Thanks for the link! I’m always being surprised by the range of things covered by Wikipedia.
Also thanks for this link! So nice to have a documentary lay it all out for you. 
That? That’s not a TV, it’s a display stand for family photos.
Now THAT would be worth protesting. NO TAXATION WITHOUT TELEVISION RECEPTION! Has a nice ring, doesn’t it?
You are probably joking, but I was actually in almost this situation. I bought a TV for the political party I volunteer for and set it up in the storefront window to display messages about upcoming events and so forth. This was all done by the connected computer; we never used the TV as an actual TV (even though it had a working tuner in it). The TV licence inspectors could clearly see the TV from the street (since, after all, that was our intention) and accepted our explanation that it was being used only as an information display, not to receive broadcasts.
And there were indeed protests, though mostly of the “I’m not paying the damn licence” variety. The licensing agency eventually forcibly registered the various protesting households and registered their outstanding “debts” with the local courts, which the protestors then contested at trial. They argued that since there was no longer any way to avoid paying for the licence, it must be a tax rather than a licence. But the Bundestag had not passed any legislation properly making it a tax, and therefore those who owned no televisions legally could not be forced to pay. All the regional courts that heard such cases rejected these arguments.
I was one of those who held off paying until the licensing agency sent me a demand via a court. I was never intending to bring the matter to trial myself, but was hoping that one of the other cases would be successful and therefore lead to the Bundestag amending its TV licensing regulations (preferably in a way that didn’t oblige me to register). But when I saw that none of the cases were successful, I went ahead and paid the backlog of registration fees, plus the late fees added on top (which truth be told weren’t all that much).
We have the same thing in Japan called the Signal Reception Fee. If your device can capture broadcast waves, you have to pay a fee. So not only regular tvs, but computers, car navigation systems and smartphones are covered. Interestingly, since iPhones don’t have a built in tuner they are exempt from the fee.
The money goes towards paying for Japan’s national broadcaster whether you watch/want it or not. It’s huge racket if you ask me.
Back In The Day (like, about '91 I think) when I was a poverty-stricken student we got a knock on the door one evening from the tv licence people asking about our lack of license and claiming to have detected a tv signal from our flat. We replied "oh my goodness no, not us, we are upstanding citizens who don’t happen to own a tv " (total lie, btw) and they went quietly away. We did later cough up for a b&w license though, because we were nervous, so I guess from their point of view that worked fine.
I have always been suspicious about anyone’s capacity to detect a working 14" tv in a second floor flat of a stone building but “suspicious” <> “knowing for a fact they can’t do it”
You mean the Phone cops? Heh. Funniest episode ever!
This all reminds me of back in the 70’s during the CB radio fad. At the time folks were supposed to have an easy to get FCC license to operate a CB. And a lot of people did. But lots more didn’t and like those who tore the tags off their mattresses I’m sure they lived in terror of the consequences.
When I first became a deputy in 1982 I had to get an FCC license in order to legally operate traffic RADAR. The weird thing is, legally I did not have to receive any training whatsoever to operate the RADAR unit, just get the license.
So England isn’t the only place with odd licensure laws.
Yes. But if you have TV apparatus, capable of receiving broadcast signals, then you need to get (and pay for) a licence for it. Whether you want to get a cable subscription in addition is neither here nor there. Whether you actually do watch broadcast TV on your capable-of-receiving-it apparatus is also neither here nor there.
As far as I understand it, the way they detect households that need licenses is by simply assuming that 100% of households have televisions and sending threatening-sounding letters* to every unlicensed home, followed up by a small number of inspectors visiting a few of those homes.
*Like by using the trick of letting readers connect two independent clauses in their minds. “Our records show that you do not have a television license. Use of a television with out a license carries a penalty of ejection into the sun.” The guilty think they’re being levied a penalty of solar ejection and they scramble to fess up and make things right before they’re put on the rocket, while the innocent are glad to allow the inspectors to see their TV-free home.
Aha, here is a selection of their current form letters. All very scary if you read the frightening words between the lines like they want.
Maybe this is true now, but it certainly wasn’t true ten years ago.
We have a TV license in South Africa, and I’m happy to pay it even though I never watch our shitty national broadcaster any more.
Because
a) it didn’t always used to be as shitty, so part of it is paying them back for the better TV of my youth
b) not everyone has all the options for media I do, and if they’re reliant on SABC TV, every little bit helps make it a little less shitty.
I just wish so much of my money didn’t go towards shitty soaps, biased news and sport, though.
I’m pretty sure that it was the situation 10 years ago. The licence was always a licence for possessing a TV, not for using one. (And you can think of pretty obvious reasons, to do with facilitating enforcement, why a TV licence law would be set up that way.)
I note the stories you tell in earlier posts. It may be that in the political party case the inspectors judged it wise not to prosecute but, if they had prosecuted, I think they would have won.
Just for information, it is possible proactively to register your home as not having a TV. It’s a simple online procedure, though I suppose it’s so rarely used as to provoke a visit to check, in due course.
For Japan’s version of this, you can read lots of stories here.
Well, I checked the official TV Licensing site just now. It’s very clear that the licence is required only if you “watch or record programmes as they’re being shown on TV, on any channel or TV service, or download or watch any BBC programmes on iPlayer”. If you use your TV only for online subscription services like Netflix, or only as a computer monitor, or only to watch DVDs, then you don’t need a licence. All these scenarios are covered by the FAQ in various entries under the “When is a TV Licence needed” section.
So it seems I am right, and the rules haven’t changed on this point in the last ten years.
So does one have the option of not being a television owner / television watcher and not paying the fee? Or is the legislation written in such a way that everyone owes a baseline single-TV fee and whether you choose to make use of your viewing privileges is your concern and none of their own?
If there’s no TV-receiving apparatus in the house, you definitely don’t need a TV licence.
Which country are you talking about? For the UK, the answer is yes. For Germany, the answer is no.
My late sister never owned a tv but was sent letters regularly asking her to pay, or declare she didn’t own one. No matter how often she told them, they’d ask again after a year or two…
As a small business, I get asked every few years if I have a tv licence for the premises.
iirc, they send a physical letter but now allow me to go online and submit a form declaration saying I don’t need one because there’s no set on the premises…
How would they pick up a receiver? Seems that while it is possible it would be very difficult to do on land, let alone from underwater with a moving receiver under wartime conditions.
Not ‘like’ the BBC. It is JUST for the BBC. But the BBC is vast.
Worth noting, however, that though publicly funded, the BBC is not ‘state run’. In fact, the Government and the BBC are pretty much at war with each other at the moment, with the Government threatening to cancel the license fee, and refusing to have its government minsters interviewed on certain news programmes.