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Court outlaws German Weather Service's free weather app

267 points by 4ad 7y ago

ryanseys 7y ago
Reminds me of John Oliver's coverage of AccuWeather. [0] [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMGn9T37eR8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMGn9T37eR8
- ConradKilroy 7y ago
  I was so about to mention that!
  - slenk 7y ago
    I will have to watch. I didn't realize this was all a thing
triangulum 7y ago
This is very surprising for a country like Germany, which has a long history of providing public services for the common good, rather than profit oriented motives. On the other hand, a comparably developed country like Australia is seeing many essential services being privatised, but the weather service rightfully remains a sacred government entity, with a high amount of public trust. http://www.bom.gov.au/app/ http://www.bom.gov.au/app/ > With the BOM Weather app you can check the weather—wherever you are—from Australia's official weather source, the Bureau of Meteorology.
- plantain 7y ago
  >has a long history of providing public services for the common good, rather than profit oriented motives. Hahaha. BOM charges extortionate, nonviable prices for <i>everything</i> above the basics. Australia is one of the hardest countries for us to get reliable weather data from. The trouble with government agencies run on a cost-recovery basis, is they have no incentive to do anything at a cost that will be recoverable.
  - dannyw 7y ago
    Should run govt agencies on a 75% cost recovery basis.
heyitsguay 7y ago
Don't German citizens pay for this information through taxes? Is this different from forbidding citizens from using the police instead of private security companies because they're providing security services "for free"?
- mqus 7y ago
  Well, the security part (extreme weather warnings) were and will be free, just the weather prediction part is not. And from the brief period where it was free I remember it as being a impressively good app, completely unexpected from a government agency, which was probably one of the reasons the company sued... Edit: The data is also freely available for private use on their website, just not as nice and compact.
- smarnach 7y ago
  Yes. We are all paying the DWD through taxes. The DWD provides its data to private companies for free, including WetterOnline, the company that sued. All the companies do is providing apps and web sites for visualization of the data. I think the main reason for the lawsuit was that the DWD app is really, really good – in my opinion it's the best weather app we have in Germany. This made it very difficult to compete with – it was free, ad-free and good. This kind of bullshit will only get worse, with investor-state dispute settlement agreements int trade deals forbidding governments to take on new responsibilities whenever there is a private company in that space.
diebeforei485 7y ago
This seems like a bad outcome for consumers. I don't the context in Germany, but in my opinion: weather information should be a public service available to everyone for free. Commercial providers can provide alternatives with features that people are willing to pay for. For example: better UI, push notifications when it's about to rain (as Dark Sky does), morning push reminders to take an umbrella if the day is looking rainy, etc.
- londons_explore 7y ago
  The flip side is weather forecasting is a rapidly evolving field. R&D into techniques for more accurate forecasts is very expensive, and governments aren't great at that kind of innovation. If all weather forecast apps were paid for, apps would have revenue to perfect their models, and true competition would exist between them, both in terms of price, but also quality of results.
  - angry_octet 7y ago
    This is such bullshit. Prove to me that NOAA/ECMWF/JMA/BOM/UKMet Office are bad at forecast innovation. I'll wait.
    - thomasfortes 7y ago
      Put the Brazilian INPE in this list too, it's sad that some people created an imaginary world in their heads where innovation comes only from private companies... When we're talking about physical sciences most of the work is done by universities and research centers, a lot of them funded by public money.
  - yummypaint 7y ago
    What nonsense. Weather models are developed by scientists mostly funded by public grants. The models are run on publicly funded supercomputers, and the results are then regurgitated by companies trying to skim a buck off the traffic. The only innovation contributed by the private sector is serving ads and tracking users. The idea that MBA Joe Blo making a weather app is developing state of the art weather models is preposterous.
SimeVidas 7y ago
> The German Weather Service (DWD) will no longer be allowed to provide general weather forecasts in a free mobile phone app. … [DWD] will only be permitted to offer extreme weather warnings for free and … a DWD app offering general weather forecasts must contain advertisements or be purchased by users. The government service is forced to put ads in its free app. WTF?
- arduinomancer 7y ago
  Truly bizzare
- s1artibartfast 7y ago
  >or be purchased by users Didn't the users already purchase the app with their tax dollars? I hope they embed helpful PSAs as adds.
  - oneplane 7y ago
    I think the difference is the guaranteed budgets vs. commercial budget that needs to be proven (to a bank for a loan) or earned. But then again, I also think this verdict is stupid and makes no sense, next we're going to have to ban free access to current laws because a law book maker firm wants to make some money.
    - s1artibartfast 7y ago
      Agreed, the list is endless. Public buses compete with taxis and public news competes with MSM
      - oneplane 7y ago
        The problem with most of the public vs. private stuff is that 'the public' often needs something (i.e. a bridge that doesn't collapse) yet a commercial entity with the goal of maximising profit will probably have no problem with a collapsing bridge as long as it's cheaper than maintaining it. Some needs are worth putting it in a public baseline. And sometimes grey areas work (i.e. a public service fulfilled by a private entity but then checked by a public instance). Some stuff may not need to be public, i.e. kegs of beer. It's great when you want one, but it's not a base public need and not a shared need (unlike infrastructure, health, security, for general survival in places packed with too many people like big cities). But then a commercial entity might see an opportunity to sell things as a public baseline (why have basic weather forecasts when you can add 'bbq weather compatibility forecasts' or 'can I play golf tomorrow' functionality. But now that company has a hard time getting people to pay for it because that extra stuff that you didn't need anyway isn't attractive to anyone who just wants to know if they need to bring an umbrella. So ban the simple stuff and now your complex stuff has a place in the market. It's practically setting yourself up not to win on your own merit but 'removing' any opposition. Or so it seems to us bystanders. I don't actually know why they thought this was a good idea to have a lawsuit about. It's tricky.
jackyinger 7y ago
That’s preposterous! I presume that the German people have already paid for the German Weather Service, and their app, with their taxes. In general it seems suspect to have companies make money off of repackaging data created with public funds... Glad the US isn’t the only place with the privatize everything problem? (Please allow me to be hyperbolic.)
- riazrizvi 7y ago
  Is it fair that public funds are used to destroy one company’s business? That seems like a path to corruption. Imagine in the US if Democrats or Republicans were able to take reprisals against uncooperative businesses once they won power...
  - username90 7y ago
