UK TV Licensing

I was going to post about this a while back didn’t think it was that interesting but I haven’t posted for a while and I’m having a well deserved break next week so what better way to sign off than with a rant

If your not from the UK you may not know that in order for us to use a TV and receive broadcasts we need a TV License. The money from the license goes to the BBC who use it provide their range of services

Previously the rules were simple. If you had a TV and used it to watch programmes you needed a license

Nowadays there a lots of ways in which in you can consume TV programming via satellite, mobile phone, and over the Internet

The rules are still simple but the wording has changed

Do I need a TV Licence?

You will need a TV Licence if you watch or record TV programmes as they are being shown on TV. It doesn’t matter what channel you are watching, what device you are using (for example TV, computer or laptop, mobile phone or any other device) or how you are receiving them (for example via terrestrial, satellite, cable, the Internet or any other method).

Technology such as BBC’s own BBC iPlayer   has made people ask the question “do i still need a TV license?”

The answer is still actually pretty simple as the quote above states

If you are watching a program online that is being broadcast at the same time as on TV

This means you’re well within your rights to use BBC iPlayer to watch programmes shown last week and not need a license

This does raise some interesting questions though.

If i have a TV license and watch TV on my laptop and then go around to a friends house who doesn’t have a license. What is the situation there?

I couldn’t find anything on the TV licensing website about this. I’ve been told by one or two people that your own license would cover you until you plugged the laptop in. This sounds a bit odd in my opinion. Plug what in? Do you mean power? An Internet connection? What if i’m using wireless and a long life battery?

So why am I interested in this?

We had a letter come to the office several months ago telling us we had been watching live TV online and if we persisted we’d need to buy a TV license for the business

As far as I’m aware we’re not sitting around watching TV but did our best to make everyone aware

We had another letter this week saying the same thing so we called them

They wouldn’t tell us how they knew we were watching TV (which i still maintain we’re not) and i can’t see ISPs giving up their log information to be honest without upfront legal proof/warrant (which is a whole chicken and egg situation!)

We were told that they would stop sending the letters but they may send an officer round to confirm we don’t need a license

How are they going to check exactly?

As i said above i can legitimately use services such as BBC iPlayer without a TV license

It then also raises the question of control as a business

Using various control mechanisms we can stop users doing lots of things but how do you control something such as the BBC news site which shows both live news broadcasts as well as old clips?

We can use technology to block specific IPs, domain names, even specific content such as flash video but can how we tell the difference between live content and old content?

Is it fair to just ban any site that has anything to do with BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Sky, etc, etc when a large chunk of the content is fine?

As always opinions welcome!

Other links

http://www.televisionlicence.info/

Do I need a TV Licence if I only watch programmes online?

Will I need a TV Licence to watch programmes on BBC iPlayer?

There are a LOT of sites out there with information and opinions on the TV license!