> People Before Profit TD Paul Murphy told Newstalk the fee should be done away with: “We think it is beyond time to scrap the licence fee,” he said.He said big tech and social media companies, “dominate much of what should be public space online”.

What does this even mean? Is he aware that the internet isn’t a finite resource. The fact that big tech companies exist doesn’t preclude any public use of online space…

Seems like a really reach to dump the cost of our floundering national broadcaster on tech companies

Source for context: https://www.newstalk.com/news/tv-licence-fee-should-be-scrapped-and-replaced-with-big-tech-tax-murphy-1495821

by dmullaney

7 comments

  1. While I don’t agree with Deputy Murphy, he is right about the big tech companies now dominating the media landscape.

    They don’t produce any media, but are how everyone consumes it.

  2. He’s an idiot. “Big tech” are dominating in “some” of those spaces because they have created those spaces.

    And that’s only some of them, like Reddit and twitter and Facebook. Nobody hangs out on Dell discussion forums for shits and giggles.

  3. TYPICAL!! PEOPLE BEFORE PROFIT, WHO ARE PROPPED UP BY THE SHINNERS AND THEIR MEDIA BUDDIES, JUST WANT TO GET THEIR FACES INTO THE TROUGH AND DESTROY RURAL COMMUNITIES WHILE WE THE PEOPLE GET STEPPED ON

  4. Not sure how many times it needs to be pointed out that Paul Murphy is a complete moron

  5. I’m happy to pay a TV license or Communications fee or whatever to support publicly funded broadcasts. RTE could be scaled down to focus on public service broadcasting, news, current affairs, political coverage, investigative journalism, the arts, sport, public health. I think a much bigger slice should be given out in grants by the BAI to independent producers of podcasts, YouTube content and other platforms.

    Not sure why we need a tech tax or what that even has to do with anything. We need to have media that’s free of the demands of advertisers and corporate owners. We have basically that. It can be streamlined and improved. No need to change a funding mechanism that works.

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