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http://www.bbctvlicence.com/De... You may find this interesting.

And you can also write to them withdrawing implied right of access and your personal details.
They are the 3rd party company only. No need to deal with them.

http://www.bbctvlicence.com/Wi...

This is 100% correct.

I once had a TV License inspector appear at my house because I had not registered with the agency. I had a TV in my living room, but its sole purpose was to use game consoles.

The letter they send before their visit is pretty scary too!

They will try to strong arm you... However, as long as your TV set is not logically set up to view television (not close to a socket or with a cable simply disconnected and laying there for the sake of the visit). You do NOT need to pay a penny!

Wrong. iPlayer is just timeshifted broadcast content, that still cost money to make, funded from the TV "license", and they DO count a computer receiving it in any fashion to effectively be a TV. The only exemption is for a detuned TV with no aerial which is used purely as a console / DVD player / etc display ... and you have to dig down to paragraph 62,584 subsection Z in the terms before they grudgingly admit even that.

I would certainly agree that the TV "license" is far too expensive, and enforced in a misleading and menacing manner by a largely unaccountable organisation, so by all means go on evading it, but be aware that's technically what you're doing ...

I like what the brits have tone with the BBC. I could get behind that kind of government support.

There's a lot of us over here who don't. It's a regressive tax, as everyone pays the same per household. Note that individual rooms rented in shared houses count as households for this.

So the rich bugger with wife and 3 kids pays GBP150 per year for his whole family to watch TV on their shiny new HDTV, while the poor guy living in a single rented room also pays GBP150 per year. If he's on minimum wage, that's about 2% of his annual salary.

If you choose to go without TV, you get a threatening letter every month, and agressive visits from a privatised tax collection agency demanding entrance to your house.

The BBC doesn't need to "convince people to pay for a TV license". Anyone who has a TV or any device capable of receiving live TV broadcasts (e.g. a PC that can run iPlayer) is required by law to have a license whether you watch BBC channels or not. If you buy a TV or video recorder in the UK the retailer is obliged to tell TV licensing that you have. If you don't buy a license they will harass you until you do

http://www.bbctvlicence.com/Tips%20for%20avoidng%20TVL-BBC%20harassment.htm

Agreed, but just to add:

you should be able to convince them.

Feel free to tell them to fuck off, too. They have no powers, and resort to imitidation, threats, fraudulent claims, in order to get money out of anyone not in their database (or in some cases as I experienced, even if you have already paid). If they turn up with a search warrant, then feel free show them, otherwise remember that you are not obliged to prove your innocence.

You could end up like this guy: http://www.bbctvlicence.com/index.htm :)

(FWIW, I think the BBC is generally a fine thing to pay for; but I have no respect for the way the TV Licensing people conduct themselves.)

Nah, it's not quite like that. There are a lot of misconceptions about the license and the law surrounding it, so I'll try to clarify things a bit. There's only one key point really- It is illegal to receive broadcast TV without a license, but you do not need a license just to own a TV.

Collection of money is outsourced, TV Licensing is not actually related to the BBC or the government, although they are paid out of TV license money (around 1% of the total).

TV Licensing have a database of almost every house in the country, and compare it to their database of who has a license. Then they send out a monthly scary letter to any house that doesn't have one. There's a page chronicling them here. They claim to have detector vans, but to date there have been no known convictions based on detector evidence.

Instead, there are "TV license inspectors". They go round to unlicensed houses, and bang on the door. If the person answers, they ask firmly to inspect the house to make sure there are no TVs. They are not allowed to enter without permission. If they think you have a TV, and you deny them entrance, they'll use tricks like banging on the door repeatedly, shouting accusingly so that all your neighbours here, anything they can think of to get you to let them in.

Individual inspectors have been prosecuted for stepping over the line, but not often.

I live in the UK. I do not own a TV. I do not watch TV, nor make use of the BBC iPlayer service.

The only BBC service I do make use of is their news website, and I'd gladly pay a small subscription for access to that.