    > Is it fair that public funds are used to destroy one company’s business? When it costs basically nothing to do, yes! Turbotax anyone? Should governments be forced to make doing taxes hard just to give companies a chance to make big bucks for doing your taxes? That is nonsense!
  - btian 7y ago
    Hell yes
  - undersuit 7y ago
    On ne saurait faire d’omelette sans casser des œufs.
    - riazrizvi 7y ago
      The cure is worse than the disease.
      - undersuit 7y ago
        No, it's an omelet.
  - 7y ago
cryptoz 7y ago
Is NOAA allowed to develop US weather apps? I vaguely recall that Accuweather or others lobbied to prevent official US NWS weather apps from existing.
- angry_octet 7y ago
  They are basically forbidden. Trump wants to put the owner of AccuWeather in charge of NOAA.
  - severine 7y ago
    Not sarcasm: https://eu.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2019/04/24/donald-trump-accuweather-noaa-nominee-barry-myers-senate-editorials-debates/3547658002/ https://eu.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2019/04/24/donald-trum...
- iwalton3 7y ago
  https://www.weather.gov/ https://www.weather.gov/ does have a mobile site that is functional, but it could be better.
- zorm 7y ago
  There was guidance [1] back in 2011 that prohibited development of mobile applications. As far as I know the situation hasn't changed since then. [1] http://www.nwseo.org/Four%20Winds/11_12_28_Sobien_Lubchenco_Letter.pdf http://www.nwseo.org/Four%20Winds/11_12_28_Sobien_Lubchenco_...
- nate_meurer 7y ago
  It was way worse than that. Back in 2005, Rick Santorum, the republican senator from AccuWeather's home state, introduced a bill that sought to privatize the National Weather Service's weather data and forecast products. AccuWeather's Founder and CEO, brothers Joel and Barry Myers, were among Santorum's biggest campaign donors, and they argued that the NWS forecast products were unfairly preventing them from making money on their similar products. Accuweather used the NWS data themselves, so they sought to prevent the NWS from publishing the data publicly, while preserving their own access to it. Not coincidentally, Donald Trump has nominated Barry Meyers to lead the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. A good summary is at https://www.outsidethebeltway.com/rick-santorums-war-against-the-national-weather-service/ https://www.outsidethebeltway.com/rick-santorums-war-against... The bill was called the National Weather Service Duties Act of 2005.
my_first_acct 7y ago
The Norwegian Meteorological Institute provides free, worldwide weather forecast information via an API [1]. Perhaps some public-minded German-speaking developer could create a free no-ad app using this data, to provide WetterOnline with some competition. [1] api.met.no
- tyfon 7y ago
  You can also use the webpage and mobile app "yr.no" for free global forecasting.
  - slenk 7y ago
    So are they paying for the data from the US and other countries? Or relying on free data online?
  - Symbiote 7y ago
    To reduce costs, they don't particularly encourage use outside Norway / Nordic countries. Last time I read the API documents, they were only in Norwegian for this purpose. Edit: it seems this is no longer the case; at least I can't find it on the site. But my Norwegian skills are practically non-existant.
    - sveniv 7y ago
      English info on the yr.no data access api is here: https://hjelp.yr.no/hc/en-us/categories/200450271-About-Yr-the-API-and-our-privacy-policy https://hjelp.yr.no/hc/en-us/categories/200450271-About-Yr-t... This data is provided by the Norwegian meteorological institute: https://www.met.no/en/free-meteorological-data https://www.met.no/en/free-meteorological-data There is also a private Norwegian weather provider, StormGeo: https://www.stormgeo.com/ https://www.stormgeo.com/
    - josinalvo 7y ago
      You could also implement a cheap mirror of the data, I guess... So that is no excuse
- 7y ago
fierarul 7y ago
This makes perfect sense to me if I think how things are in Romania (and I suspect it's the same in Germany too). The Romanian state entity sells access to their weather data. So any 3rd party would, indeed, be at a severe disadvantage with a free app. Last I checked they wouldn't even confirm if at least the severe warning notices were available to the public without a license. So, the thing that's missing here is: where were WetterOnline getting the data from? They clearly were paying for it. I suspect they were getting it from none other than the German Weather Service. The solution would be, of course, for this dataset to be free. But German Weather Service preferred the courts to find another solution...
- oneplane 7y ago
  Most of the data is free and access costs no money. Some of it is even free across all of Europe due to open governmental data regulations. Some detailed or highly localised data would probably only be available commercially. But satellite data for example can be downloaded realtime by anyone.
  - fierarul 7y ago
    Then why was WetterOnline paying for the data and how could they make a case out of it. Something is still missing...
    - VonGallifrey 7y ago
      If WetterOnline was paying for their weather data then they didn't get their data from DWD. The DWD data is completely free. You don't even need a registration or API key or something like that. I just tried and downloaded Radar images. I can't read that format, but I could download it. The issue is that the legal mandate of DWD is just to provide the data and not to compete with private companies. It probably made sense when those laws where written, but now it is just stupid.
      - detaro 7y ago
        This law was written in 2015, so no, it didn't make more sense then. (the concept certainly is older, but while writing the 2015 law it was specifically modified to add this restriction again)
Gabrielfair 7y ago
I wonder if old versions of the app will still work. Assuming the endpoints are not going to change. Also it seems that I can't find the app due to my search region. Can someone provide a link to the app?
- vmednis 7y ago
  You can find the links to their App on DWD Website German version[1] seems like they've already implemented the ban. The warnings are free, but you have to do an in-app purchase of 1.99 to see the forecasts, etc. 1. https://www.dwd.de/DE/service/dwd-apps/dwdapps_node.html https://www.dwd.de/DE/service/dwd-apps/dwdapps_node.html
kuschku 7y ago
Interestingly, all of the data which is shown in the DWD app, and third-party apps, is available free of charge since 2019. You can look at the price list here: https://www.dwd.de/SharedDocs/downloads/DE/allgemein/preisliste_2019.pdf https://www.dwd.de/SharedDocs/downloads/DE/allgemein/preisli... All the important stuff is free. So one would just have to develop a free app to process and display this data ;)
- toomuchtodo 7y ago
  Not even German and I'll chip in for this as long as the app ends up open source.
- lima 7y ago
  Interesting, I did not expect the high-resolution COSMOS-D2 and ICON weather models to be available free of charge. Cool! Basically, the data is free, but most higher-level processing results are not (like point forecasts derived from the models).
  - kuschku 7y ago
    Actually, point forecasts are also free – but only for places where they already have to create the forecasts (you can find those on their FTP for free). It’s high quality data, for free, you’d just have to build your own frontend.
jakub_g 7y ago
> The private Bonn-based firm considered the DWD app anti-competitive as it put commercial providers at a disadvantage since they could not provide the information for free. Is the official data not free? Maybe the solution should rather be to make the data free, rather than make the official app non-free?
- reitzensteinm 7y ago
  My private firefighting service is struggling to get off the ground due to the government's anticompetitive price dumping at well below market rate.
  - JorgeGT 7y ago
