The BBC World Cup Broadband trap!

That is just pure naivety. You honestly think that the Government would just hand back to Joe Public over £3 billion in licence fee revenues? That money would happily into the old Budget box and get wasted on some unnecessary quango or something else. No, that money is better off being put back into a broadcaster that will keep the commerical broadcasters on their toes.

BBC News is one of the best news providers in the world. BBC News 24 is a success story that has evolved over time. It would not be a good idea to change a successful brand now. It would be like renaming CNN or MTV. These are globally known brands and it would be very foolish to change something so well known.

I think easy targets would be businesses that use static IPs, particularly ones that state the company name when you do a WHOIS.

The PC is not a telly unless you have a TV tuner in it, as far as I am concerned you only pay the TV licence for reception of traditional TV signals ie via satellite, aerial or cable, broadband can hardly be classified as a tellie signal it's data being captured and streamed!

Whatever next the Beeb probably wants us to pay the licence fee for using broadband!

As I said earlier - what is the difference between a HomeChoice ADSL IPTV box and a PC connected to an ADSL line streaming video?

They are both ways of watching BBC content via an IP link.

I don't think a UHF/VHF/Cable tuner defines broadcasting - surely it is the viewing of content, not the delivery method that is the key?

The BBC is about providing content to licence fee payers - not about providing radio frequencies...

You tend to need to have a TV to plug your HomeChoice box into, and isn't that what the licence is technically covering?

Given all the fuss kicked up in the past about 'You need a TV licence if you have a television, even if all you use it for is watching pre-recorded videos, because it can still pick up off-air singals', isn't it odd that they're trying to bend the rules now and say it's covering things without a tuner?

This is a very murky area for the licensing, I don't think they've bent the rules though. The law as I understand it is if you have any piece of equipment capable of recieving 'signals' then you need a licence. From reading around, the TV Licensing people are quite sneaky in their language about needing a licence for simply owning equipment that can pick up these 'signals' - but I think they will let you get away with owning a TV as long as you don't use it for broadcasts and can prove that (i.e. detuning it).

I don't believe the regulations ever simply refer to the 'tuner' part of a tv, it is vague enough for them to interpret watching broadband content as 'recieving signals'.

The chance is that if the BBC didnt exist then there would be no healthy competition, and the commercial channels would be much worse than they are - and of course how would Digital, Colour, Stereo, freeview have progressed? I dont know and it's not for discussion here - but think about it for a second beyond your shallow views - you would probably be much worse off watching what you 'want' now.

Good on them.

Please lets not let this place turn into Digital Spy where every single thread seems to be about the license fee

Sascha - of course the licence fee should be abolished. Why not replace it with subscription for those who want the BBC. Then they'd be able to concentrate on the sort of intelligent high brow stuff they're good at. Only a few people would be able to afford it, but that's OK because the sort of intelligent people who'd want to watch the BBC would be well off lawyers and doctors etc. The poor are generally stupid and they'd be OK watching lowest common denominator commercial TV - which is free! Hooray!

Is this really what you want? Two tier TV?

The only fair way is to spread the cost of top quality evenly throughout the population - and the only way of doing this is the TV license. Subscription creates two tier, and it's accepted by all that there's not enough advertising revenue around for an advertising only system.

Sorry for continuing the OT, but I had to give my point of view.

Perhaps the point of BBC / Crapita clamping down on these businesses is that they intentionally telling staff to watch online rather than pay for a TV licence in the first place? Also I wonder how many schools / colleges could be caught out by this and the uproar that would cause.

Nope - you could easily use a monitor with a Home Choice box - just as you can with a Freeview receiver or Sky box.

The monitor on its own doesn't require a licence as it has no tuner and is not capable of receiving broadcasts on its own. (It was legal to have a monitor and a VHS player with no licence as long as the player and monitor had no tuners)

Schools / colleges have slightly different licencing rules - as well as different rules about copying and recording shows.