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TV detector vans once prowled the streets of England

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Re: TV detector vans once prowled the streets of England

#501

Post by willtim »

flower-giraffe wrote: post #211

I think the funding and governance (by Royal Charter) of the BBC have historically provided a huge benefit to society in the UK. Advertising free children’s TV (and radio) may have delayed the onset or rampant consumerism fuelled by commercial TV elsewhere. The BBC microcomputer project is arguably the origin of ARM CPU’s. Initially the license fee was for radios, I can’t find a reference but I remember being told as…

While I think that having some publicly funded radio/TV is a really good thing, the idea of the UK TV license and the subsequent enforcement is not. My friends elderly mother does not have or want a TV. She is constantly harassed and threatened by UK license enforcement. Her son has invited them into her home on numerous occasions, hoping that the legal threats and visits would cease, but to this day they have not. I object to having my license fee money spent on such abuse of vulnerable people.

Re: TV detector vans once prowled the streets of England

#502

Post by staplers »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #410
faceplanted wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People have clearly noticed the social and political issues with advertising for a very long time now. The issue is that it's hard to rally against one of the most lucrative businesses ever to exist that inherently has an extreme amount of messaging power to defend itself.

I think the issue is people really like watching TV and movies, and continuing to watch the content shows they are OK with all the ads. Never have people had more access to other content, or other ways of entertaining themselves. I have no idea how people put up with the NFL in the US.

During the early days of sports streaming (sometimes still) you'd find a stream with a live feed of the stadium broadcast without the ads. During the commercial breaks you'd be able to watch what was on the megatron (camera panning crowd, in-stadium entertainment).

I would pay a massive premium to have access to that feed for every sports broadcast. Gabe Newell said it best about piracy offering the best experience.

Re: TV detector vans once prowled the streets of England

#503

Post by kapuasuite »

boffinism wrote: post #128

The BBC is currently dedicating hours of airtime a day to educational content to match our primary and secondary curricula because the schools are shut and lots of kids can't access online provisions. And still people complain about the licence fee in terms of whether or not they enjoy BBC gameshows...

The US has public television - PBS - it's funded by tax revenues rather than a "TV license".

Re: TV detector vans once prowled the streets of England

#504

Post by MaxBarraclough »

gambiting wrote: post #436
nailer wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if an event is on YouTube but also shown by satellite, cable, terrestrial transmitter etc? Does that mean I owe a license fee for YouTube? Am I obliged to check before every video? (Obviously these are ridiculous hypothetical questions, and I don't expect answers, but the policy itself is ridiculous)

Yep, it technically does. If there is a live channel on Youtube showing say a football match, then yes, technically you have to pay a TV licence for watching it, since the same match is broadcast on a TV channel. I don't think the policy is that ridiculous, it's just that it's one of these where certain edge cases like this one can be safely ignored. You will be tracked and found if you use the BBC iPlayer without ha…

> If there is a live channel on Youtube showing say a football match, then yes, technically you have to pay a TV licence for watching it

Sky offer a streaming service in the UK called NowTV which includes live TV streaming of their channels, as well as Netflix-style on-demand streaming from their library. They're very upfront that a TV licence is needed if you wish you watch their live channels over NowTV, [0] but one is not required for on-demand streaming.

[0] https://help.nowtv.com/article/do-i-need-a-tv-licence-to-wat...

Re: TV detector vans once prowled the streets of England

#505

Post by maxerickson »

kapuasuite wrote: post #503
boffinism wrote: post #128

The BBC is currently dedicating hours of airtime a day to educational content to match our primary and secondary curricula because the schools are shut and lots of kids can't access online provisions. And still people complain about the licence fee in terms of whether or not they enjoy BBC gameshows...

The US has public television - PBS - it's funded by tax revenues rather than a "TV license".

Federal funding is only a portion of the support for PBS.

https://www.pbs.org/publiceditor/blogs/pbs-public-editor/how...

I'm not sure how it all breaks down when you look at funding that goes to local stations and various other entities involved.

Re: TV detector vans once prowled the streets of England

#506

Post by VonGuard »

ouid wrote: post #499
afavour wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strongly agreed. Having lived in the US for a good number of years now I can see how the idea of vans roaming looking for TV viewers is baffling, but the public TV offering by the BBC, while definitely not perfect, is miles ahead of both the public and network offerings on US TV (though credit to the likes of PBS and NPR for doing miraculous work with a fraction of the budget!). I even got my start in computing from…

Then pay for it with taxes on sales of television sets themselves.

This.

Re: TV detector vans once prowled the streets of England

#507

Post by msla »

_ph_ wrote: post #282
lultimouomo wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a state wants to fund public radio and TV stations, it doesn't need to do it through a mandatory, regardless of use flat fee. I would argue that that is the worse possible way to do it: * Increased bureaucracy (why not add a 0.1% to an existing tax?) * Regressive taxation (you pay the same amount regardless of your income; if you used the income tax, you would distribute it more fairly) * No market shaping (you co…

The point of having a fee vs. a tax is, that the government has no direct control of it. So they can't just adjust it at will. The fee is set for several years in advance and increased from time to time to adjust for inflation etc. But it is an independant entitiy deciding about this.