    Firefighting used to be a private service since Roman times until recently. Some old buildings in my city still bear a plaque saying "Fire insured" signaling that in case of fire, they should be saved. If not, the firefighters would just control the spreading to other (insured) buildings.
    - mcv 7y ago
      Capitalism has taken a hit since Roman times.
      - JorgeGT 7y ago
        Yep. People talk about "peak capitalism", "late capitalism" etc. but they don't realize the world used to be much, much more extreme. Even until a few centuries ago, even public cops or prosecutors weren't a thing.
        mytherin 7y ago
        Isn't that why people call it late capitalism, because it is in its final phases? Pure, unfettered capitalism has been dwindling for a long time, mostly because of issues like slavery, severe exploitation of workers and forced child labor. Yet still many issues remain. I would say peak capitalism is colonial times, when companies had private armies and people were enslaved/massacred for profit.
dahooz42 7y ago
Note that this is the status quo since 2017, when the DWD lost in court the first time. At that time they began to charge 1,99€ and have done so ever since. I've happily paid that, as in my opinion it is one of the most reliable weather forecasts for Germany, not only for the general audience, but also for prosumers. For example, they provide high quality precipitation radar images, I regularly can determine the onset of rain with minute accuracy.
madsbuch 7y ago
Court doesn't outlaw anything. They interpret laws. Lawmakers should change these laws.
- MauranKilom 7y ago
  The German legal system to a large degree has the extent and actual interpretation of the written laws determined by case law. I don't know if this is a landmark case, but if it is (which I would assume) then this is very much outlawing this practice.
  - em-bee 7y ago
    that is not correct. germany does not use the common law system where case law is binding, but the civil law system where each case is taken on its own merrits against the law as it is written. past cases are only used as advice to help interpret a new case, but judges have the freedom to not follow that advice.
- noarchy 7y ago
  Depending on the ruling, this is a distinction without a difference.
fimdomeio 7y ago
There's a very interesting article/podcast episode about how the weather data is freely shared between countries: https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-weather-machine/ https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-weather-machine/ It only makes this news sound even worse. Weather information only exists because the source data is freely shared, thinking anyone can lock down this information is obscene.
Tomte 7y ago
The law about the weather service clearly states that the weather service should provide information about severe weather. The decision isn't about what would be nice, it was a purely legalistic question whether the law gave authorization for additional free services. Which it clearly doesn't. This decision wasn't surprising. Edit: dislike this comment as much as you want. The commentary in legal circles in Germany was exactly this. Nothing beats HN in legal expertise in a foreign country!
- Semaphor 7y ago
  I don't really see people complaining about the decision so much as about the law which was the result of heavy lobbying.
chewz 7y ago
WetterOnline has pretty lame app which didn't change much over last 10 years or so. https://www.wetteronline.de/apps https://www.wetteronline.de/apps If everyone gives them one star Apple will kick their app out of Appstore.
- rerx 7y ago
  I like the app (on Android though) and paid 3 Euros or so once. Their weather and rain "radars" are really useful.
  - flo123456 7y ago
    The „funny“ thing is that they are using data provided by DWD (for free) for those.
- neokya 7y ago
  haha it already started https://imgur.com/gallery/Ajh7HB6 https://imgur.com/gallery/Ajh7HB6
turbinerneiter 7y ago
Jokes on them, I never knew about the DWD app before any just now bought it because of this article.
fxtentacle 7y ago
In my (German) opinion, the court did a great job by stating only that they need ads in general but leaving the amount undetermined. Most likely, the DWD will show a one-time ad to everyone activating the free weather service. Most likely, they can even make it 5 minutes of uninterrupted ads, because everyone knows that it's a one-time thing and it's easy enough to ignore your phone for 5 minutes if you can choose the time when the ad plays. And afterwards, the DWD has realized a year worth of ad revenue per user and is free to provide the service for free and ad free like they used to. So while technically WetterOnline won, it won't have much consequences. That said, I myself am a paid subscriber for WetterOnline because their worldwide real-time radar videos are super helpful, and the German weather service obviously provides data only for Germany. So I'm not really sure why they felt the need to sue in the first place.
- zahrc 7y ago
  It sets a dangerous precedence tho and Germans are already paying for it indirectly with taxes, since DWD is mostly run privately, but it’s resources and workforce is public. What’s next? Will the ARD and ZDF Apps become subscription based because of Netflix and amazon prime, even tho we pay for GEZ already?
  - rndgermandude 7y ago
    The "next" already happened to a degree, quite a while ago. ARD and ZDF have online archives ("mediathek") where most content must be de-publicized (removed) after a while because the commercial competitors bitched to the politicians who make the rules for the public broadcasters. But now there is a ZDF channel on amazon prime that I can pay for again after having paid my mandatory fees (GEZ) already, yay. The online offerings of ARD and ZDF also had and have to remove a ton of old content (articles and such), and had to discontinue a lot of services, especially interactive services such as chat platforms, that weren't directly connected to their basic information mandate. And in 2017 some commercial newspapers successfully won a court decision against the ARD's tagesshow app (tagesschau being their flagship prime time newscast), meaning the app (and also the tagesschau website) had to remove a lot of texts that were "not directly related" to the content of their news shows[1]. Why were they successful? Because the law already prohibits the ARD and ZDF from being to "press-like". [1] https://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Urteil-gegen-Tagesschau-App-nun-rechtskraeftig-3926334.html https://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Urteil-gegen-Tagessc...
IvanK_net 7y ago
Is it even right to spend tax payers money for running a Weather Service, if it can be handled by private companies?
- jfk13 7y ago
  Can't you say that about almost anything.... Is it even right to spend taxpayers' money for running a Health Service, if it can be handled by private companies? Oh, right -- that's the US. No thanks.
  - IvanK_net 7y ago
    The US is still one of the most rich countries. In many countries with "free healthcare" you usually don't get anything without a bribe.
- tokai 7y ago
  Is it even right to let private companies do things that can be handle by tax payer funded organisations?
- lioeters 7y ago
  Is it even right for private companies to profit from a service, when tax payers' money has already been spent and it can be offered free of charge?
mgoetzke 7y ago
Maybe the commercial companies should not compete on quality of data with publicly available data from the government ? They can still provide their app, but must offer something better than just the same data. WTF.
matt_morgan 7y ago
Here in the US I have a free, open source desktop weather app (OpenWeatherMap) that lets me set the location to many German locales. On my phone I have something similar. Surely people in Germany could install these same apps? Who is paying for weather in Germany?
