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Comment by hkmurakami | Hacker News Reader

NHK in Japan has a similar scheme. If you have a TV you have to pay. If you have a phone that can receive TV signal, you have to pay. They'd even send people in person to "check if you have a TV". I believe they recently lost a court case on this.

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In Britain, the BBC uses vehicles fitted with equipment to detect TVs, though who knows how effective they are.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_detector_van

It's unclear they even exist..or work..our could even theoretically work now we have digital. Their true enforcement strategy is to harass the small minority who don't pay the license fee.

For young people it's not a small minority. Young people have gone off transmitted TV and they havent adapted yet.

They have started to - they extended the relevant law to close loopholes about “real time” vs “prerecorded” BBC broadcasts, now you need a licence if you use the iPlayer for anything. Which is fair, even if it forced me to get a license again. I expect at some point the law will either get more draconian (by requiring a license for any broadband contract at home) or the BBC will become an actual streaming service like Netflix, with regular subscription (which would be a bit of a disaster, since it would basically mean the end of the BBC as we know it).

Most young people don't watch iPlayer either. It heavily tilted towards older people.

It will only be an issue for people who watch it...

I'm heavily against the license fee, as the majority of content could be delivered commercially. I absolutely hate that i'm paying money towards soaps, cake shows, misses brown boys etc which I will never have an interest watching and get zero value from.

The small amount of state or non commercial stuff it produces could be paid for by tax or a much smaller license fee.

The money i save could be spent a couple of books or rentals instead which I would get value from.

I'm also for getting rid of the licence fee but instead increasing taxes by equal measure and funding it that way. Hopefully enshrine that funding into law. The license fee is just too easy to attack nowadays.

I find the argument for purely commercial a selfish one as public broadcasting provides a lot of public good through educational means. I mean, just tune into The One Show or Spring Watch on an an evening and you'll get what I mean. Plus no ads!

And those are the minority of shows. So in reality i'm paying a lot of money for things that are commercial quality and not educational and don't use.

That's as about as selfish of not wanting to pay for a gym membership i don't use.

Well, yes. It's literally a protection racket, what do you expect from making that legal?

Funnily enough in one of the article's citations, the UK's government has funded SIGINT research for CRT and LCD televisions[0] to see if you're watching the BBC on the flat panel television inside your own home. I've been cold-called by cable companies while in college trying to sell me a cable subscription, and were absolutely baffled when telling them I didn't own a television.

[0] https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/temc2013-tv.pdf

Oh I didn't hear about the court case, thanks! I'll see if I can track some information on that down.

I live in Japan, no tv and a phone that doesn't receive TV broadcast, but the nhk guys hastle us every month or two and almost convinced my wife to pay.

Some of the tactics I've heard of them using are quite scummy as well.

Edit:

Link to some information about the court case.

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/06/27/national/crime-...

Happy to hear this might help you out! :)

I read this in Murakami's books. Was surprised at Japan doing this to her citizens!

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