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> 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 informat
by 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 agoMy 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 agoFirefighting 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 agoCapitalism has taken a hit since Roman times.
- JorgeGT 7y agoYep. 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 agoIsn'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.
- sfgweilr4f 7y agoMy private taxation system is having a few problems as well.
- anticensor 7y agoYou mean your private levying instrument.
- pests 7y agoYou joke about firefighting but you couldn't have picked a worse example. That is one of the major misconceptions people have about required local services - it's not required.
- reitzensteinm 7y agoThe only misconception here is the misconception that it's appropriate to label a differing opinion on governance a misconception.
- pests 7y agoWho labeled a differing opinion as a misconception?
- VonGallifrey 7y agoThe official data is free. The court said that DWD is overstepping their mandate. Apparently they are mandated only to provide the data and not to compete with private businesses. This is also why the Public TV channels have to delete their content from their free Video on Demand services after a certain amount of time. They are only mandated to broadcast TV and not offer VOD. Both of these issues stem from the fact that the mandate of these public services was written so long ago and with the limitations of the time in mind. Of course the DWD was not supposed to provide this data to everyone, that would have been too expensive at the time. It was just cheaper to provide the data to private weather companies and have them distribute it, but now it is comparatively easy to make an app to provide useful data to everyone. For public TV as well. When their mandate was defined there was no VOD and that is why they can only provide it in this very limited way. This is really stupid in my opinion and should be changed.
- detaro 7y agoSadly, no, this is not an example of "old regulations that don't work for today". It's an example of successful lobbying, since when the DWDs role was redefined in 2015 these rules specifically set up, with the stated goal of having it not compete with private providers.
- luckylion 7y agoWell, the main task of the DWD is to monitor and document climate & weather in Germany and warn about risks. Providing consumer facing products is not part of it, and, to my knowledge, never has been, that was something they did on their own, not part of their mandate.