People who watch live TV on their iPad and Android mobile devices with a new BBC appliction but do not have a TV licence are unlikely to be caught after the corporation admitted it has failed to develop the necessary tracking technology.Regardless of the fact that their existing tracking technology doesn’t work…
The corporation has not updated its detection technology to include tablet devices, mobile phones and computers.And even if it did, without the powers to enter homes, it couldn’t do much about it.
While it might be able to bully and bamboozle elderly ladies, the sort of tech-savvy people who buy iPads won’t be quite such pushovers, I hope.
Instead it continues to use the same tracking system which only detects television signals to discover which homes have TV sets that might be unlicensed.Note the weasel word there, ‘might’…
The BBC yesterday vowed to prosecute anyone who watches live TV via the new iPlayer application, which it is launching today (thurs), without a TV licence - but it was unclear how they would be caught.Empty threats, and they know it.
…, TV analysts say that the number of people, especially the younger generation, are increasingly watching TV via a computer, rather than a TV set, therefore often avoiding paying the annual fee, and that the issue is becoming a growing problem for the TV licensing authority which should be tackled.So tackle it.
Scrap the license fee. Job done!
15 comments:
As someone who has dropped the TV licence as I no longer watch TV, and use streaming sites on my PC instead, I heartily concur. Technology will kill the licence fee much quicker than any political changes.
Good old internet, transferring power from the State to the individual once again!
Detector vans cant detect TV signals. All they can do is check if you have an ariel on your roof.
That's the extent of the technology, a database and the mark one eyeball.
DAMN we are EFFICIENT!
Our version of T.V licencing (G.E.Z) snapped THAT in the bud about two years ago.
Now you have to have a licence if you have; T.V, and/or radio (Same in Britain still?), computer, Sat nav, or ANY other form of "electronic communications device". If you have these in your car/caravan/Schrebergarten (Allotment) hut, you need also to have a licence, but your house licence covers them.
They're after an ISP tax to fund themselves, the bastards. You mark my words. There'll be an OFCOM "stake holder consultation" and "all options are being considered" then they'll plonk the fucking licence fee on our net connections. Bet you anything.
If there's a great hullabaloo, which this being The People Republic Of Ukay there won't be, they'll "compromise" with some absurdly incomprehensible bureaucratic opt-out system, more than aslike.
There's no way on Earth that "Auntie" is going to let herself get shut down for lack of money. For the political class, that would be entirely beyond consideration.
'Inspectors' are merely self employed individuals, (wheel clamping mentality an advantage here) who are contracted by the private firm, Capita Group. A significant portion of your licence fee is squandered each year through colossal mailshots and in retaining Capita's bully boy methods.
The technology which TV Licensing uses to intimidate, exists only in the minds of the public. Successful prosecutions are solely reliant upon exploitation of the vulnerable and by obtaining admissions from the gullible.
Were we to follow the successful example set by Australians when they decided to refuse paying TV licenses en masse, this abusive militia would be finished within weeks.
These BBC creeps need slapped down. They are a self perpetuating 'elite' who live of us and yet have only contempt for us. What would any of them do to earn a real living? Prostitution if they were lucky.
We used to laugh about the 'TV detector vans' twenty years ago when I was working as an engineer in an electronics factory. The spurious explanation was that they were picking up stray RF from harmonics generated by the 15.625 kHz flyback transformer. It was bollocks then. It's always been a data-dredging exercise based on comparing addresses against addresses with a TV license and badgering the difference. Since most people these days have a flatscreen which has thoroughly different electronic characteristics it's bollocks on a stick.
If I am ever forced to live in the UK again, it will be my great pleasure to not have a TV, just so I can tell the TV licensing wooden-tops to fuck off. I can watch DVDs on my computer without a license, so they can go piss up a rope.
@ Dr Melvin T Gray - the Australian example might be thought of as rather less than successful when it's considered that the ABC still exist, still don't carry ads, still has their corporate bias, still have their own shops etc (I think of it as a BBC Mini-me with a funny accent) and is now funded fully straight from general taxation. As much as I disliked paying the licence fee there was always a choice even if playing by their rule: ditch the telly. In Australia you help fund the ABC whether you have a TV or not. Good that people stood up to it, but the end result was not what I'd call a success. Arguably it's worse.
The licence fee will stay, and will be joined by an internet tax.
No tax ever disappears; they just get added to.
If Auntie Beeb is bothered by people watching live t.v. on untraceable iPads and computers, then stop the live feeds to iPlayer. Simples (as they say).
This is exactly the same reason why they had to abandon the old Radio Licence (though they said it was being 'combined' with the telly tax), they simply could not keep track of all the transistor radios once people could take them to the park or the beach (not to mention new-fangled car radios).
No-one asked the BBC to invade the internet with their turgid shite and if they think they can tax me just because I might access their muck they can get stuffed.
"Good old internet, transferring power from the State to the individual once again!"
No wonder the Powers That Be want to control it...
"That's the extent of the technology, a database and the mark one eyeball."
I'm surprised no-one's ever taken the Beeb to court under the ASA over their own adverts...
"Our version of T.V licencing (G.E.Z) snapped THAT in the bud about two years ago."
That's the Germans, living up to stereotypes... ;)
"They're after an ISP tax to fund themselves..."
Yup, wouldn't surprise me AT ALL if that was their next move.
"Were we to follow the successful example set by Australians..."
Ah, but as Angry Exile points out, that didn't work out so well, did it?
"If Auntie Beeb is bothered by people watching live t.v. on untraceable iPads and computers, then stop the live feeds to iPlayer."
I doubt they can - it's almost certainly something they get extra money or kudos for providing...
Laughing at the the wrong part of the joke is one effect of sleep deprivation, J.
If the BBC is unhappy about people watching its programmes without paying for a licence fee why doesn't it just stop broadcasting? Problem solved - empty the prisons.
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