[drewmcarthur]

public means public, if something is paid for by tax money, it should be licensed for public use

[blueflow]

I was about to call that the Rundfunkbeitrag is not legally a tax (Steuer), but a tax (Beitrag). For some reason that difference does not seem to exist in English and it translates to the same word??

[sunaookami]

It doesn't matter if it's masquerading as a license fee, it's by all means a tax - it's required by law and you go to jail if you do not pay it and you have to pay it even if you don't want to consume their content.

[mschuster91]

I'd translate "Beitrag" literally to "contribution", maybe add a "mandatory" as qualifier.

The key difference is that taxes are completely under discretion of parliamentary control, whereas the Rundfunkbeitrag is under discretion of the individual broadcast authority governance boards (which are too closely tied to politicians for my comfort, but that's another thing).

[ggm]

Impost.

Duty. (like stamp duty)

Fee.

Licence/License. (maybe like the BBC licence fee?)

Levy. (see below)

There is also the concept of the hypothicated tax. The only exemplar I know is the Australian Medicare levy, the money is solely to be used, and spent on Medicare, and no other purpose enshrined in law. People often claim petrol tax was designed to pay for roads infrastructure but it wasn't legally bound, and is not a hypothicated tax. Nor is the ULEZ and like costs to drive in the inner city with a petrol engine. They are designed to discourage use of ICE not to pay for them.

[jupp0r]

It doesn't exist because the distinction is meaningless. The government forcing you to pay money to a government (adjacent) institution is a tax for all practical purposes.

[vaidhy]

Equivalent might be a bond paid by tax payers. The money collected is used only for a specific purpose, but you cannot avoid paying it. For me, a tax goes into a general fund that is budgeted for common use while a special purpose bond (or a tax) is money collected for a singular purpose and accounted as such.

[trueismywork]

The difference between Steuer and Beitrag is an artificial distinction that the German government has made in their laws. It has not much to do with the language itself. It's just that because German language is not used much outside Germany, official government terms and language basically get conflated.

[callalex]

If I’m understanding the concept correctly, in the USA we describe that kind of tax as “earmarked” which is a reference to folding the corner of a page in a book to mark your place.

[kiney]

Because the reason is totally made up by german bureaucrats to steal more from the people

[sealeck]

Tax vs contribution?

[Grimeton]

broadcast license fee/tv license fee

[riedel]

This often a complicated case regarding competition law. In our neoliberal world giving away something for free that was subsidized is often seen as destroying market. The national CIO of Germany at one time recommended public bodies to us copyleft (also the EC opted for EPL) , rather than putting it into public domain. I also like this idea. However, this is fundamentaly different from the US. The German weather service even had to shutdown some functions in their free app due to a court order.

[kioleanu]

As a loophole, they ended up making the app paid as not constitute disloyal competition, which, depending on the angle makes sense: you have a competitor that you can actually never compete because regardless of what they do, their funding never runs out. It’s not a fair battle. On the other hand tho, wetter online were crying like little kids about an app that was doing what a government was supposed to do.

https://www.heise.de/news/BGH-Urteil-Staatlicher-Wetterdiens...

[zelphirkalt]

I would rather have a model where anyone can contribute and can see the code, if they want to, than a model, where there is "competition" of who can make the shittiest but most profitable broadcast system.

[freedomben]

Thanks, I strongly feel that publicy-funded software should be at least open source if not public domain, but the market impact is a wrinkle I hadn't considered before.

[drewmcarthur]

that’s incredibly silly

[constantcrying]

One would hope so, but they don't even open the shows for public use, they don't even keep them around so people can watch the things they had to pay for.

[fsflover]

If you really think so, you should sign this petition: https://publiccode.eu

[drewmcarthur]

signed, thank you for posting!