- PinguTS 7y ago
  This is totally missing the point. The point is DWD is tax financed service to process weather data and to distribute it to the once that need such weather data. As it is pay by taxes, the data is distributed free of charge. The are many services, even the one you just mentioned, that uses exactly that data to distribute it further. DWD build its own app to inform about severe weather conditions as this is also allowed by DWD. Then DWD added just the regular weather data to the exact same app including rain radar and such things, that OpenWeatherMap for example does not provide. DWD got sued for this by the companies who using the exact same DWD weather data and selling it to the customers either by adding ads or by subscription. By the way OpenWeatherMap is providing just basic weather data that is actually allowed to be included into the app for free. We are talk about much more detailed data.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- Majromax 7y ago
  It's not obvious that those applications are using the data from DWD. It's possible that they're using (for example) global forecasts from the ECMWF (Euopean Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasts), or even global forecasts produced by the US. The DWD's contribution would be higher-resolution (and presumably therefore more accurate) forecasts for the region immediately around Germany.
Kaiyou 7y ago
Reminds me of the Candle Maker Petition about the unfair competition of the sun. Very good read with good insights. It's satire.
dmos62 7y ago
This is beyond me. So if I open a pay-to-visit park in Germany, can I get the courts to close down all open-access parks? This isn't natural competition, more like subsidizing by faking scarcity. What's more, the public sector should (contrary to this development) provide more internet services and resources: that's a good thing. Their financial incentives in many cases are better than the private sector's. And, they should do it for free where it makes sense, like when you're already indirectly financing the public weather department.
- magduf 7y ago
  This is a court ruling I would have expected to see in America, not western Europe. WTF is going on over there?
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - lima 7y ago
    Money rules everywhere. Courts in the German state of Baden-Württemberg also recently forcibly privatized the State Forestry Service's logging operations because they were considered a monopoly (the "Forstkartell") and the sawmill industry sued in hope of lower timber prices. This forced the regional Forestry Service departments to split into two organizations - the logging operations and the government authority, now regulating its former self. Government and state forestry services are now supposed compete with each other on prices. Of course, this ended up increasing timber prices due to the resulting mountains of paperwork, the organizational chaos that would be expected from splitting up a hundreds of years old government organization, and the extra personnel/training required. Lawyers got paid and tax payer money was burnt, and the main purpose of the Forestry Service - environmental protection and research - suffers from the overhead. Oh, and the state-ran broadcasting organizations need to delete productions - paid for by everyone's broadcast tax money - from their online media libraries after a few weeks because private media organizations sued because it supposedly competes with their for-profit streaming services.
    - 7y ago
HenryBemis 7y ago
I remember an episode of Last Week Tonight from season 6 where in the USA some pricks wanted to do the same on the free app of the respective gov department. And Trump made the hear of that dept one of the founders of (was it??) Weather.com so he can sabotage the app from the inside. I don't remember the story, it was another brilliant example of how USA is allowing large corporations soil on everything free and wants the sharks to keep biting people's flesh (just like in healthcare, insurance, guns, etc.).
omrjml 7y ago
I am curious how this would work in the UK. The UK national met service, Met Office, has a free app, but has to show ads (not sure if there is a legal requirement similar to this case). Its biggest competitor is the BBC weather app which is also tax funded and is not allowed to show any ads. Up until a couple of years ago BBC got its data from the Met Office anyway so the two apps were basically showing the same data. However, now the BBC get its weather information from a private weather company. Anti-competition laws and tax-funded organisations is a complicated business!
microcolonel 7y ago
I mean, this is an understandable argument, but the moral harm of the government broadcasting the weather data they produce anyway for free is not so great (in my opinion) that it should be stopped. If DWD has an API, I guess somebody should just put up an open source app on F-Droid, and maybe somebody will pay to put it on Play. I don't know about iOS anymore, last time I made an iOS app it was kinda something you would only do if there was money in it. I agree somewhat with the general argument, but I don't think the courts should be pushing for "peak neoliberalism" at any cost.
kitteh 7y ago
Disturbing to see. We have the same issue in the US as well. Specifically some companies want NOAA/NWS to give their data to private companies who buy licenses and then the public can go to those companies (ex: AccuWeather). To me, weather (current observations or forecasts) is a public safety thing. Whether you're driving in the mountains and need an accurate forecast to make a go/no go decision or if you're a pilot and need to know freezing levels or other items. I've seen other things like aviation charts and terminal plates where private companies don't want the FAA to give it away for free, either (again: public safety - it should be free).
looperhacks 7y ago
The article is a little bit light on the details. While I don't agree with the situation, the decision is based on the law for the DWD[1]. According to §4 (1) Nr. 3 DWDG, the only public information is for weather warnings. While in reality, most other information is free, providing it for free is not the tax-payed task of the DWD. According to §4 (1) DWDG, it may only provide free information for the public if it's due to their legal obligation. [1]: https://www.bundesgerichtshof.de/SharedDocs/Pressemitteilungen/DE/2020/2020028.html https://www.bundesgerichtshof.de/SharedDocs/Pressemitteilung...
rurban 7y ago
And I immediately went and bought this DWD app for 2€, even if I get the same sources and visualization from the free Windy app. The DWD app is just better, and has a nice widget.
erikerikson 7y ago
If this is a valid basis, should they be blocked from offering a website too? If you don't think so, why? I can add a page to my home screen.
gpvos 7y ago
Same in the Netherlands: weather forecasts on public radio have since more than ten years been provided by a private company instead of the national weather service.
thecleaner 7y ago
I mean this should come with a tax break. Since one benefit is gone and now we have to rely on the bullshit service of this incompetent jackass of a company.
Anthony-G 7y ago
This real bullshit – particularly given that the private companies base their forecasts (indirectly) on the observations that national meteorological services such as Deutsche Wetterdienst collect and provide for free as scientific data. These observations are used as the input data for the same Numeric Weather Prediction models that the commercial companies want to make money from. Neoliberals want to have their cake and eat it. Unfortunately, neoliberalism is currently (over the past couple of decades, with a small stumble in 2008) the dominant ideology within European politics.
Jaxkr 7y ago
This is very dumb and probably (ironically) hurts the business environment in Germany

