Vienna – There is currently no license fee to pay for computers with an Internet connection. This was decided by the Administrative Court (VwGH). The court announced in a broadcast on Monday that the reception of radio programs via internet streaming does not qualify as a broadcast performance.
(Symbolic photo) Photo: Shutterstock/Yeamake
Background to the decision: GIS Fees Info Service GmbH, which collects broadcasting fees for the ORF in Austria, had imposed broadcasting fees for the operation of a broadcast reception device (radio) on a Viennese who has a broadband Internet connection and notebooks with loudspeakers in his apartment .
The broadcasting fees are also associated with other taxes and fees, in particular the ORF program fee and the art funding contribution.
The person concerned then lodged a complaint with the Federal Administrative Court.
This overturned the GIS decision because the computers did not have any radio reception modules (“TV card” or “radio card”) and the reception of radio programs via streaming from the Internet did not qualify as a broadcast performance.
The Administrative Court now rejected the GIS's appeal against it as unfounded and stated in its decision that the legislature did not want to include electronic performances over the Internet in the constitutional definition of the term broadcasting.
“Broadcast reception facilities within the meaning of the Broadcasting Fee Act are only those devices that use 'broadcast technologies' (wireless terrestrial path, cable networks, satellite).
A computer that can be used to receive radio programs using these broadcast technologies (e.g. using a TV or radio card, DVB-T module) is therefore to be assessed as a radio receiving device,” said the Administrative Court. “A computer with just an internet connection is not a radio reception device, so there are no broadcasting fees to pay for it.”
(APA, July 20, 2015)
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