TV detector vans once prowled the streets of England • Hacker News Board

Re: TV detector vans once prowled the streets of England

#321

Post by spuz » Tue, Jan 19, 2021, 12:14 PM UTC

MaxBarraclough wrote: post #256

gambiting wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is absolutely 1000000% not true. You only have to pay the TV Licence if you ever watch live TV, not if you merely have a televion set. I've never paid the fee because I don't watch live TV, ever, and when you go on the TV licence page to fill out the form why you don't need a licence, one of the options on the form is "I only use my TV for games consoles, netflix, dvd players etc". So it's not some "clever hack"…

It's unhelpful to disagree with someone on a point of fact and to decline to provide a decent source. The result is that you've given the reader no reason to take your word over the other person's. From what I can tell, your account of things is accurate. On the website [0][1][2] the requirements aren't concerned at all with what equipment you own or with how it's set up, only with the act of watching or recording li…

Thanks for the clarification. It's possible that what I said used to be true but looks like it is no longer the case. It's also possible that in the pre-internet days, the fact that you had your TV connected to an aerial was used as strong circumstantial evidence that you actually watched live TV but it was never actually used as the sole basis to fine you.

Re: TV detector vans once prowled the streets of England

#322

Post by mattbee » Tue, Jan 19, 2021, 12:14 PM UTC

I haven't seen one here for years but I always assumed they were a fake-out! There are definitely criminal penalties to not paying, but mostly it's done by sending threatening letters for addresses that don't have licenses, and visiting as a last resort.

I heard in Japan there isn't any penalty for not paying, and I was captivated by a Murakami story of the "NHK man" who raps loudly on apartment doors and can only yell at these closed doors trying to shame non-payers.

Re: TV detector vans once prowled the streets of England

#323

Post by 5cents » Tue, Jan 19, 2021, 12:15 PM UTC

tallanvor wrote: post #179

philwelch wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At that point, why don’t they just have the government fund the television networks from tax revenue rather than effectively levying a poll tax earmarked for broadcasters?

Norway recently switched from a system where you paid a set fee if you owned a TV to a system where you pay based on your income and it's part of your tax form. The reasoning behind the change was that basically everyone either has a TV or internet, and since the channels are available online, everyone has access.

The Monty Python-inspired comedians in KLM made at least one story about it https://youtu.be/iaVMO4t_D8c (length ~1 minute)

Re: TV detector vans once prowled the streets of England

#324

Post by pbhjpbhj » Tue, Jan 19, 2021, 12:15 PM UTC

jonathanstrange wrote: post #216

haspok wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least in the UK there is content on TV worthy of watching (I got addicted to snooker while there, also some quite interesting shows like "Benefits Britain: Life on the Dole"), also, when I moved overseas they paid back the licence fee for the remaining part of the year, no questions asked. Now I'm in Austria and the "content" on TV channels is just ridiculous. Targeted at 70+ pensioners, but why should I pay for t…

BBC is awesome, their news is very good and they produce some of the best series in the world. It's a shame that they have split up BBC UK and BBC International so strictly and do everything they can to lock all BBC UK offerings to citizens of the UK. It infuriates me that I'm redirected from bbc.co.uk to bbc.com and are being displayed something else than people in the UK. If I go to bbc.co.uk, I do that to find out…

They lock content away from UK users too, it's mostly made by third party, paid by UK public, and so it's locked from international use so those companies can sell rights abroad, and locked from UK users so they can buy the content again (despite paying for it already).

Re: TV detector vans once prowled the streets of England

#325

Post by captainbland » Tue, Jan 19, 2021, 12:16 PM UTC

aqsalose wrote: post #308

captainbland wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems impossible to imagine the BBC being truly unbiased when the government occassionally likes to show it has power over the organisation by sabre-rattling over continuing to allow the TV license fee. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/dec/09/boris-johns... Honestly I think it has a general pro-government-of-the-day-bias - as you say, 'used to be the witty cry', indeed! Under New Labour it was still broad…

I agree with your general thesis. However, this line got me thinking: >It seems impossible to imagine the BBC being truly unbiased Thought example. If there was a truly objective, unbiased source of information about political and physical reality, wouldn't it be far too valuable to put in charge of a news desk. They should be running the government in place of the parliament and politicians! Of course, if you find t…

Ah, but that wouldn't be enough in a democracy because people might choose to vote against it given the right conditions. Your best bet in that case might be to communicate it to the voters in some sort of news programme - taking us back to square one!

But in all seriousness I do accept that unbiased outlets basically don't really exist and it is an impossibly high bar. The reason I talk about this in the way that I do is not as some kind of campaign against the BBC: on the contrary, I think public service broadcasting is in general a good thing and frequently produces higher quality content than the vast majority of privately owned outlets, at least in the UK, despite its biases.

