TV licensing rant

kylew said:
I would say that reporting on it in the way they did implies a form of bias, as they should really know these statistics will be made up to fit with what the company wants to portray.

Reporting it without question is, in my opinion, one of the problems here. Especially the way they were seriously saying that:

"The film industry says online piracy of film and TV shows costs around £500m a year with illegal downloading responsible for a third of that figure. They claim that puts thousands of jobs at risk."


It is a complete and utter load of nonsense. It's also implying that the "Film Industry" is somehow entitled to make at least a certain amount of money, I don't believe it's putting thousands of jobs at risk at all, they're non-sales basically, the industry is constantly reporting record earnings as well, it's just guilt mongering biased nonsense.
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They're reporting the claims of the industry, not stating them as fact. Isn't that kinda what you're asking for?
 
Nexus said:
Stealing is stealing, I don't see how silly quibbles of how it's reported make it anymore defensible.
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by definition its not stealing :p its unsolicited goods! damn those BBC people sending the airwaves into our homes!...

if anything its got more in common with a good old protection racket

A protection racket is an extortion scheme whereby a criminal group or individual coerces other less powerful entities to pay money, allegedly for protection services against external threats (usually violence or property damage). Many racketeers will coerce potential clients into buying protection through property damage or other harassment. In most cases, the racketeers do little to protect the client from other predators, and their "protection" is little more than extortion.
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buahahahaha !
 
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nonhelmet said:
Civil law is still law.
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Ok, you point me to a law the explicitly states that downloading music and movies is an offence in civil law. I think you will find that the written law is ambiguous, and the case law non-existent.

Assuming you can't, then I stand by my point, downloading is not demonstrably against any law, civil or otherwise and as such, should be called so by the BBC.

Its a fact that the recording companies come out with these stats every single year, and every single year their methodology is debunked to show that they have generated a result they wanted. Its always fairly obvious what's wrong with it, which tells me that whoever ran this interview did not read, much less understand the report.

And to those of you who have swallowed this whole "Every pirated copy costs us the price of a ticket/DVD etc", know this. According to the UK film council, the number of cinema tickets sold in 2009 was 31 million higher than in 2000. That is the equivalent of every other person in the country going to the cinema once more than they did in 2000. Interesting that the rise in piracy coincides with the fall of cinema tickets sold. Oh, wait...

source

I'm not saying that downloading is morally right, I'm not saying that downloaders are not getting something for nothing, what I am saying is that this whole "1 download = -1 sale" is bull****. The majority of evidence indicates that piracy has actually helped the various recording industrys.

*Edit - forgot why we are discussing this. My point is that if nothing else, this clearly shows that the reports details are not clear cut "facts", and regurgitating them without balance is not acceptable for a "neutral" broadcaster. So no, BBC news is not "worth the licence fee", not when they produce this kind of propaganda.
 
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nonhelmet said:
Civil law is still law.
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Werewolf said:
It's not hip to point that out.
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I think you'll find the guy was referring to the fact that breaching civil law does not an 'illegal' act make. It's 'unlawful'. So by stating the 'fact' that 'illegal' downloading is up 30% the article is not only incorrect, but essentially (in his eyes) bolstering up big media's agenda regarding pushing the 'downloading is theft, y0' stance.
 
Rainmaker said:
I think you'll find the guy was referring to the fact that breaching civil law does not an 'illegal' act make. It's 'unlawful'. So by stating the 'fact' that 'illegal' downloading is up 30% the article is not only incorrect, but essentially (in his eyes) bolstering up big media's agenda regarding pushing the 'downloading is theft, y0' stance.
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Dictionary.com said:
il·le·gal   /ɪˈligəl/ Show Spelled
[ih-lee-guhl] Show IPA

–adjective
1. forbidden by law or statute.
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So illegal and unlawful are essentially synonymous. Hmmm.
 
The tv gestapo came knocking on my door again last night. They put a new type of form through the door with a reference number and everything haha. I don't answer the door to them. If they keep harassing me i am going to chase him down the street and attack him.

