Really Worried - The TV Licence - Unnecessary Trial

bazzyb

Nodding_Donkey wrote: »

So why is there all this discussion? The OPs wife just needs to turn up in court and show them the TV licence to back up her not guilty plea.

Because they did have a licence, then they didn't have a licence, then they had a new licence because they did or didn't have one before. The licence was needed because they were watching live TV, then they weren't watching live TV, then they were only watching 10% live TV, then they weren't watching any live TV whatsoever but decided to buy a licence anyway even though they didn't even need one.

That's pretty much a summary of the OP's posts in this thread so far. Clear as mud. Don't expect any further detail as if you ask for clarification you get hit with a torrent of abuse from the OP.

MothballsWallet

prowla wrote: »

Interestingly on the iPlayer angle, I think there may be a delay between the live broadcast and its streaming over the Internet, but I'm not sure if it is long enough to stop it being considered to be live.

Actually, not necessarily - I once watched Dr Who from my PC over iPlayer as it was broadcast while my mum (who was visiting) watched something else on the TV in the living room (we do have a TV licence).

Swipe

prowla wrote: »

Well, the technology is available to say which IP address was used to click which URL at which time, and the technology is available to say whose connection had that IP at that time.

(Unless you use some sort of ubfuscation, like a VPN/proxy, of course...)

Well, let me present the following scenarios where IP address does not prove a crime has been committed...

What if my parents (who are correctly licensed) were over at my house using their mobile phones on my wifi connection to watch 10 minutes of News 24 via the BBC app while they were waiting for me to get ready?

What if friends (all correctly licensed) bring there laptops over and some point during the day decide to watch a live programme on battery via my broadband connection?

What if my elderly neighbour's (over 75) broadband has gone down and I allow him to use mine for the time being and he streams live TV from next door which is covered by his free TV licence?

Let me hasten to add that none of the above could actually occur at my house because all live TV is blocked via my router. But they are all valid examples.

prowla

Swipe wrote: »

Well, let me present the following scenarios where IP address does not prove a crime has been committed...

What if my parents (who are correctly licensed) were over at my house using their mobile phones on my wifi connection to watch 10 minutes of News 24 via the BBC app while they were waiting for me to get ready?

What if friends (all correctly licensed) bring there laptops over and some point during the day decide to watch a live programme on battery via my broadband connection?

What if my elderly neighbour's (over 75) broadband has gone down and I allow him to use mine for the time being and he streams live TV from next door which is covered by his free TV licence?

Let me hasten to add that none of the above could actually occur at my house because all live TV is blocked via my router. But they are all valid examples.

Hmmm, that's interesting; the external IP would be yours, but the internal/tunneled ones would be your visitor's.

But your visitor's IP addresses may be recognisably different to yours, and depending upon your DHCP settings you may tend to get the same one on your computer.

Of course though, the forensics to prove who was who may take time (ie. cost!).

The question about someone else using your internet would make an interesting test case though.

I suppose the question would come into play if it happened regularly, rather than occasionally, and so less consistent with visitors.

Swipe

prowla wrote: »

I suppose the question would come into play if it happened regularly, rather than occasionally, and so less consistent with visitors.

The whole debate is pointless anyway as they'd need to know who your ISP was before they could do anything. If they don't know that, then how could they prove or even know live TV was being accessed from your premises?

prowla

Swipe wrote: »

The whole debate is pointless anyway as they'd need to know who your ISP was before they could do anything. If they don't know that, then how could they prove or even know live TV was being accessed from your premises?

Who knows where the snooping law is going to take us?

Uxb

I was involved as witness in a court case which involved misuse of a computer.
The IP address was ID'd
This just gives the router - not the computer connected to it either wired/wireless at the time.
The physical address was extracted from the ISP by the police.
The owner was "visited" by the police and "invited to cooperate"
Not surprisingly the name of the person using the system at the time was very rapidly provided indeed.

In this case the perp' was not very clever had had not used any of the known IP hiding/anon' techniques to cover their traces.

Whose ISP is allocated which blocks of IP address numbers is freely available information. Even forum admins will know from which ISP any poster is posting!
Sometimes this can be great fun when say a poster rants on about how they hate BT and would never use them and the forum admin get fed up with this drivel and point out that they are posting from a BT IP address.

Swipe

Uxb wrote: »

Whose ISP is allocated which blocks of IP address numbers is freely available information. Even forum admins will know from which ISP any poster is posting!
Sometimes this can be great fun when say a poster rants on about how they hate BT and would never use them and the forum admin get fed up with this drivel and point out that they are posting from a BT IP address.

All fair comments, but how would the BBC know if the IP address accessing their live TV streams belonged to an unlicensed premises?

Cornucopia

Big Data....

Not_Another_Username

For the benefit of those who can't keep up:

We moved into a new property, not knowing if the licence had expired. It was the last thing on our minds as we were very busy. We recently found out it had expired.

TVL visited one evening. My wife unwittingly signed the form. We hadn't even got the TV properly set up at the time.

Since around 90% of the TV we had been watching at our previous address was either pre-recorded (yes, "LIVE", but that's irrelevant at this point) or via On Demand services, we wondered whether to say goodbye to the licence and go 100% On Demand. We enquired with TVL and they confirmed we did not need a licence for On Demand and put us through to their Cancellations department.

We received a letter stating that we no longer required a licence.

My wife continues to watch On Demand and, as far as I know, that's all she watches. But I do not check every minute of the day. I hardly watch TV myself anyway and I am usually occupied with other things.

Several months later, my wife receives a court summons for not having a TV licence.

The discrepancy, which I clearly stated, and I was honest enough to admit that I am not 100% sure whether my wife had been watching On Demand all the time, hence the 10% bit. So that would be the only reason to plead guilty.

My wife has two kinds of epilepsy and her memory is very poor. She suffers blackouts. Yes, I know it sounds like an obvious excuse, but it is a fact that she doesn't always know what she is doing. This is well documented by her doctor and in hospital tests.

So dear listeners, make of that what you will. Thankfully there seem to be a lot of sensible people on here. For those who aren't and need me to explain in more detail, please go elsewhere and do something more useful.