UK.gov pledges licence fee 'rethink' over heavy catch-up use

keep it simple

If they just issued a login/password with the TV license you could use it to access all the bbc services including catchup stuff, and they could be sure you were paid up then.

More meaningless stats

"40% of students in halls of residence use a laptop as their main way to watch TV"

What a meaningless statistic! Do they use TV cards, in which case alicence still applies? My kids all had tv licences in halls.

I don't know anybody that uses ONLY a pc to watch TV. Most people I know have a "proper telly" (and therefore pay a licence fee) as well as any pc related watching they may do.

Strikes me as bit of the usual posturing and quoting of random meaningless stats prior to jacking up the costs somehow.

They should spend less time trying to "stop people consuming material..." and find ways to ALLOW them to watch it making sure they pay. The whole "stopping.." thing speaks volumes about the way these people see the masses.

If they truly believe a flat rate per household, ring fenced broadcasting tax is the way to go, then be honest and make it one. Then no one will need "stopping from consuming" anything and the TV licencing detector/database bullshit can be disbanded saving even more money to be spent on programmes.

Its really simple

Introduce authentication via licence fee. It would get around all those pesky geolocation issues as well.

TV Licensing and enforcement

The criteria for enforcing license collection must be changing with the digital switch over.

Up until now, it used to be that if you had equipment that was capable of receiving broadcast television, the TV license enforcement people assumed that you needed a license, and you had to demonstrate to them (on a regular basis) that you didn't use it for broadcast TV in order to escape from their harassment.

The License used to be required for "owning equipment capable of receiving a TV broadcast". After switchover, TV's with only analogue tuners are no longer capable of doing this, so should be exempt and classed as monitors.

Will TV's that do not have digital tuners (and where no other digital tuner is in use) actually be exempt from requiring a license? I know that it is almost impossible to buy a TV without a digital tuner now, but I would guess that if you just use such a device for DVD's and videos, TV licensing should stop bothering households that have not purchased digital receiving equipment (ever wondered why you have to prove who you are when buying a TV - it's because that information is fed to TV licensing by the shop! I even had to do this when buying a DVD player not so long ago even though that was not able to receive TV, and also for a TV signal amplifier, even though that is technically not television receiving equipment)

Of course, the intent of the TV license now is that it should be required for receiving broadcast video in real time from any source (as indicated in the article), so the wording of the license must have changed, although I have not read it.

Something Must Be Done!

Not that licensing revenue is dropping, you understand, there's just that nagging thought that someone, somewhere, is getting something for free. And it must. Be. Stopped.

What is the problem

Configure the streaming software with the license number.

How much of the licence fee is wasted on collection costs?

I have often heard that a large part of the licence fee is spent on collecting the licence fee. I'd like to know whether that's true.

If it is true, then presumably most people would be better off if the BBC were paid out of general taxation instead. In fact, that might be true even if collecting the licence fee doesn't cost very much. The TV licence is basically just a regressive tax. Abolish it, I say.

(I hardly ever watch TV myself, but other family members do.)

Ooh...

This'll be a well balanced and non-rabid discussion, I'm going to get my special f5 key warmed up...

final paragraph says it all

no change in legislation is either required or desirable as current legislation appears to cover this very well.

Good luck

I'm sure whatever solution they come up with will have a lot of criticism, and i'm glad it's not my job to figure this out.

The 2 main options seem to be:

1. some form of dedicated income source like the current TV license, but who should pay? if I make my own TV show do you need to pay the BBC before you can download it from my website? and a subscription for users of BBC services just won't work

2. take it from general taxation, then if BBC news says something bad about the government? oh, well due to budget issues we'll have to cut your funding...

yeah, good luck with solving this one

This sounds a little like the music industry.

While I realise some people may decide to watch online rather than pay a license, you may also find that some do it simply because it is there. I am not convinced that online viewing will really replace TV viewing to a degree that makes an awful lot of difference to the number of license payers -- so I'd be inclined to think of it as "shrinkage" for the short term and think about what will happen if most TV goes IP in some way.

The argument about students, though, was the one that made me think of the music industry first -- students have a history of not paying the license fee going back decades. When I was there we used to watch portable TV which, technically, came under our parent's TV licenses* -- I see this as a more modern version of the same thing. The parallel with the music industry being that students, historically, have always shared music and the only way the internet changed this was to give them more choice -- there was no lost revenue as students would be unlikely to buy music much anyhow.

*well, arguably at least depending on factors like internal batteries.

If they do bring in...

...some kind of 'net license, I expect the BBC to lift all restrictions on what players can play back their content. I will have paid for it, so I expect to play it on any device of my choice (PC, Mac, iPod, hacked xBox, whatever; on any OS of my choice [not just Windows]).

I am also interested in the pricing. At the moment I pay £12 for "all you can eat" and rarely need to use iPlayer as the PC records more than enough stuff for me (only when it has a glitch do I use iPlayer). So if there is a 'net license, will I end up paying more? I strongly suspect the answer is "yes".

And how does the costing work? Who pays? The owner of the 'net connection or the viewer? If three people share the same net connection, is the fee levied once or three times? What if one person watches three shows at once? Is that now 3 charges?

With some kind of 'net fee, will they (and by "they" I primarily mean the parasitic distributors) finally get out of the dark ages and agree a global license. If I pay the fee to the BBC (or whomever) why the hell can't I play their content from anywhere in the world?

Perhaps such a model is the beginning of the end for traditional broadcasters. Perhaps we'll move to a system where you pick a "agency" that has agree license terms and just get what content you want, when you want (e.g. Jamendo, Magnatune) without restriciton. Paying the appropriate fee, of course.

This will, undoubtedly, lead to the demise of some major player which IMHO would be a good thing. The majors have ruined many promising series in the chase for the current bottom line and jerked content creators around more than enough. I have no doubt the some content creators could "go direct" (e.g. Seth McFarlane, Trey Parker & Matt Stone) and allow their fans access to their content, to major label required.

Can you smell the fear from the MAFIAA yet? Perhaps this is what ACTA is intended to stop - free trade and an open market.

Surely this is an easy enough thing to sort out

Every TV license has a license number associated with it....make it so that for the BBC iPlayer you need to have an account that has a License number bound to it in-order to play content that the BBC deem should be covered by the license fee.

I personally pay for a TV License but do most of my watching of BBC's programs through the iPlayer so I can watch at my convenience. I have zero issue with making me bind my license number to my iPlayer account in-order to view content.

They could put an incentive on it too, release some programming for free but keep the popular good stuff locked to only license bound accounts.

Simple

You get or signup for a userid and password with your paper license number which you use to logon to the catchup website. This way you can also watch the programs you are paying for whilst you are abroad, currently foreign ip addresses are prevented from viewing even if the person is a license payer.

Erm

Would`nt it be just a case of loging in with your tv licencse accoutn id and your postcode??

Carnt be that hard to implent surley.

Then if others want to watch they could add a debit/credit/mobile fone thingy to view..

But it is the bbc we are talking about so going to cost a min of 5 millions to implement.. lol

I've already paid once.

'The BBC's governing body the BBC Trust expressed concern last year about the increasing number of viewers watching catch-up services and said that rules on licences should be clearer.

Most people in the UK already pay a licence fee. They're forced to because of the snooping vans that go around all over the place. It's pretty much impossible to not pay the fee. Therefore anything I watch on my computer is already paid for

Actually, forget that

The BBC can go subscription-based. Then you can login to use iplayer.

Only sub to the channels you want, e.g. BBC2+3 and pay porportionally.

Plus the BBC gets a true idea of its perceived value.