TV licence

[Jazzy]

Nearly 130 people each day are prosecuted for failing to pay £159 for a television licence.

The vast majority are some of the poorest people in Britain. Many fined up to £1,000 despite having crippling medical conditions such as dementia and cancer.

Full article

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I understand the UK TV license stuff, but I'm curious how they are catching these people that aren't paying the license fee.

 

[tango]

Usually it's pretty easy.

It used to be that TV detector vans would drive around looking for signal leakage that proved what channel was being watched. Now virtually everything is based on cable so if you have an active cable TV subscription the chances are you're watching live TV. It's a pretty safe assumption because if you didn't watch live TV you wouldn't have a cable TV subscription.

If you only ever watch things like BBC's iPlayer the chances are you'd never get found out, although if you don't have a TV license you'll get pestered by the licensing agency until you file a declaration to say you don't need one. Even then they "reserve the right to check", which means more or less nothing but it's the kind of term that they hope intimidates people who only ever watch things like Freeview into buying a license.