Parliament can pass any law it wants. That's central to the system the UK has.

The BBC is dependent on a fee collected by the government, as regulated by laws the government has passed and the government enforces. Insisting it's not government funded is trying to invent a distinction where none exists.

Re: TV detector vans once prowled the streets of England

#508

Post by seanhunter »

willtim wrote: post #501
flower-giraffe wrote: post #211

I think the funding and governance (by Royal Charter) of the BBC have historically provided a huge benefit to society in the UK. Advertising free children’s TV (and radio) may have delayed the onset or rampant consumerism fuelled by commercial TV elsewhere. The BBC microcomputer project is arguably the origin of ARM CPU’s. Initially the license fee was for radios, I can’t find a reference but I remember being told as…

While I think that having some publicly funded radio/TV is a really good thing, the idea of the UK TV license and the subsequent enforcement is not. My friends elderly mother does not have or want a TV. She is constantly harassed and threatened by UK license enforcement. Her son has invited them into her home on numerous occasions, hoping that the legal threats and visits would cease, but to this day they have not. I…

Yeah. My father in law had the same experience. He once took an enforcement person into his house and insisted they go through the house together and conduct an exhaustive search of all the places a TV could be. "Perhaps it's in the cistern of the toilet? Let's look!...Not there? Perhaps it's in the bread bin..." etc etc

It is really bad the way they do this, and having seen the threatening letters they send out they could be very frightening. The letters were on the lines of "Our detectors have found that you have a TV and you have to pay the license fee or we'll send bailiffs around, take you to court etc", and the one I received once (when i too didn't have a TV) was printed on red paper.

Re: TV detector vans once prowled the streets of England

#509

Post by ookdatnog »

jeofken wrote: post #452
ookdatnog wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your argument only works under the assumption that money=speech, a belief that doesn't hold up to much scrutiny. AFAIK, it's perfectly legal to speak in support of, say, an active terrorist organization. I doubt it is legal in many places to donate money to support an active terrorist organization. If you believe that money=speech, the law is inconsistent in this matter. Assuming you want the law to be consistent, th…

That’s a fair point! The example should be voluntarily paying a writer to write what I deem truth worthy, vs the state threatening with violence if I refuse to pay for what they want me to pay for. In my country Sweden the state media is very biased and paints my points of views in a bad light - but I am forced to fund them. I encourage Americans here to cherish not having to have that.

> In my country Sweden the state media is very biased and paints my points of views in a bad light - but I am forced to fund them.

I understand that that's frustrating for you, my objection with your post is merely your claim that this constitutes forced speech. It does not, unless you believe that money=speech. Some people hold that belief, but I suspect very few of them will be consistent about accepting the logical consequences of that belief (therefore they don't really hold the belief, they just reasoned backwards to justify a belief they _do_ hold).

There's nothing in the belief that speech should be free and unforced that prohibits state-owned media (as long as other speech is not suppressed), or even outright state propaganda. That doesn't mean you can't be against these things, merely that being against these things doesn't automatically follow from believing in that free and unforced speech is a fundamental right.

If you want to make the case that state-owned media are immoral (which, just to be clear, I don't currently believe), you need to refer to different rights. I've heard some people on the internet make the claim, for instance, that all taxes constitute theft, and that taxes are fundamentally immoral. I don't believe this at all, but that would give you a moral basis to renounce state media.

But really, sometimes the state is just going to do something that you don't like, perhaps even hate with a passion, without violating a fundamental right. I know I'd be furious if the state broadcaster started propagandizing a religion, for instance, but as long as they don't infringe on my freedom to believe what I want, they're not violating any of my rights (I could, at most, argue that it's a slippery slope to violating my rights, which may be a convincing argument by itself).

Re: TV detector vans once prowled the streets of England

#510

Post by dehrmann »

andyjohnson0 wrote: post #400
saberdancer wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the point of this license fee in this day and age? Everyone has a TV, so everyone pays the license fee. Wouldn't it be simpler to just use a part of the taxes already collected to go to BBC. My problem with this type of license fee collection is that it bring forward a number of costs associated with it that could be removed if it went directly from taxes and that today everyone has TV so it doesn't really "t…

> Wouldn't it be simpler to just use a part of the taxes already collected to go to BBC. That would make the BBC dependent on the government for its revenue, which definitely isn't desirable. The current system, where the BBC collects its own revenue under the authority of a royal charter, is intended to help insulate it from political interference.

At last from an American perspective, that seems like a technicality, and it uses government enforcement tools.

The US funds the Corporation for Public Broadcasting directly, and even under Trump, there wasn't much pressure around changing its funding--I guess defunding Sesame Street looks bad. Of course, public broadcast stations turn into panhandlers once every few months, so it's not without its faults.

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