Get Your iPlayer TV License Immidiately or Face £1000 Fine & Prison!!
Thursday 1st September is not just any other day. And with all the other world news that goes on these days, you’d be forgiven (by us anyway! The authorities might not be quite as understanding!) for forgetting that big changes to the way TV Licensing works come in today.
Previously, unless you watched ‘live’ TV (i.e. as it was being broadcast) you could ‘get away’ with not having a TV License. In the day and age of rapidly advancing technology, the law rarely keeps up – and it’s no exception in this case. Back when TV Licensing laws were crafted, there was no way to get around the fact that if you watched TV it was deemed ‘live’. Even if you record TV (in the good old days of VHS) you still needed a TV License as although you were not necessarily watching the programme whilst it was being broadcast, you were actually recording it as it was broadcast – which meant you needed a TV License.
In the days of austerity, and dwindling Government support, the BBC is having to make a series of tough decisions – making efficiency savings and working out how much they need to increase revenue.
So, the solution (or part of the solution) has been to close the TV License loopholes – which license payers often perceived to be unfair. After all, the license fee pays for the BBC’s content – it costs the same to make whether you watch it live or otherwise.
From today onwards, if you watch any ‘live’ TV or you watch iPlayer you need to get a TV License.
‘But They’ve Never Caught Me Before’…
Wait!!! This is not before. Run the risk at your peril – if caught without a TV License when you should have one you can face a £1000 penalty and a potential jail sentence. Plus, it’s not morally right either :-P.
And if you think you can still sneakily watch iPlayer and be safe, please be aware it is much easier to catch you now than it was in days gone by. No need for detector vans anymore! If you’re accessing iPlayer, you’re doing so over an Internet connection. Each Internet connection is assigned a unique IP (Internet Protocol) address – this is as good as a home address in the real world. This IP address can be uniquely linked to your account (either fixed at home or mobile e.g. 3G, 4G). In turn, this can be uniquely linked to you. And if you’ve accessed iPlayer, the BBC will be able to see IP addresses that have accessed their service in their server logs and you’ll be banged to rights.
In short, it was never really a clever thing to evade the TV License. Now it’s near on reckless. Buy your TV License now!
On the plus side, more license fee payers should mean that we still get the great content we love from the BBC (who else can’t wait till Question Time is back on next week!?) and hopefully there won’t be any steep rises in fees (fingers crossed!).
