[permo-w]

>It's never been changed to a direct tax to prevent direct interference from the government

that's half of the reason, and also feeds into the other reason. if it's not a direct tax and it's semi-voluntary it's harder for people to criticise as unfair. not that they don't find a way

>The BBC has an obligation to serve everyone, not just subscribers. Netflix has an obligation to serve subscribers, at least well enough that they don't leave.

this is an intrinsic property of Netflix being a private business, not Netflix being a subscription service. the BBC could comfortably move to a subscription model and still have the exact same ethos. the BBC's payment model is not so different from a subscription model that right now a private company would be serving license fee payers rather than everyone in general