Tv license for a gfx card??

[finlay666]

i have told them 3 times over the phone i dont have a TV...still every month i get threatening letters

Do what I know some people in my uni did, call them up and basically give them an ultimatum:
Come look for yourself and cross me off your list
or
Stop wasting my time and cross me off your list

Funnily enough they threatened to send someone round, but having to check roughly 500 rooms when most people are out and at uni is hardly a practical thing to do

Even people that had a TV for their games consoles were fine (I had a tv card for playing on my wii through my pc monitor and was told it was fine over the phone, quickly started recording the call and asked the kind lady to confirm it )

[JPreston]

Detector vans were only ever propaganda; there never was a reliable way to detect whether TV signals were being received.

1) When has anyone actually seen one?

2) How could it ever be formally established (case-by-case) that whatever (mythical) waves were (allegedly) being picked up weren't simply attenuated and originated from next door anyway?

3) What about cable TV?

4) How many vans and how much time would be required to surveille even a fraction of every home in the country?

Detector vans were just a tactic used to foist a regressive tax onto the gullible (I believe they used to park mocked-up vans in town centres on a saturday afternoon). Now they just tell us about this magical database of every home in the country.

[finlay666]

3) What about cable TV?

Surely that would be the easiest, as the cable company would (more than likely IMO) have to provide details, and all it takes is cross referenccing the address

[JPreston]

Cable TV is bundled with virgin's/ntl cheap phone and broadband deal, so just because someone has cable doesn't mean they even have a TV. Prove it, copper!

[j.o.s.h.1408]

do you need tv licence for sky/cable? a bit daff cuz your already paying for cable/sky service??

[jimbouk]

You need a licence for cable and sky because you recieve the 'free' bbc channels.

And I thought it was something along the lines of 'having a device capable of receiving a TV signal' not actually using it. That stuck in my mind after a guy was prosecuted for having a TV so that his son could play a video came, where it wasn't even plugged into an aerial.

[Saracen]

You need a licence for cable and sky because you recieve the 'free' bbc channels.

Not really. You need the licence because the legislation says you need one to receive TV transmissions. It doesn't have anything much to do with what you receive, or with what the licence fee funds.

Until a couple of years ago, the legislation was worded in such a way that if you only received certain channels (satellite ones, generally) that were transmitted from and controlled from outside the UK (such as an Arabic language sat channel, for instance) then you didn't need a licence. That changed with the Communications Act 2003, which now basically says that receiving transmissions, whether foreign or not, requires a licence.

And I thought it was something along the lines of 'having a device capable of receiving a TV signal' not actually using it. That stuck in my mind after a guy was prosecuted for having a TV so that his son could play a video came, where it wasn't even plugged into an aerial.

It's a long story, but essentially, it's all about definitions.

The original licence requirement was the Wireless and Telegraphy Act 1949, which stated (section 1) that

"no person shall establish or use any station for wireless telegraphy or instal or use any apparatus for wireless telegraphy except under the authority of a licence in that behalf granted by the Postmaster General (now the Secretary of State) and any person who established or uses any station for wireless telegraphy or instals or uses any apparatus for wireless telegraphy except under and in accordance with such a licence shall be guilty of an offence under this Act:"

The first thing to note is that this definition opens up a whole raft of issues that need to be defined. For instance, what is "wireless telegraphy", and secondly, what is "use" or "instal"?

And then, there've been a whole series of amendments to the basic provisions by subsequent legislation, and by definitions provided by the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry.

If, for instance, you have a TV set connected to an XBox, with the TV channels detuned and no aerial connected, is it either "installed" or "used" for wireless telegraphy? Is it even wireless telegraphy apparatus, if it can't be used for wireless telegraphy, without additional components (like an aerial)?

These issues have been argued back and forth extensively, and as is usually the case, what's happened is that Parliament creates the laws, and the Courts then interpret exactly what those laws mean, and how they are to be interpreted in relation to other existing law. So, it's the Courts that define terms like "use", and a critical example is the precedent set by Rudd vs The Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, 1987, where the interpretation of "use" was tackled.

Rudd was caught running a pirate radio station, and the case went right up to the Law Lords. Part of their ruling established that mere possession of a TV set did not require a licence. The situation they cited was where a householder had a TV, but was about to go away from home when the licence expires. They went on to argue that the word "use", for more than one reason, should be taken in the commonplace sense rather than in the sense of "available for use".

But, and it's a big but, they go on to suggest that a court may interpret the presence of an unlicenced set as highly suggestive that the intention was to use it in an illegal manner, in the absence of a good explanation to the contrary. They said

"But I trust and believe that if, for example, a television set in working order is found in the sitting room of a house occupied by the defendant, it will not be difficult for a court to draw the necessary inference in the absence of some credible explanation by the defendant to the effect that it was not being used".

In other words, you do not need a licence unless you're using the set to receive TV transmissions, but a court is likely to infer that that is exactly what you were doing, unless you can convince them that you had a credible other use. However, even since 1987, technology has moved on and the use of a TV for video playback, DVD playback, games consoles and so on, is far more prevalent now than it was then, so convincing a court of that "other use" should be far easier than it was.

But also note the inference from the above of where the burden lies in satisfying the court. Rudd is double-edged: you do NOT need a licence for a TV if it isn't used for receiving TV signals, but it may end up with you having to demonstrate that you aren't doing that, rather than the authorities having to prove that you are. In other words, there's heavy overtones of guilty until proven innocent.

The following quote is from TV Licencing's website, with the red emphasis added by me.

You need a TV Licence to use any television receiving equipment such as a TV set, set-top boxes, video or DVD recorders, computers or mobile phones to watch or record TV programmes as they are being shown on TV.

If you use a set-top box with a hi-fi system or another device that can only be used to produce sounds and can't display TV programmes, and you don't install or use any other TV receiving equipment, you don't need a TV Licence.

Even that, while appearing to say you don't need a licence for using consoles etc, is ambiguous. What defines whether a TV is capable of displaying TV programmes? Any set can be used that way, IF it has a decent signal source and is tuned. But with no antenna and if untuned, can it be used that way?

[j.o.s.h.1408]

i wont be surpised if they make anotehr law that states that if u use a pc you need a tv licence lol!

[Agent]

i wont be surpised if they make anotehr law that states that if u use a pc you need a tv licence lol!

Not as crazy as it sounds...
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/02/12/1955224