As a result, I do not pay a TV license. Every month, I get a nasty letter through the door, telling me how evil I am and how they're going to press charges. Every few months, a guy turns up, bangs on my door for a few minutes, then puts a card through. Note, they typically do this while I am at work, but the nightshift worker downstairs is trying to sleep.

It's not my website, but there's a guy who has chronicled the attempts of TV Licensing(the group of thugs that the BBC hire to do their enforcement) to threaten him into paying up.

I will not pay a TV Tax to use my internet connection.

Watching TV on the internet does not need a license. It's on the website if you care enough to check.

If watching material on the Internet at the same time as it is broadcasted as TV, then you need a licence. See http://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/information/index.jsp .

If you ignore the threats -- which eventually progress to 24pt font on red paper in a red envelope -- they eventually cycle and you're back to the initial polite-ish reminder (I ignored them all when I had no TV).

Indeed - this website is quite amusing :)

The BBC says they've been using detector vans for 50 years and have gone through ten different types. Earlier ones had visible antennae on top *and* big signs on the sides, but now apparently they're allowed to make unmarked vans.
There are apparently about 26 detector vans in all of the UK.
Here is a purported picture of a 1950's detector van.

You're right about the BBC's tactics. It seems from their behaviour over the past couple of years that they want to charge everyone who has access to the internet. The annual tax (it has been so defined by the government) is about $270. However, collection of this tax has been outsourced to Capita plc, http://www.capita.co.uk/. They are not very good at it, and depend on propaganda put out by the BBC about electronic detection of TV sets in use. Evidence from "detectors" has never been used in court, and the technology behind them is deeply suspect. There is a growing resistance in the UK to the tax; the BBC is effectively the state broadcaster and is seen by many as manipulating the news to present the government in a favourable light. To learn more, go to http://bbctvlicence.com/.

"The spot fine is a direct and immediate result of the presumption of guilt you will have been warned and notified in advance that entry in required"

Entry is _never_ required in the UK without warrant, and in such cases, there must be a police officer in attendance. Somebody sending you a letter claiming otherwise doesn't change this one whit or iota.

"you have refused an appointed officer the chance to inspect your equipment to prove licensed within the law"

TV licensing people are not appointed officers of anything. The BBC sub-contracts license collection and enforcement to Capita Services Ltd., "easy payment" schemes to Revenue Services Ltd., and licence-related PR and publicity to the AMV Consortium, private corporations which, together with the BBC, operate under the "TV Licensing" trademark. The guys who come round in the uniforms with bullet proof vests and a nasty attitude work for Capita Services Ltd., and have exactly the same right of entry into your home as security guards, who also wear uniforms with bullet proof vests and work for private corporations, i.e. none.

"Therefore you are guilty and are responsible for the fine. "

You are not guilty of anything without proof, which they can't get if you don't let them in (unless of course you are silly enough to use an unlicensed TV where it can be seen or heard from the street). They also need proof to obtain a search warrant, which magistrates don't grant just because some employee of Capita Services Ltd., asks for it, and "our database says this premises hasn't got a TV license" isn't proof of receiving TV broadcasts.

"You can later challenge this in court, but it is however most certainly A CRIMINAL OFFENSE."

Which means that the rules of evidence are precisely the same as those of all other criminal cases, i.e. there needs to be some for a prosecution to take place, and refusing to admit an employee of a private corporation and ignoring threatening letters from said private corporation isn't evidence of committing any sort of crime.

"As the person refusing access YOU are responsible for YOUR part in the law being broken and are therefore equally culpable under the law."

Refusing access to an employee of Capita Group Ltd. isn't a crime, so no laws have been broken to be culpable under. Here are some links with plenty of evidence from both correspondence with the BBC itself and large numbers of personal experiences that make it quite clear how far you've been taken in the FUD:

http://www.bbctvlicence.com/Questions%20and%20answ ers.htm (make sure you read through the other section, because there's some good info in there)
http://www.marmalade.net/lime/ (nice collection of personal anecdotes and links to media resources)
http://www.savethepound.fsnet.co.uk/tvl.htm

There are plenty of others, but these should get you started.