267 points by 4ad 7y ago

Reminds me of John Oliver's coverage of AccuWeather. [0] [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMGn9T37eR8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMGn9T37eR8

ConradKilroy 7y ago
I was so about to mention that!
- slenk 7y ago
  I will have to watch. I didn't realize this was all a thing

triangulum 7y ago

This is very surprising for a country like Germany, which has a long history of providing public services for the common good, rather than profit oriented motives. On the other hand, a comparably developed country like Australia is seeing many essential services being privatised, but the weather service rightfully remains a sacred government entity, with a high amount of public trust. http://www.bom.gov.au/app/ http://www.bom.gov.au/app/ > With the BOM Weather app you can check the weather—wherever you are—from Australia's official weather source, the Bureau of Meteorology.

plantain 7y ago
>has a long history of providing public services for the common good, rather than profit oriented motives. Hahaha. BOM charges extortionate, nonviable prices for <i>everything</i> above the basics. Australia is one of the hardest countries for us to get reliable weather data from. The trouble with government agencies run on a cost-recovery basis, is they have no incentive to do anything at a cost that will be recoverable.
- dannyw 7y ago
  Should run govt agencies on a 75% cost recovery basis.

heyitsguay 7y ago

Don't German citizens pay for this information through taxes? Is this different from forbidding citizens from using the police instead of private security companies because they're providing security services "for free"?

mqus 7y ago
Well, the security part (extreme weather warnings) were and will be free, just the weather prediction part is not. And from the brief period where it was free I remember it as being a impressively good app, completely unexpected from a government agency, which was probably one of the reasons the company sued... Edit: The data is also freely available for private use on their website, just not as nice and compact.
smarnach 7y ago
Yes. We are all paying the DWD through taxes. The DWD provides its data to private companies for free, including WetterOnline, the company that sued. All the companies do is providing apps and web sites for visualization of the data. I think the main reason for the lawsuit was that the DWD app is really, really good – in my opinion it's the best weather app we have in Germany. This made it very difficult to compete with – it was free, ad-free and good. This kind of bullshit will only get worse, with investor-state dispute settlement agreements int trade deals forbidding governments to take on new responsibilities whenever there is a private company in that space.

diebeforei485 7y ago

This seems like a bad outcome for consumers. I don't the context in Germany, but in my opinion: weather information should be a public service available to everyone for free. Commercial providers can provide alternatives with features that people are willing to pay for. For example: better UI, push notifications when it's about to rain (as Dark Sky does), morning push reminders to take an umbrella if the day is looking rainy, etc.

londons_explore 7y ago
The flip side is weather forecasting is a rapidly evolving field. R&D into techniques for more accurate forecasts is very expensive, and governments aren't great at that kind of innovation. If all weather forecast apps were paid for, apps would have revenue to perfect their models, and true competition would exist between them, both in terms of price, but also quality of results.
- angry_octet 7y ago
  This is such bullshit. Prove to me that NOAA/ECMWF/JMA/BOM/UKMet Office are bad at forecast innovation. I'll wait.
  - thomasfortes 7y ago
    Put the Brazilian INPE in this list too, it's sad that some people created an imaginary world in their heads where innovation comes only from private companies... When we're talking about physical sciences most of the work is done by universities and research centers, a lot of them funded by public money.
- yummypaint 7y ago
  What nonsense. Weather models are developed by scientists mostly funded by public grants. The models are run on publicly funded supercomputers, and the results are then regurgitated by companies trying to skim a buck off the traffic. The only innovation contributed by the private sector is serving ads and tracking users. The idea that MBA Joe Blo making a weather app is developing state of the art weather models is preposterous.

SimeVidas 7y ago

> The German Weather Service (DWD) will no longer be allowed to provide general weather forecasts in a free mobile phone app. … [DWD] will only be permitted to offer extreme weather warnings for free and … a DWD app offering general weather forecasts must contain advertisements or be purchased by users. The government service is forced to put ads in its free app. WTF?

arduinomancer 7y ago
Truly bizzare
s1artibartfast 7y ago
>or be purchased by users Didn't the users already purchase the app with their tax dollars? I hope they embed helpful PSAs as adds.
- oneplane 7y ago
  I think the difference is the guaranteed budgets vs. commercial budget that needs to be proven (to a bank for a loan) or earned. But then again, I also think this verdict is stupid and makes no sense, next we're going to have to ban free access to current laws because a law book maker firm wants to make some money.
  - s1artibartfast 7y ago
    Agreed, the list is endless. Public buses compete with taxis and public news competes with MSM
    - oneplane 7y ago
      The problem with most of the public vs. private stuff is that 'the public' often needs something (i.e. a bridge that doesn't collapse) yet a commercial entity with the goal of maximising profit will probably have no problem with a collapsing bridge as long as it's cheaper than maintaining it. Some needs are worth putting it in a public baseline. And sometimes grey areas work (i.e. a public service fulfilled by a private entity but then checked by a public instance). Some stuff may not need to be public, i.e. kegs of beer. It's great when you want one, but it's not a base public need and not a shared need (unlike infrastructure, health, security, for general survival in places packed with too many people like big cities). But then a commercial entity might see an opportunity to sell things as a public baseline (why have basic weather forecasts when you can add 'bbq weather compatibility forecasts' or 'can I play golf tomorrow' functionality. But now that company has a hard time getting people to pay for it because that extra stuff that you didn't need anyway isn't attractive to anyone who just wants to know if they need to bring an umbrella. So ban the simple stuff and now your complex stuff has a place in the market. It's practically setting yourself up not to win on your own merit but 'removing' any opposition. Or so it seems to us bystanders. I don't actually know why they thought this was a good idea to have a lawsuit about. It's tricky.

jackyinger 7y ago

That’s preposterous! I presume that the German people have already paid for the German Weather Service, and their app, with their taxes. In general it seems suspect to have companies make money off of repackaging data created with public funds... Glad the US isn’t the only place with the privatize everything problem? (Please allow me to be hyperbolic.)