I don't even own a TV i just enjoy messing with them.
 
nonhelmet said:
So illegal and unlawful are essentially synonymous. Hmmm.
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No illegal gives reference to legalese which is a legal language. While unlawful gives reference to common law, which came before legalese.

In the tv license ACTS (if you can find the exact act then please point it out because they do not make it easy to find, on purpose of course)

But if you look in that act it says that they have to have reasonable grounds of suspicion. Ie you are innocent until they can provide reasonable grounds for suspicion that you have a tv. The tv gestapo argue that everyone is guilty until proven innocent because X amount of people that are investigated are found to have a tv. But there is nothing in the legislation about everyone being guilty until the tv gestapo has searched your home.

Only once they have reasonable suspicion should they be able to request a warrant. But of course the whole thing is corrupt as can be. The tv gestapo have no contact details on their website, they only provide two ways to contact them. By snail mail and by completing a form which requires all your information. You find that when organizations are corrupt then they provide no means of contacting them.

By law when you purchase a TV the company you bought it from has to notify the tv gestapo of your purchase. A satellite dish is not reasonable grounds for suspicion because there is no way to prove that it is in use.
 
Adam_151 said:
Half there, the techology does work to an extent, but most of the vans were decoys in order to get folk to buy a tv license.

Its the tuning circuits which are picked up, not the method of display, so it'll work fine for LCD televisions, but with the advent of digital tv, you'll only be able to detect what muliplex they are tuned into, not what programme (channel if you prefer) they are viewing from this
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Actually vonhelmet was right, though LCDs can be picked up as well.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Eck_phreaking
 
groen said:
No illegal gives reference to legalese which is a legal language. While unlawful gives reference to common law, which came before legalese.
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No, illegal refers to acts that are against the law, be it civil or criminal.

groen said:
In the tv license ACTS (if you can find the exact act then please point it out because they do not make it easy to find, on purpose of course)
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Part 4 of the Communications Act 2003 and The Communications (Television Licensing) Regulations 2004? Took me all of one Google search to find that out.

groen said:
But if you look in that act it says that they have to have reasonable grounds of suspicion. Ie you are innocent until they can provide reasonable grounds for suspicion that you have a tv. The tv gestapo argue that everyone is guilty until proven innocent because X amount of people that are investigated are found to have a tv. But there is nothing in the legislation about everyone being guilty until the tv gestapo has searched your home.
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OK, well, there you go. I'm not going to argue with this. On the one hand, it's a reasonable suspicion that most people do have a TV, because... most people do have a TV. On the other hand, I agree that their methods are a bit heavy handed.

groen said:
Only once they have reasonable suspicion should they be able to request a warrant. But of course the whole thing is corrupt as can be. The tv gestapo have no contact details on their website, they only provide two ways to contact them. By snail mail and by completing a form which requires all your information. You find that when organizations are corrupt then they provide no means of contacting them.
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Their phone number is on their website.

groen said:
By law when you purchase a TV the company you bought it from has to notify the tv gestapo of your purchase.
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Um... Seems fair enough, really, given that it will almost certainly be used to watch TV.

groen said:
A satellite dish is not reasonable grounds for suspicion because there is no way to prove that it is in use.
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I assume you mean a dish on the side of a house? Fair enough. I imagine the same holds true for a TV aerial.
 
Castiel said:
Just don't let them in, they have no right of entry.

Write to the licensing Authority and state categorically that you have no means of receiving broadcast TV and to cease and desist.
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If he has an internet connection then he does have the means
 
Vonhelmet said:
That petition appears to ignore the fact that a great many other countries in the world have tv licences.
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And rather amusingly many of them either still have adverts on the "licence funded" channels, or indeed do a vehicle excise duty with the money, and you don't even get it part funding anything related to TV/Radio.

It also makes some fun statements that don't seem to be backed up by the viewing figures, and some rather faulty comparisons with other services.
 
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