No idea how the BBC sniff vans can detect a violation of the license. Anyway, according to the article the BBC somehow can.
Amazingly you can get a criminal record for watching BBC without a license.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/08/05...internet-users/
BBC sniff vans to catch illegal viewers?
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tsubaki_sanjuro
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the detection vans are a bit of a mystery, they have always been rumoured to exist but few people have ever seen one (agri grew up down the far end of a dead end road and can never recall ever seeing one) and the beeb have never confirmed how they operate or presented evidence in court obtained by them.peet wrote:QUOTE (peet @ Aug 6 2016, 01:15 PM) No idea how the BBC sniff vans can detect a violation of the license. Anyway, according to the article the BBC somehow can.
Amazingly you can get a criminal record for watching BBC without a license.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/08/05...internet-users/
they do prosecute people all the time though, around 100,000 a year. miscreants usually get fined. they should do really because the licence fee is the last line of defence against barbarism and ignorance, as anyone who has ever seen itv can attest to.
“Life,” the belgian agri observed, “is a long dialogue with imbeciles.’’
BBC Dambusters programme: "By the time they (617 Squadron) had dropped their bombs on the Eder Dam, they were flying at the height of that lamp-post"
BBC Dambusters programme: "By the time they (617 Squadron) had dropped their bombs on the Eder Dam, they were flying at the height of that lamp-post"
A long time ago they could detect from the leaking signal from your CRT what you were watching.
With old TVs this was possible.
Since the widespread advent of LCD TVs etc. this is fairly impossible, and I guess they just knock on doors of people who don;t have a licence and see if they can catch people out (I used to have a colleague who never got a TV license, who didn;t watch much TV, andwatched DVDs and stuff when they did. At least once a year - she used to get knocks on the door from the BBC licence team.
"New detector vans" seems to be a nonsense story to me, but it's possible if they can (legally) hack your WiFi - which is where the dispensation comes in - I guess they can snuiff for packets heading from IPlayer addresses (shrugs)
With old TVs this was possible.
Since the widespread advent of LCD TVs etc. this is fairly impossible, and I guess they just knock on doors of people who don;t have a licence and see if they can catch people out (I used to have a colleague who never got a TV license, who didn;t watch much TV, andwatched DVDs and stuff when they did. At least once a year - she used to get knocks on the door from the BBC licence team.
"New detector vans" seems to be a nonsense story to me, but it's possible if they can (legally) hack your WiFi - which is where the dispensation comes in - I guess they can snuiff for packets heading from IPlayer addresses (shrugs)
Last edited by notjarvis on Thu Aug 11, 2016 3:47 pm, edited 1 time in total.
I asked myself that question too: how does the "sniffing van" detect a violation of a license? I can understand they park the van near an address which does not pay the fee. Perhaps they search for an apple_tv_ssid. If they find one they knock on the door.
I can also imagine people are watching BBC on their wifi tablets, but tablets can also be used for many other things. It seems inefficient to scan for those things, they can simply knock on the door and go inside to visually inspect the house.
Hacking wifi routers to find a BBC stream seems very inefficent too. I assume those "sniff vans" and hacking staff cost a small fortune.
I thought "Downtown Abby" was made by the BBC seeing the quality, but it was iTV.
I can also imagine people are watching BBC on their wifi tablets, but tablets can also be used for many other things. It seems inefficient to scan for those things, they can simply knock on the door and go inside to visually inspect the house.
Hacking wifi routers to find a BBC stream seems very inefficent too. I assume those "sniff vans" and hacking staff cost a small fortune.
I thought "Downtown Abby" was made by the BBC seeing the quality, but it was iTV.
Downtown Abby was probably produced by a independant company and offered out to the big broadcasting companies to screen. ITV no doubt had the biggest wallets and accepted a less favourable contract for the show.
Plenty of content shown on the BBC is made and produced by third parties. F1 for example (when it was on the BBC)
The detector vans were pure fiction. The independant companies (usually debt collection companies) who went around as the strong arm of the BBC would simply knock on a door of a known house without a TV lisence. Then look through the window or front door to see if there was a TV on. Or in one case I have known they asked a neighbour if there was tv being watched!
With the advent of DAB, digital freeview and freesat. You would have thought that the BBC would save a great deal of money and have their potential customers purchase viewing/listening cards to accesss their content. Digitise the already bought and paid for content so it could be accessed by the British public and charge a small fee for those outside the UK to access it, should they want to.
Then they would not have to chase down the unemployed and single parent families for their bread and butter.
Plenty of content shown on the BBC is made and produced by third parties. F1 for example (when it was on the BBC)
The detector vans were pure fiction. The independant companies (usually debt collection companies) who went around as the strong arm of the BBC would simply knock on a door of a known house without a TV lisence. Then look through the window or front door to see if there was a TV on. Or in one case I have known they asked a neighbour if there was tv being watched!
With the advent of DAB, digital freeview and freesat. You would have thought that the BBC would save a great deal of money and have their potential customers purchase viewing/listening cards to accesss their content. Digitise the already bought and paid for content so it could be accessed by the British public and charge a small fee for those outside the UK to access it, should they want to.
Then they would not have to chase down the unemployed and single parent families for their bread and butter.