riazrizvi 7y ago
Is it fair that public funds are used to destroy one company’s business? That seems like a path to corruption. Imagine in the US if Democrats or Republicans were able to take reprisals against uncooperative businesses once they won power...
- username90 7y ago
  > Is it fair that public funds are used to destroy one company’s business? When it costs basically nothing to do, yes! Turbotax anyone? Should governments be forced to make doing taxes hard just to give companies a chance to make big bucks for doing your taxes? That is nonsense!
- btian 7y ago
  Hell yes
- undersuit 7y ago
  On ne saurait faire d’omelette sans casser des œufs.
  - riazrizvi 7y ago
    The cure is worse than the disease.
    - undersuit 7y ago
      No, it's an omelet.
- 7y ago

cryptoz 7y ago

Is NOAA allowed to develop US weather apps? I vaguely recall that Accuweather or others lobbied to prevent official US NWS weather apps from existing.

angry_octet 7y ago
They are basically forbidden. Trump wants to put the owner of AccuWeather in charge of NOAA.
- severine 7y ago
  Not sarcasm: https://eu.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2019/04/24/donald-trump-accuweather-noaa-nominee-barry-myers-senate-editorials-debates/3547658002/ https://eu.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2019/04/24/donald-trum...
iwalton3 7y ago
https://www.weather.gov/ https://www.weather.gov/ does have a mobile site that is functional, but it could be better.
zorm 7y ago
There was guidance [1] back in 2011 that prohibited development of mobile applications. As far as I know the situation hasn't changed since then. [1] http://www.nwseo.org/Four%20Winds/11_12_28_Sobien_Lubchenco_Letter.pdf http://www.nwseo.org/Four%20Winds/11_12_28_Sobien_Lubchenco_...
nate_meurer 7y ago
It was way worse than that. Back in 2005, Rick Santorum, the republican senator from AccuWeather's home state, introduced a bill that sought to privatize the National Weather Service's weather data and forecast products. AccuWeather's Founder and CEO, brothers Joel and Barry Myers, were among Santorum's biggest campaign donors, and they argued that the NWS forecast products were unfairly preventing them from making money on their similar products. Accuweather used the NWS data themselves, so they sought to prevent the NWS from publishing the data publicly, while preserving their own access to it. Not coincidentally, Donald Trump has nominated Barry Meyers to lead the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. A good summary is at https://www.outsidethebeltway.com/rick-santorums-war-against-the-national-weather-service/ https://www.outsidethebeltway.com/rick-santorums-war-against... The bill was called the National Weather Service Duties Act of 2005.

my_first_acct 7y ago

The Norwegian Meteorological Institute provides free, worldwide weather forecast information via an API [1]. Perhaps some public-minded German-speaking developer could create a free no-ad app using this data, to provide WetterOnline with some competition. [1] api.met.no

tyfon 7y ago
You can also use the webpage and mobile app "yr.no" for free global forecasting.
- slenk 7y ago
  So are they paying for the data from the US and other countries? Or relying on free data online?
- Symbiote 7y ago
  To reduce costs, they don't particularly encourage use outside Norway / Nordic countries. Last time I read the API documents, they were only in Norwegian for this purpose. Edit: it seems this is no longer the case; at least I can't find it on the site. But my Norwegian skills are practically non-existant.
  - sveniv 7y ago
    English info on the yr.no data access api is here: https://hjelp.yr.no/hc/en-us/categories/200450271-About-Yr-the-API-and-our-privacy-policy https://hjelp.yr.no/hc/en-us/categories/200450271-About-Yr-t... This data is provided by the Norwegian meteorological institute: https://www.met.no/en/free-meteorological-data https://www.met.no/en/free-meteorological-data There is also a private Norwegian weather provider, StormGeo: https://www.stormgeo.com/ https://www.stormgeo.com/
  - josinalvo 7y ago
    You could also implement a cheap mirror of the data, I guess... So that is no excuse
7y ago

fierarul 7y ago

This makes perfect sense to me if I think how things are in Romania (and I suspect it's the same in Germany too). The Romanian state entity sells access to their weather data. So any 3rd party would, indeed, be at a severe disadvantage with a free app. Last I checked they wouldn't even confirm if at least the severe warning notices were available to the public without a license. So, the thing that's missing here is: where were WetterOnline getting the data from? They clearly were paying for it. I suspect they were getting it from none other than the German Weather Service. The solution would be, of course, for this dataset to be free. But German Weather Service preferred the courts to find another solution...

oneplane 7y ago
Most of the data is free and access costs no money. Some of it is even free across all of Europe due to open governmental data regulations. Some detailed or highly localised data would probably only be available commercially. But satellite data for example can be downloaded realtime by anyone.
- fierarul 7y ago
  Then why was WetterOnline paying for the data and how could they make a case out of it. Something is still missing...
  - VonGallifrey 7y ago
    If WetterOnline was paying for their weather data then they didn't get their data from DWD. The DWD data is completely free. You don't even need a registration or API key or something like that. I just tried and downloaded Radar images. I can't read that format, but I could download it. The issue is that the legal mandate of DWD is just to provide the data and not to compete with private companies. It probably made sense when those laws where written, but now it is just stupid.
    - detaro 7y ago
      This law was written in 2015, so no, it didn't make more sense then. (the concept certainly is older, but while writing the 2015 law it was specifically modified to add this restriction again)

Gabrielfair 7y ago

I wonder if old versions of the app will still work. Assuming the endpoints are not going to change. Also it seems that I can't find the app due to my search region. Can someone provide a link to the app?

vmednis 7y ago
You can find the links to their App on DWD Website German version[1] seems like they've already implemented the ban. The warnings are free, but you have to do an in-app purchase of 1.99 to see the forecasts, etc. 1. https://www.dwd.de/DE/service/dwd-apps/dwdapps_node.html https://www.dwd.de/DE/service/dwd-apps/dwdapps_node.html

kuschku 7y ago

Interestingly, all of the data which is shown in the DWD app, and third-party apps, is available free of charge since 2019. You can look at the price list here: https://www.dwd.de/SharedDocs/downloads/DE/allgemein/preisliste_2019.pdf https://www.dwd.de/SharedDocs/downloads/DE/allgemein/preisli... All the important stuff is free. So one would just have to develop a free app to process and display this data ;)

toomuchtodo 7y ago
Not even German and I'll chip in for this as long as the app ends up open source.
lima 7y ago
Interesting, I did not expect the high-resolution COSMOS-D2 and ICON weather models to be available free of charge. Cool! Basically, the data is free, but most higher-level processing results are not (like point forecasts derived from the models).
- kuschku 7y ago
  Actually, point forecasts are also free – but only for places where they already have to create the forecasts (you can find those on their FTP for free). It’s high quality data, for free, you’d just have to build your own frontend.

