notwithstanding the fact that the constitution, along with the Federal Republic of Germany itself, technically ceased to exist as a legal document on July 17, 1990). Oh wonderful. Maybe the new EU constitution will have something to say about it. |
| Posted by: Rafael 2004-10-21 1:41:12 PM |
| #9 The theory for those who resent having tv's and radios registered is this: Should there be some kind of totalitarian regime coming to power that would like to restrict the flow of contrary info coming into the country, they would definitely like to know who potentially has the hardware to access the frequencies you are trying to block. I might be wrong, but there are some instances (such as N Korea) where that kind of thing can get you in serious shit with the authorities (having the wrong kind of receiver allowing you to hear something other than the party line). Whether present-day Germany would once again be the kind of place you would have to worry about that kind of thing, I don't know. I do recall hearing that listening to the BBC during the Nazis was a good way of risking getting whacked. As for the PC's....well, try to surf freely in Saudi Arabia for Jewish websites. 'Nuff said. |
| Posted by: Desert Blondie 2004-10-21 1:33:10 PM |
| #8 But as a sidenote and in order to forestall misunderstanding of my post above, I'll just have to note that I also find such registration of radios, tvs, or computers *offensive*. I just don't find it very dangerous. |
| Posted by: Aris Katsaris 2004-10-21 1:27:35 PM |
| #7 RN> Registration is the key. If you know who has the radio/TV's, if you know who has the PC's, if you know who has the GUNS...You are in total control! Um, how would that work? Even if I knew that everyone has PCs, everyone has radio/TVs and everyone has guns, I don't see how that would give me even a *tiny* bit of control, let alone "total" of it. I've heard about TV registration in UK -- didn't know that Germany also had it. |
| Posted by: Aris Katsaris 2004-10-21 1:25:32 PM |
| #6 Bingo, RN. This is very unsettling to Americans - and not just the bureaucratic stupidity of it - the entire notion of Gov't licensing / registration where it serves no real purpose other than taxation (why? because they can) or to assist in tracking people down... smells like terminal fascism to me. It's one thing to register a car - to tax it for road, bridge, public safety costs, etc. It's a whole 'nuther thing to register a fucking radio. I'll bet they go apeshit over HAM units, i.e. transmit-capable gear... Is there any justification for this that should withstand the anger of the electorate? "Be a good little drone, folks, and let us know when you move, K? Oh, and you'll owe [mumble] Euros per month for the privilege." I'll bet this is the norm in you-know-who's beloved E(ternally fucked)U Nanny State. |
| Posted by: .com 2004-10-21 1:23:14 PM |
| #5 Registration is the key. If you know who has the radio/TV's, if you know who has the PC's, if you know who has the GUNS...You are in total control! |
| Posted by: RN 2004-10-21 1:10:54 PM |
| #4 ..unless they are already complying with the full GEZ tax for a registered television and radio... A tax on a TV and a radio????? Good heavens... |
| Posted by: Bomb-a-rama 2004-10-21 1:08:27 PM |
| #3 Did the Germans get this idea from the Sauds or the ChiComs? |
| Posted by: Mrs. Davis 2004-10-21 12:45:19 PM |
| #2 ...Do these people have an office somehwhere where they try to figure out things that will hurt them the most?... Mike |
| Posted by: Mike Kozlowski 2004-10-21 12:34:24 PM |
| #1 This has stupid and insane written all over it. The tax sounds amazingly high - like financial rape. Unfuckingbelievable. Talk about your basic blinders - penny-wise / pound foolish. Yewbetcha - discourage use of the greatest information tool ever invented. It'll do wonders for your country. TGA - time for a bitch-slapping jihad on the appropriate Gov't morons, bro. |
| Posted by: .com 2004-10-21 12:32:12 PM |