Mixed Signals
Any sufficiently advanced information is indistinguishable from noise
Wednesday 21 February 2007, 1:21 PM
BBC Wonga
Moreover, the licence is grossly unfair - it's a poll tax, in effect - and doesn't really succeed in its stated aim of keeping the Beeb free from political control (as anyone inside Aunty at the moment will ruefully admit). It would be much fairer on the viewers to pay for the BBC from general taxation (as parts of it are - the World Service lives on postal orders from its uncle in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office), but that's even more dangerous - it would be entirely impossible (and wrong) to then exempt it from the sort of management overview that public services as a whole require. It's our money, after all.
So here's a proposal. The BBC gets its dosh from tax, but the oversight comes back to us. Every citizen gets a hundred BBC Points a year, which we can then spend in an online auction for the programming we want - or, for the more involved, buy a seat at online forums for discussion policy and technology.
I can think of ten problems off the top of my head, but as Churchill famously said of democracy in general -- it's a bad system, just the least bad system.
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There is no mention of ending the practice of TV receiver licencing in Ofcom's recently released "Licence Exemption Framework Review" (http://www.ofcom.org.uk/consult/condocs/lefr/) even though the LEFR indicates that receive-only "stations" should in general be licence exempt. It's an oversight - or inconsistency - that the public should note in their comments (due by mid-June 2007).
Hardly anyone recalls that receiver licencing was introduced in Britain before there was even a BBC. The original purpose was to give the government a register of people capable of monitoring naval movements and radiotelegraph messages related to commercial shipping - presumably so they (or at least their equipment) could be rounded up in time of war. The same applied in the colonies to ensure that natives of uncertain loyalty could lose their radios if caught listening to "enemy" broadcasts. (This British-made law still applies in Burma/Myanmar.) Licencing entails political risks that go far beyond what is necessary to raise money for filling time on the telly.
Since growing numbers of people watch videos on mobilephones and PCs, when will the government decide we need licences for these devices, too?
Receiver licencing is an idea whose time should be GONE. And SOON.
Receiver licencing is a mess. For a start, you don't need a licence for any sort of receiver per se, just to have it set up to receive stuff outside the radio broadcast bands and the radio hams - although technically speaking, I believe it's illegal to listen to unlicenced stations within those bands.
So the primary crime one used to commit when one listened to the plod on the broadcast FM band (what a work of art was that particular allocation...) wasn't actually hearing anything, but having a set capable of reception. So, as far as I can tell, everyone who had an FM set that didn't stop at 100MHz (or wherever the old Band II broadcast allocation stopped) but went up to 108 - ie, everyone not relying on something with valves - was guilty of infringing the WIreless Telegraphy Act 1949 or 67, as amended.
Likewise, my snazzy little DC-to-light scanners aren't in any way illegal, until I put the batteries in. And my amateur radio gear all has wideband receive capabilities - you can't buy any other sort, these days - plus I have a requirement, as a radio ham, to make sure I'm not interfering with any other service. I just can't listen on those frequencies to make sure.
It's all pointless these days, as anything really interesting has gone digital and all that's left are aircraft, taxi cabs and, er, people like me...
As you probably know, http://www.radiolicence.org.uk/ documents the history of receiver licencing in the UK - mainly photos of paper licences (strangely similar to the QSL collecting impulse!):
There's also the protest site http://www.tvlicensing.biz/ and Wikipedia's excellent page on TV set licencing, with global coverage of the subject as a political issue: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_licence
Note that a message dated 7 Feb 2005 at http://www.tvlicensing.biz/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=1046 quotes a letter from TVL declaring that a PC needs a licence if it is merely CAPABLE of receiving "live broadcasts":
"If your lap top computer is capable of receiving live broadcasts, whether on-line, or through an aerial or satellite dish, then it is classed as television receiving equipment. This means a licence is needed to receive BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Five, digital television, other terrestrial services, satellite television and cable television..."
