WTF. If they're not supplying the broadband (which they're not) then they don't get to collect for it. This is so irritating - it's this sort of thing which casued me to leave the country. The Irish government figures that since it's an island, they can just use the geography to squeeze people for anything, especially when times are tough.<p>Be interesting to see how this would stack up against the recent EU decision to make internet access a legal right (not free as in beer). I'm guessing EU law would trump this transparent attempt at a shakedown.
In Tokyo, they hire an army of people to canvas houses and apartments and collect a modest fee (about 10-20 dollars) per household to support public TV. The general population just pays, but many expats make up some excuse or feign ignorance until they go away.<p>If Ireland really needs the TV license revenue, they will have to start charging per head, rather than per device. Per device sales, just mean that companies will stop selling neat things in your country and the black/grey market will thrive, at the expense of consumers.
"Last month the BBC Internet Blog said that if, in the future, 'some people stopped receiving live broadcasts at all, stopped paying their licence fee, but continued to consume television programmes, solely on-demand' then they would consider having the Government extend its TV licence fee to cover Internet access too."<p>This is basically what's behind the iPlayer, IMO. It's not wildly useful for TV (I use it for radio mostly) because the quality and speed are often flaky. But it does give the BBC the opportunity to say "people are receiving our shows without paying the licence fee, and that's not fair, etc". It just won't wash to say "people are using YouTube and we're not getting a cut" or "more people are using online video rental in preference to our output and refusing to get a licence" so this gives them the "in" they require.<p>I wouldn't mind if the BBC's output wasn't so poor. They have nothing of the quality of The Wire, The Sopranos, BSG, etc. Cheesy soap operas and reality shows seem to be the kind of "high quality original output" the BBC aspires to. I'd almost prefer to do without broadband than pay them for that crap.
The contentious point will come if/when people start being charged for TV content for using a device that <i>can</i> receive streamed TV - eg businesses being charged a licence fee for each pc/blackberry/ipod. I'll be interested to see how this goes.
As a person from Ireland, I feel sick at how much we're being taken for every single day. This is just another scam that we will accept and pay for if approved. UK here I come
a) Duplicate post and
b) Completely incorrect anyway<p>I hoped we'd put this one to rest last time - <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=598513" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=598513</a>