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The 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
by VonGallifrey 7y ago
The 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.