jakub_g 7y ago

> The private Bonn-based firm considered the DWD app anti-competitive as it put commercial providers at a disadvantage since they could not provide the information for free. Is the official data not free? Maybe the solution should rather be to make the data free, rather than make the official app non-free?

reitzensteinm 7y ago
My private firefighting service is struggling to get off the ground due to the government's anticompetitive price dumping at well below market rate.
- JorgeGT 7y ago
  Firefighting used to be a private service since Roman times until recently. Some old buildings in my city still bear a plaque saying "Fire insured" signaling that in case of fire, they should be saved. If not, the firefighters would just control the spreading to other (insured) buildings.
  - mcv 7y ago
    Capitalism has taken a hit since Roman times.
    - JorgeGT 7y ago
      Yep. People talk about "peak capitalism", "late capitalism" etc. but they don't realize the world used to be much, much more extreme. Even until a few centuries ago, even public cops or prosecutors weren't a thing.
      - mytherin 7y ago
        Isn't that why people call it late capitalism, because it is in its final phases? Pure, unfettered capitalism has been dwindling for a long time, mostly because of issues like slavery, severe exploitation of workers and forced child labor. Yet still many issues remain. I would say peak capitalism is colonial times, when companies had private armies and people were enslaved/massacred for profit.

dahooz42 7y ago

Note that this is the status quo since 2017, when the DWD lost in court the first time. At that time they began to charge 1,99€ and have done so ever since. I've happily paid that, as in my opinion it is one of the most reliable weather forecasts for Germany, not only for the general audience, but also for prosumers. For example, they provide high quality precipitation radar images, I regularly can determine the onset of rain with minute accuracy.

madsbuch 7y ago

Court doesn't outlaw anything. They interpret laws. Lawmakers should change these laws.

MauranKilom 7y ago
The German legal system to a large degree has the extent and actual interpretation of the written laws determined by case law. I don't know if this is a landmark case, but if it is (which I would assume) then this is very much outlawing this practice.
- em-bee 7y ago
  that is not correct. germany does not use the common law system where case law is binding, but the civil law system where each case is taken on its own merrits against the law as it is written. past cases are only used as advice to help interpret a new case, but judges have the freedom to not follow that advice.
noarchy 7y ago
Depending on the ruling, this is a distinction without a difference.

fimdomeio 7y ago

There's a very interesting article/podcast episode about how the weather data is freely shared between countries: https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-weather-machine/ https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-weather-machine/ It only makes this news sound even worse. Weather information only exists because the source data is freely shared, thinking anyone can lock down this information is obscene.

Tomte 7y ago

The law about the weather service clearly states that the weather service should provide information about severe weather. The decision isn't about what would be nice, it was a purely legalistic question whether the law gave authorization for additional free services. Which it clearly doesn't. This decision wasn't surprising. Edit: dislike this comment as much as you want. The commentary in legal circles in Germany was exactly this. Nothing beats HN in legal expertise in a foreign country!

Semaphor 7y ago
I don't really see people complaining about the decision so much as about the law which was the result of heavy lobbying.

chewz 7y ago

WetterOnline has pretty lame app which didn't change much over last 10 years or so. https://www.wetteronline.de/apps https://www.wetteronline.de/apps If everyone gives them one star Apple will kick their app out of Appstore.

rerx 7y ago
I like the app (on Android though) and paid 3 Euros or so once. Their weather and rain "radars" are really useful.
- flo123456 7y ago
  The „funny“ thing is that they are using data provided by DWD (for free) for those.
neokya 7y ago
haha it already started https://imgur.com/gallery/Ajh7HB6 https://imgur.com/gallery/Ajh7HB6

turbinerneiter 7y ago

Jokes on them, I never knew about the DWD app before any just now bought it because of this article.

fxtentacle 7y ago

In my (German) opinion, the court did a great job by stating only that they need ads in general but leaving the amount undetermined. Most likely, the DWD will show a one-time ad to everyone activating the free weather service. Most likely, they can even make it 5 minutes of uninterrupted ads, because everyone knows that it's a one-time thing and it's easy enough to ignore your phone for 5 minutes if you can choose the time when the ad plays. And afterwards, the DWD has realized a year worth of ad revenue per user and is free to provide the service for free and ad free like they used to. So while technically WetterOnline won, it won't have much consequences. That said, I myself am a paid subscriber for WetterOnline because their worldwide real-time radar videos are super helpful, and the German weather service obviously provides data only for Germany. So I'm not really sure why they felt the need to sue in the first place.

zahrc 7y ago
It sets a dangerous precedence tho and Germans are already paying for it indirectly with taxes, since DWD is mostly run privately, but it’s resources and workforce is public. What’s next? Will the ARD and ZDF Apps become subscription based because of Netflix and amazon prime, even tho we pay for GEZ already?
- rndgermandude 7y ago
  The "next" already happened to a degree, quite a while ago. ARD and ZDF have online archives ("mediathek") where most content must be de-publicized (removed) after a while because the commercial competitors bitched to the politicians who make the rules for the public broadcasters. But now there is a ZDF channel on amazon prime that I can pay for again after having paid my mandatory fees (GEZ) already, yay. The online offerings of ARD and ZDF also had and have to remove a ton of old content (articles and such), and had to discontinue a lot of services, especially interactive services such as chat platforms, that weren't directly connected to their basic information mandate. And in 2017 some commercial newspapers successfully won a court decision against the ARD's tagesshow app (tagesschau being their flagship prime time newscast), meaning the app (and also the tagesschau website) had to remove a lot of texts that were "not directly related" to the content of their news shows[1]. Why were they successful? Because the law already prohibits the ARD and ZDF from being to "press-like". [1] https://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Urteil-gegen-Tagesschau-App-nun-rechtskraeftig-3926334.html https://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Urteil-gegen-Tagessc...

IvanK_net 7y ago

Is it even right to spend tax payers money for running a Weather Service, if it can be handled by private companies?

jfk13 7y ago
Can't you say that about almost anything.... Is it even right to spend taxpayers' money for running a Health Service, if it can be handled by private companies? Oh, right -- that's the US. No thanks.
- IvanK_net 7y ago
  The US is still one of the most rich countries. In many countries with "free healthcare" you usually don't get anything without a bribe.
tokai 7y ago
Is it even right to let private companies do things that can be handle by tax payer funded organisations?
lioeters 7y ago
Is it even right for private companies to profit from a service, when tax payers' money has already been spent and it can be offered free of charge?

mgoetzke 7y ago

Maybe the commercial companies should not compete on quality of data with publicly available data from the government ? They can still provide their app, but must offer something better than just the same data. WTF.

matt_morgan 7y ago

Here in the US I have a free, open source desktop weather app (OpenWeatherMap) that lets me set the location to many German locales. On my phone I have something similar. Surely people in Germany could install these same apps? Who is paying for weather in Germany?

