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Comment by scrollaway | Hacker News Reader

What's amazing/amusing to me is a hacky technical solution that solves the problem for "inspectors", instead of a solution that removes the need for any inspector to inspect the TV. A good administration system would make it easy to automatically check whether pub addresses use a business subscription.

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A good administration system would make it easy to automatically check whether pub addresses use a business subscription.

That's what the TV licensing people do. There are people who've never bought a TV who've been hassled endlessly by TV Licensing simply because they can't believe there are any households who might choose not to own a television. The whole "detector van" thing is mostly a bogeyman to scare people.

The whole "detector van" thing is mostly a bogeyman to scare people.

The technology to remotely see what's showing on a CRT is Van Eck phreaking. Not sure over what distance it would be possible (and whether you could target a specific house accurately), also given the diversity in display technologies at current I can't see it being too effective.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Eck_phreaking

I think you could do a pretty good job just by watching the pattern of lights changing in a room, and comparing it to what's currently being broadcast. No need for Van Eck hackery.

Yes, van eck phreaking obviously works.

But is it actually used in the UK to detect people without a license?

Probably not, even though TVLA used to heavily advertise the use of detector vans.

TVLA have the largest civillian database in the UK so mostly they just send letters and inspectors to addresses without a licence.

The detector vans are most likely smoke and mirrors. Even when they had the technology, you don't need to use it in most cases, the van's presence is enough to scare people.

There's an interesting subculture of license refuseniks in the UK.

It does indeed seem to be true that the detector vans are pure PR, with no useful electronics. According to legend no data from a van has ever been used in a prosecution.

But it's a sad business. A lot of people who are caught and fined incriminate themselves unnecessarily.

They're almost always at the poor and not very educated end of the population, and will always accept a rubber-stamped prosecution because they literally have no idea they can often put up a defence in court.

Really, fining them four figures for what is really a trivial offence is unhelpfully nasty and persecutory.

The recent attempt to decriminalise non-payment of the license fee failed:-

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-31151821

> They're almost always at the poor and not very educated end of the population > Really, fining them four figures for what is really a trivial offence is unhelpfully nasty and persecutory.

It's a great reflection of the sad state of the country.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-csYPQVaqA

AIUI (from distant days working at BT) the thing they were looking for was the EMR of the CRT flyback transformer. But it could only be detected if the television was towards the front of the house (not behind too many internal walls) and only on the ground floor.

That method has got no hope of detecting a modern LCD/OLED/Plasma display.

The majority of enforcement is database driven:-

Royal Mail database of addresses - addresses of current tv licenses = huge list of possible offenders

Now cross check database of possible offenders with databases of: * Sky or Virgin Media subscribers * people who have recently purchased or rented appropriate equipment (televisions, VCRs, PVRs, etc) * etc

Would it be possible to detect the transformer noise in the antenna cable? The cable often runs on the outside of buildings, especially older ones.

I thought that they were looking for the IF (intermediate frequency) being fed back up the antenna cable, but I have no source for that information other than "something my dad once said".

In reality, I'm sure it's like road tax, they check the database of addresses without one against a list of people who own a television. I believe all retailers are required to take a name and address when selling televisions.

Sky is a satellite system, not cable; it's trivial to take the receiver and smartcard from one address to another and plug it into the dish there.

How does the pint glass help with this and how doesn't this just strengthen gp's point?

I expect that Sky broadcast multiple copies of the sports channels simultaneously (at a minimum, one with and one without the pint glass logo). Home subscribers are set up to tune[1] to the channel without the logo, the more expensive pub subscribers get the version with the pint glass logo.

If a pub landlord subscribes at home, and then take their receiver/smartcard to the pub and plug it in there, the receiver will still display the home version of the channel without the logo. That's what the inspectors are looking for.

(Alternatively, the smartcards used for pub subscription could insert the image into the decoded stream, but I'm not sure if they have enough processing power for that. The end result would be the same, though -- no expensive subscription, no logo.)

[1] Yes, it's a digital system with multiple program streams per frequency, so 'tune' isn't quite the right word, but it's close enough.

A for some reason I thought you were talking about a COTS receiver and just pirating the business channel completely, not using an actual home receiver.

I think there's probably a perception issue at play too. Buying a pirate decoder card from a shady dealer is 'obviously' wrong, while using a subscription that you've already paid for in a different location is a different matter. I could see pub landlords being more comfortable doing the latter than the former.

I don't know what the current state of the art for pirate decoders is, but if it still depends on extracting a keystream from a legitimate decoder in real time and sending it to the pirate receivers, limiting the number of legitimate receivers of the business channel to would also help cut down on piracy of the business channels by reducing the possible sources of key material. The high cost of a subscription and limiting subscribers to pub businesses only also reduces the number of potential key sources.

