Yet another Hacker News

BBC licence fee to be extended with 'YouTube tax' to force more to pay

15 points beejiu 1 hour ago 15 comments

xvxvx 1 hour ago | parent

“It’s not fair that people are essentially able to watch television content but avoid the licence fee.”

How about this: it’s not fair that one propaganda-centered corporation that shelters pedophiles is forcing people to fund its existence. They think they own the airwaves and everyone else is merely riding their coattails. Now they’re trying to go after YouTube, Netflix and Disney? Hopefully they’ve just bit off more than they can chew. RIP BBC.

dpark 56 minutes ago | parent

I don’t know what the pedophile statement is about but funding public broadcasting is a reasonable thing for a government to do. The US is currently showing that independent journalism does not necessarily protect from a decline into government propaganda.

doublerabbit 53 minutes ago | parent

Many years ago; 2012, the BBC were exposed to shielding pedophiles. Operation Yew Tree exposed all the dark-murk going on within [0].

The BBC knew this but covered it up. Jimmy Savile was the main vile person in the case but it was later revealed that many of children's TV presenters had inappropriately conducted child abuse.

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Yewtree

dpark 20 minutes ago | parent

Did they cover it up? I have heard about Savile. I had not heard that the BBC was implicated in actively hiding it (vs being incompetent/negligent and having no pathways to report it).

ChocolateGod 6 minutes ago | parent

[delayed]

micv 53 minutes ago | parent

That quote is incredible really. The current fee and its terms are just about justified because the BBC plays a big role in maintaining the transmission infrastructure and the relevant standards for the formats. What does it have to do with YouTube or any streaming service's material getting from A to B? Bugger all as far as I know. It has no role in the UK's Internet infrastructure. And if it's part of any of the consortiums that are responsible for the standards it's getting a cut of the patent fees already for that.

Might as well ask me to pay an OpenReach licence fee to support the national standard even though I'm using Virgin Media.

bigyabai 52 minutes ago | parent

You might not have seen it, but "propaganda-centered corporation that shelters pedophiles" is the new media norm ever since the Paramount/Warner Bros. merger.

dpark 58 minutes ago | parent

The BBC license fee is weird. Functionally everyone has a TV of some sort. If you want to tax everyone to pay for BBC content, why not just charge every taxpayer consistently (minus whatever discounts legislators think are appropriate). This “extending to streaming services” thing is bizarre. Netflix licenses BBC content if they stream it (right?) so this is asking for double payment.

micv 37 minutes ago | parent

The licence fee is currently only due if you watch live content. Owning a TV is not sufficient as there are now many people who own a TV set but don't actually use it to watch TV broadcasts, and there's not really much distinction between a TV and a computer screen other than size (kudos if anyone reading has a 70" computer screen though) and having a TV tuner built in these days.

That's the root issue really. The BBC is a provider of media that's increasingly irrelevant, and even if approval of it hadn't declined precipitously over the last decade or so it'd still have a big issue with the youth mostly not being interested in that format at all. It's not the only reason for declining ratings (declining quality is a big one) but it's a bad sign for the future.

fakedang 23 minutes ago | parent

To be fair, they dug their own grave. Schmoozing to the party in power for the last decade practically destroyed all of their credibility in the eyes of the youth. Not to mention, the BBC was the champion of empty virtue signalling in its programming, which gave enough fodder to neo-right online media outlets to render it irrelevant in the eyes of the right-wing population. Perhaps the only ones who'll clutch their BBC pearls are the Telegraph readers still dreaming of the good old days of yore.

micv 18 minutes ago | parent

Yeah, I don't honestly know anyone who's even remotely happy with the BBC these days. There are different hopping off points, but no-one really respects them all that much any more and they don't exactly do a lot to keep people tuning in with the absolute rubbish they fill their schedule with.

yladiz 49 minutes ago | parent

Without getting into the territory of if the tax should exist at all, in general I think the way it works in Germany is the optimal way to approach a tax of this kind: tax each household (not individuals), with few exceptions. This gets rid of the whole trouble of people checking if you should pay the tax, because you have to, and so it dramatically simplifies the system.

gaiagraphia 45 minutes ago | parent

Revenue tax all media services, and put the money into a public pot for whichever broadcasting company wants to use it for 'the public good'.

Maybe split it up between education which will support the local industry in the sector, infrastructure, mitigating any negative externalities, etc.

A "TV license" is the most retarded way of collecting taxes, ever. It's just so utterly dumb.

In fact, split off the department of media and culture, and have it fully self-funded by this tax. Let industries govern themselves to streamline national government.

tonyedgecombe 37 minutes ago | parent

>Let industries govern themselves ...

I wonder what could go wrong with that.

rvz 37 minutes ago | parent

They should know this is absolutely unenforceable.

Flere-Imsaho 11 minutes ago | parent

"Currently, anyone who uses a television to watch content must pay the licence fee even if they do not watch the BBC."

This is simply not true. Which puts me in doubt about the rest of this "article". The rules are:

1. Watch or record live TV on any channel or service

2. Use BBC iPlayer

Note the "live" part of this.

I'm not a fan of the BBC, and so I don't pay a license. Being forced to pay for something I wouldn't use would force me to break the law.

ChocolateGod 7 minutes ago | parent

[delayed]

ChocolateGod 8 minutes ago | parent

[delayed]