PinguTS 7y ago
This is totally missing the point. The point is DWD is tax financed service to process weather data and to distribute it to the once that need such weather data. As it is pay by taxes, the data is distributed free of charge. The are many services, even the one you just mentioned, that uses exactly that data to distribute it further. DWD build its own app to inform about severe weather conditions as this is also allowed by DWD. Then DWD added just the regular weather data to the exact same app including rain radar and such things, that OpenWeatherMap for example does not provide. DWD got sued for this by the companies who using the exact same DWD weather data and selling it to the customers either by adding ads or by subscription. By the way OpenWeatherMap is providing just basic weather data that is actually allowed to be included into the app for free. We are talk about much more detailed data.
deleted 7y ago
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Majromax 7y ago
It's not obvious that those applications are using the data from DWD. It's possible that they're using (for example) global forecasts from the ECMWF (Euopean Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasts), or even global forecasts produced by the US. The DWD's contribution would be higher-resolution (and presumably therefore more accurate) forecasts for the region immediately around Germany.

Kaiyou 7y ago

Reminds me of the Candle Maker Petition about the unfair competition of the sun. Very good read with good insights. It's satire.

dmos62 7y ago

This is beyond me. So if I open a pay-to-visit park in Germany, can I get the courts to close down all open-access parks? This isn't natural competition, more like subsidizing by faking scarcity. What's more, the public sector should (contrary to this development) provide more internet services and resources: that's a good thing. Their financial incentives in many cases are better than the private sector's. And, they should do it for free where it makes sense, like when you're already indirectly financing the public weather department.

magduf 7y ago
This is a court ruling I would have expected to see in America, not western Europe. WTF is going on over there?
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- lima 7y ago
  Money rules everywhere. Courts in the German state of Baden-Württemberg also recently forcibly privatized the State Forestry Service's logging operations because they were considered a monopoly (the "Forstkartell") and the sawmill industry sued in hope of lower timber prices. This forced the regional Forestry Service departments to split into two organizations - the logging operations and the government authority, now regulating its former self. Government and state forestry services are now supposed compete with each other on prices. Of course, this ended up increasing timber prices due to the resulting mountains of paperwork, the organizational chaos that would be expected from splitting up a hundreds of years old government organization, and the extra personnel/training required. Lawyers got paid and tax payer money was burnt, and the main purpose of the Forestry Service - environmental protection and research - suffers from the overhead. Oh, and the state-ran broadcasting organizations need to delete productions - paid for by everyone's broadcast tax money - from their online media libraries after a few weeks because private media organizations sued because it supposedly competes with their for-profit streaming services.
  - 7y ago

HenryBemis 7y ago

I remember an episode of Last Week Tonight from season 6 where in the USA some pricks wanted to do the same on the free app of the respective gov department. And Trump made the hear of that dept one of the founders of (was it??) Weather.com so he can sabotage the app from the inside. I don't remember the story, it was another brilliant example of how USA is allowing large corporations soil on everything free and wants the sharks to keep biting people's flesh (just like in healthcare, insurance, guns, etc.).

omrjml 7y ago

I am curious how this would work in the UK. The UK national met service, Met Office, has a free app, but has to show ads (not sure if there is a legal requirement similar to this case). Its biggest competitor is the BBC weather app which is also tax funded and is not allowed to show any ads. Up until a couple of years ago BBC got its data from the Met Office anyway so the two apps were basically showing the same data. However, now the BBC get its weather information from a private weather company. Anti-competition laws and tax-funded organisations is a complicated business!

microcolonel 7y ago

I mean, this is an understandable argument, but the moral harm of the government broadcasting the weather data they produce anyway for free is not so great (in my opinion) that it should be stopped. If DWD has an API, I guess somebody should just put up an open source app on F-Droid, and maybe somebody will pay to put it on Play. I don't know about iOS anymore, last time I made an iOS app it was kinda something you would only do if there was money in it. I agree somewhat with the general argument, but I don't think the courts should be pushing for "peak neoliberalism" at any cost.

kitteh 7y ago

Disturbing to see. We have the same issue in the US as well. Specifically some companies want NOAA/NWS to give their data to private companies who buy licenses and then the public can go to those companies (ex: AccuWeather). To me, weather (current observations or forecasts) is a public safety thing. Whether you're driving in the mountains and need an accurate forecast to make a go/no go decision or if you're a pilot and need to know freezing levels or other items. I've seen other things like aviation charts and terminal plates where private companies don't want the FAA to give it away for free, either (again: public safety - it should be free).

looperhacks 7y ago

The article is a little bit light on the details. While I don't agree with the situation, the decision is based on the law for the DWD[1]. According to §4 (1) Nr. 3 DWDG, the only public information is for weather warnings. While in reality, most other information is free, providing it for free is not the tax-payed task of the DWD. According to §4 (1) DWDG, it may only provide free information for the public if it's due to their legal obligation. [1]: https://www.bundesgerichtshof.de/SharedDocs/Pressemitteilungen/DE/2020/2020028.html https://www.bundesgerichtshof.de/SharedDocs/Pressemitteilung...

rurban 7y ago

And I immediately went and bought this DWD app for 2€, even if I get the same sources and visualization from the free Windy app. The DWD app is just better, and has a nice widget.

erikerikson 7y ago

If this is a valid basis, should they be blocked from offering a website too? If you don't think so, why? I can add a page to my home screen.

gpvos 7y ago

Same in the Netherlands: weather forecasts on public radio have since more than ten years been provided by a private company instead of the national weather service.

thecleaner 7y ago

I mean this should come with a tax break. Since one benefit is gone and now we have to rely on the bullshit service of this incompetent jackass of a company.

Anthony-G 7y ago

This real bullshit – particularly given that the private companies base their forecasts (indirectly) on the observations that national meteorological services such as Deutsche Wetterdienst collect and provide for free as scientific data. These observations are used as the input data for the same Numeric Weather Prediction models that the commercial companies want to make money from. Neoliberals want to have their cake and eat it. Unfortunately, neoliberalism is currently (over the past couple of decades, with a small stumble in 2008) the dominant ideology within European politics.

Jaxkr 7y ago

This is very dumb and probably (ironically) hurts the business environment in Germany