TV Licence Entrapment
Ever wonder why all the “catch up” services in the UK all have a “Live”, “Live TV” or “Watch Live” somewhere very prominent on their website?
Most have “parental controls” to watch restricted content, requiring a log in and proof of age (ie credit card) to comply with the law, yet don’t have a problem with you watching live TV and therefore breaking the law (ie Section 363 of the Communications Act 2003), strange that? Not even a pop-up disclaimer stating that you might be breaking the law by clicking on that button! When they could ask you, while gathering all your other personal information if you have a TV Licence or not. The default SHOULD be to not display links to live content until you understand the law they are tempting you to break!
Another concern is that parents often don’t know about this loophole. They often don’t allow TV’s in bedrooms so that their children aren’t tempted to watch undesirable content and have internet filters to block such undesirable content on their tablets etc. The only problem is that the likes of channel4 are seen as “safe” content on these filters, and that a young person can just go to channel4.com click on the “Live” stream and watch the age restricted content any ways!
Then you have the BBC wanting all new “smart” TV’s in the UK be pre-installed with BBC iPlayer by default and TV Licensing aka Capita employee’s harassing our older, vulnerable people by sending monthly threatening letters and sending strangers to knock on their doors. Why do these people assume us all to be guilty until they deem us to be innocent? Capita employees attempting to gain entry into your home to “prove” you aren’t watching “live” content, recording live content or using iPlayer! It’s absolutely ridiculous. We don’t have “Knife Enforcement Officers” knocking on doors asking to see our knifes aren’t being used to break the law!
Personally you couldn’t pay me to watch the tripe on BBC! I can get all of my content, when I want to watch it via on-demand streaming services. I don’t want, or need a TV Licence yet TVL keep threatening me with visits, fines and all the other non-sense!
