Posts by Neil

Spotigo promises Wi-Fi mapping within 5 metres

Re: iPod Touch

I believe Google maintains a database of mobile cells along with their geographical locations. The maps application can use this to divine your current location if your device supports it - quite a few phones do.

Steve Jobs rescues freetards from BBC iPlayer wilderness (for now)

Paul Warne

TV Licencing wants the public to believe that they're criminals simply for not having a licence - all the scare-tactic advertising and thinly-veiled threats through the post support this. It seems evident that they believe their own FUD and are no longer sure what requires a licence. Take this comment from the BBC itself:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinternet/2008/01/iplayer_does_not_require_a_tv_1.html

It states quite unambiguously that watching on-demand programming does not require a licence, yet you've just heard from the company contracted to deal with it that it does! Maybe it's down to poor staff training, but it's much easier to tell the concerned that they require a licence (and, of course, collect the fee) than it is to request clarification of the law and risk loopholes being made common knowledge.

Re: license to take our money.

Paul Warne:

Simply possessing a device with a display or tuner does NOT mean you require a licence by law. The Communications Act 2003 states that a licence is required if television receiving equipment is installed or used for the purposes of receiving television programmes (i.e. broadcasts).

If you don't receive television broadcasts, you don't need a licence. Using a TV for watching videos, computers and games consoles or monitoring, say, a CCTV camera is exempt. It does help if the equipment isn't tuned to any station, mind, should the enforcement officer visit and you let him in for a poke around.

Receiving television over the internet is something of a grey area. The consensus is that services such as the iPlayer (on-demand programming) does not require a licence, but broadcast television (like streaming News 24) does.