The current state of the art prevents this technique from working on Sky's highest value HD channels. (HD channels require a newer set top box with a later generation of decryption abilities, and these ensure that any liftable keystream is specific to that one receiver, so it has no value if distributed, and no ability to activate other receivers.)

> the receiver will still display the home version of the channel without the logo. That's what the inspectors are looking for.

But why can't the inspector just look for: is this pub showing the channel, and is it in our database of pubs which are allowed to show the channel? That was what I took from scrollaway's post, though I might have misinterpreted ver.

They are also seeking to prevent subscribers re-streaming the content on the Internet.

The more expensive subscription displays the pub glass. I don't think sky minds if you want to pay for the more expensive sub and move it elsewhere.

Because satellite is one-way, the cheapest option for sky is to pay for enforcers. There must be quite a spread between commercial and home licenses.

It's pretty expensive; based on location, size/value and some other factors (whether the location serves food etc.).

The average pub Sky Sports subscription is £1250-1500 per month, on a 12-month contract. You can price it up online just like a domestic package.

http://business.sky.com/calculator/desktop.aspx

The domestic equivalent is about £25

That's £25 on top of the basic package subscription, which is another £22-£30 by itself.

Not entirely true. Sky can be delivered over the internet via Sky NOW / Sky GO and in certain countries (e.g. Germany) over the cable network.

The picture quality on Sky Go is horrible (no where near HD), even over fibre. Sky Go is just a token feature. For instance, you're allowed 4 devices (with Sky multiscreen) but can only add/ change one device per month.

And they'll still know exactly which door to knock on if they see the streams being illegally re-streamed.

Also amusing, these inspectors are paid to go to pubs to watch football matches. Not a bad job.

I had a part-time job for a while inspecting cinema advertisements. The pay was minuscule (I did it on the side of my full time work), but all it involved was writing down the ads and previews in the order they were shown and noting any reaction from the crowd (positive, negative etc).

My work was done when then feature started ... at which point, well, it would be rude to get up and leave wouldn't it?

(We did have to get the manager's permission to stay for the show, but I was never once knocked back. I'd usually buy a frozen drink, so I guess they got something out of me.)

Doesn't it defeat the purpose a bit if they know you're there? Why not cloak the inspection so you can catch the sort of fumbling of ads that happens when you're not aware you're being watched?

They're paid to visit lots of pubs during one particular match.

Walk in, look at screen(s), walk out.

You wouldn't get to see much of the game at all as most of the time you will be traveling between pubs.

Yes, but they get to tell a bunch of hooligans that the show they are watching is over.

Well I think the idea might also be non-inspectors noticing and reporting establishments.

Very much so and case of being something joe-public can spot and report https://business.sky.com/fighting-fraud

Now if they were to offer a token reward of even £50 then they would still be ahead as they would catch them all pretty much.

Though imagine what would happen if traffic parking enforcement offered a commision to the public who reports such violations they see. Traffic wardens would be out of jobs and everybody would park much better in the long-run and many people without jobs and spare time would have a better quality of income.

So like HOAs for the road where soccer van moms can make money enforcing the most insignificant laws over and over again.

Um... maybe let's not.

The problem with HOAs isn't the soccer moms enforcing stupid rules, it's that stupid rules are in place to begin with. Likewise, the problem with parking enforcement isn't the enforcement, it's the stupid parking rules they enforce. Fix that, and citizen reporting is perfectly reasonable. (After all, we do it for all sorts of other crimes.) Don't fix that, and dedicated enforcement is also bad.

These laws already exist. http://gothamist.com/2015/03/10/cash_in_on_idling_vehicles.p...

Wrong country, dude.

It's an example where the law suggested is in place and for the most part no positive result is being achieved.

Most people want to watch their sports in their favourite environment. They're not going to report the pub and have that stop permanently.

Pull the other one!

I could fill a stadium with people who, if they saw a Time Warner or Comcast truck on fire in the street, would with great urgency and celerity rush past their fire extinguisher on the way to the bag of marshmallows.

I'll report the guy who cheats the distribution channel the day after I see a monthly bill that I believe treats me fairly and respectfully.

Are there pub proprietors that live over their pubs though, or beside them? If so, they could just snake the wire in from their homes.

Yes, this is very common.

To clarify: Living next to/over the pub is rather common. Fraud… not so much.

It's not a matter of how they physically get the signal, it's a matter of whether they have license to use that signal in a commercial setting.

You still need to send someone out to confirm whether or not they are actually showing the TV to customers. For example, many pubs owners live over top their pubs, and their home may have the same address as the pub. Or, some pub owners might have a TV subscription to entertain their employees who are washing dishes in the back, but not actually show the TV to patrons.

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