It's just that to me, everything has a bias, and it's important to understand what any particular outlet's biases are before you start accepting information from it. I'd say this is the one redeeming feature of our print media, despite how much crap they often produce, they are at least usually very open about their biases.

You can get a lot of good information out of the BBC news and politics programmes, but I'd say you do have to use a fairly critical lens to get the most out of it.

Re: TV detector vans once prowled the streets of England

#326

Post by germanier » Tue, Jan 19, 2021, 12:17 PM UTC

kwanbix wrote: post #238

sleavey wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In Germany, the situation changed a few years ago, every household has to pay now, even if they don't own a television or radio. This was literally the first piece of mail I got when I moved to Germany: a letter demanding I pay for the TV networks I don't watch. I didn't even own a TV by that point, nor would have understood much of what was being said! A German explained to me once that the forced payment by non-w…

IIRC in Germany Netflix €14, Disney+ €7, Amazon Prime Video €6. And all 3 I can watch whenever I travel. The TV/Radio Tax is about €18!!! and I can only "enjoy" it in Germany!!! Not only that, the quality of programming quite bad, and to make it even worse, I am forced to pay for it when I don't even watch it. When I moved to Germany it just blown my mind.

Most of their content is streamable worldwide. Exception being licensed content for which they only acquire the rights for streaming to Germany. Why would they buy worldwide licenses? Netflix and the others also don't do that – they only get licenses for the local market (of which they have much more of course), travelers are just a byproduct.

Re: TV detector vans once prowled the streets of England

#327

Post by da_big_ghey » Tue, Jan 19, 2021, 12:17 PM UTC

cjrp wrote: post #309

mrsuprawsm wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately BBC news really isn't that good any more. It's been on a long slow decline since about 2005 or so, and now the majority of their news programming (with a few small but notable exceptions) are primarily cheering on the Tory government + ministers of the day.

Their programmes quite often suffer from both-sidesism. They'll have a senior scientist on debating a conspiracy-theory-believing anti-vaxxer, as if they're both on the same level.

While that's galling to see, it's targeted to convince the anti-vaxxer, or really the person who's on the fence. If they just dismiss the ideas, the anti-vaxxer says, "Oh look, the mainstream media covering up the truth again. Must be paid off by ${EVIL_BILLIONAIRE}." If he's given a chance, debates, and loses, that's a much better impression.

Re: TV detector vans once prowled the streets of England

#328

Post by xorcist » Tue, Jan 19, 2021, 12:19 PM UTC

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #221

xorcist wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just any private business. Compare with social insurance fees that must also be paid, it is not something you can opt out of while being part of the society. The fact that it is not a state owned organization is a feature, not a bug. In Germany specifically it is not a revolving door between public broadcasting and politics, and there is clearly journalistic pride in taking down corrupt politicians, so while…

You're contradicting yourself. You say it's good that the TV tax is levied by the government like social insurance fees but instead of it going directly to the government like social insurance fees, it goes to an "independent" organization and that's the "feature"? LOL, what?! Do you really think that money is no strings attached? Ideally it would be and I guess that's the idea on paper but in practice, the public br…

Yes, that is indeed how things work. It is not part of the budget and the ruling coalition has no mandate to bargain with it. I believe most European countries have similar checks and balances in place. I do not understand what the contradiction is, but if there is one it must be widespread.

We pay for many things we can not use, roads where we don't live, schools we can not attend and health care for the opposite sex. That does not mean public funding is good in itself, only that the grey area between what is public and what is private is large and politicized and settled over time. I disagree with many of them but that is no reason to get counterfactual.

There was a loud public debate about the migration crisis, both at the time and for a long time afterwards. It is important to recognize these things even if we don't personally agree with the outcome. That's part of living in a democracy.

Re: TV detector vans once prowled the streets of England

#329

Post by da_big_ghey » Tue, Jan 19, 2021, 12:20 PM UTC

powderpig wrote: post #317

M2Ys4U wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I expect that will be slowly expanded; the BBC's new Director-General wants to increase commercial revenue (and immediately before being appointed as DG he was the CEO of BBC Studios, the BBC's commercial subsidiary).

The new chairman has apparently donated to the Tory party. https://bylinetimes.com/2021/01/06/new-bbc-chairman-richard-... The DG was also a former deputy chairman of Hammersmith and Fulham Conservative party. https://inews.co.uk/news/tim-davie-new-bbc-director-general-...

Should making a donation, campaigning for a candidate, or exercising other forms of political speech disqualify one from working as a civil servant?

Re: TV detector vans once prowled the streets of England

#330

Post by teekert » Tue, Jan 19, 2021, 12:24 PM UTC

In 1969 the Dutch Television broadcasters did an April fools joke, they said they could detect people that did not pay for watching TV (zwartkijkers) by driving around with a detector [0]. It could be blocked by wrapping your TV in aluminum foil. The next day aluminum foil was sold out in many places...

[0] https://historiek.net/1-april-grappendag/1070/