Iplayer and Crapita
Author
Discussion

LukeBrown66

Original Poster:

4,479 posts

75 months

Thursday 17th June 2021
quotequote all
So can anyone explain or give some evidence on how Crapita and the goons can prove you are watching Iplayer.

Obviously you have to click you have a licence on the site when you go there, but I presume it is just based on checking the address, then checking our ability to watch it and seeing if you are?

Have people been done, convicted of just watching Iplayer?

randlemarcus

13,646 posts

260 months

Thursday 17th June 2021
quotequote all
It's fairly simple. If you watch Live TV, pay your licence fee - that's the law. If you watch things on iPlayer, cough up - you're enjoying the content, so pay for it.

If you have a moral position against it, campaign for a change in the law.

Capita will have investigative access to the iPlayer logs - if you have said you have a licence, and do not, that's good evidence to support the prosecution, is it not? Have they done that? Dunno - I suspect most non-loons fold when they bring that up.

rampageturke

2,625 posts

191 months

Thursday 17th June 2021
quotequote all
LukeBrown66 said:
So can anyone explain or give some evidence on how Crapita and the goons can prove you are watching Iplayer.

Obviously you have to click you have a licence on the site when you go there, but I presume it is just based on checking the address, then checking our ability to watch it and seeing if you are?

Have people been done, convicted of just watching Iplayer?
Theres not really any proof outside of seeing you physically use it. The fundamentals of consumer internet just work against their cause.

Whether a judge or whoever is also clued up on that is another matter though, and plenty of things that aren't actually proof on the internet are allowed to be proof because people don't know any better.

markjmd

563 posts

97 months

Thursday 17th June 2021
quotequote all
They have implants in your head that relay all the info via 5G, obvs.

BertBert

21,249 posts

240 months

Thursday 17th June 2021
quotequote all
markjmd said:
They have implants in your head that relay all the info via 5G, obvs.
I thought it was part of the covid vaccine

rxe

6,700 posts

132 months

Thursday 17th June 2021
quotequote all
It’s pretty much impossible.
It would rely on you being so stupid that you write an email to Crapita saying “I don’t need a TV licence” and using that email address to register for player.
There are a billion perfectly legitimate reasons why an IP address that didn’t have a licence at the correlating physical address (which is variable) could be watching player content.

Believe it or not, it makes a difference whether the device you are watching on is battery or mains powered….and they certainly can’t tell that remotely.

pavarotti1980

6,329 posts

113 months

Thursday 17th June 2021
quotequote all
randlemarcus said:
It's fairly simple. If you watch Live TV, pay your licence fee - that's the law. If you watch things on iPlayer, cough up - you're enjoying the content, so pay for it.

If you have a moral position against it, campaign for a change in the law.

Capita will have investigative access to the iPlayer logs - if you have said you have a licence, and do not, that's good evidence to support the prosecution, is it not? Have they done that? Dunno - I suspect most non-loons fold when they bring that up.
VPN is a bit of a bugger though....

Trax

1,600 posts

261 months

Thursday 17th June 2021
quotequote all
randlemarcus said:
Capita will have investigative access to the iPlayer logs - if you have said you have a licence, and do not, that's good evidence to support the prosecution, is it not? Have they done that? Dunno - I suspect most non-loons fold when they bring that up.
They have zero investigative powers, they are just civilians you know.....

CzechItOut

2,156 posts

220 months

Thursday 17th June 2021
quotequote all
BertBert said:
I thought it was part of the covid vaccine
Exactly. Instead of vans drive around, the chip in your vaccine can sniff your WiFi to see if your household is making HTTP GET requests to their servers.

Byker28i

91,440 posts

246 months

Thursday 17th June 2021
quotequote all
BertBert said:
markjmd said:
They have implants in your head that relay all the info via 5G, obvs.
I thought it was part of the covid vaccine
I've had a double jab, was upset on dropping a bolt I couldn't pick it up easily as I wasn't actually magnetic...

48k

17,385 posts

177 months

Thursday 17th June 2021
quotequote all
rxe said:
Believe it or not, it makes a difference whether the device you are watching on is battery or mains powered….and they certainly can’t tell that remotely.
The "Any device powered solely by its own internal batteries" exception clause only applies to second homes where the primary home is covered by a licence.

randlemarcus

13,646 posts

260 months

Thursday 17th June 2021
quotequote all
Trax said:
They have zero investigative powers, they are just civilians you know.....
So you truly believe that Capita, a Service Partner of the BBC, do not have the means of asking erm, the BBC if Joe Bloggs has watched iPlayer recently? I doubt its open season on iPlayer usage logs, but it would be thoroughly remiss of the consortium not to have the means of collating information for the purposes of a legal action. Its not like they don't get enough practice - aren't TV Licensing the second biggest bringer of private prosecutions behind the RSPCA?

pavarotti1980

6,329 posts

113 months

Thursday 17th June 2021
quotequote all
randlemarcus said:
So you truly believe that Capita, a Service Partner of the BBC, do not have the means of asking erm, the BBC if Joe Bloggs has watched iPlayer recently? I doubt its open season on iPlayer usage logs, but it would be thoroughly remiss of the consortium not to have the means of collating information for the purposes of a legal action. Its not like they don't get enough practice - aren't TV Licensing the second biggest bringer of private prosecutions behind the RSPCA?
What information do you expect them to collate? An email address.....

BBC IPlayer is set up with my email address throughout the house using VPNs on devices. The TV license is not in my name though. They do however know I live somewhere in the North East and Cumbria region

Andeh1

7,594 posts

235 months

Thursday 17th June 2021
quotequote all
They wouldn't be able to tell.


ISPs don't hand over your IP data without a very good reason, capita & BBC isn't one. Same with browsing history.

A random free Internet email address linked to an I player account, which then needs to be proven to be used by a household with no license fee. Good luck joining those dots as a civilian commercial entity. biglaugh

CloudStuff

4,248 posts

133 months

Thursday 17th June 2021
quotequote all
Licence Fee Obligation Deniers and Freeman of the Land-types - 100% overlap?

randlemarcus

13,646 posts

260 months

Thursday 17th June 2021
quotequote all
Andeh and Pavorotti - good points well made biggrin It's easier to track me down tongue out

Not sure there's a 100% overlap, as I think a fair few people draw their lines before obligation denier, and fall into the mildly object camp - if you watch, and pay for Live Sky, I personally fail to see why you have to pay for the BBC and C4, and that's before objecting quite strongly to TV Licencing and Capita. And that's with being happy to pay for the licence because I enjoy enough of the BBC stuff.

jondude

2,441 posts

246 months

Thursday 17th June 2021
quotequote all
I do indeed think it is all snookered by data protection.

CAPITA(to Virgin): Can you give us the address attached to IP address blah blah
VIRGIN: No, due to data protection. Who are you anyhow?
CAPITA: We cannot say due to data protection.


Or something like that. smile

Virgin (any net provider) is not going to want to be seen as handing your personal details over so easily, it would petrify them (rightly) that customers would run away.

cheesesliceking

1,577 posts

269 months

Thursday 17th June 2021
quotequote all
randlemarcus said:
It's fairly simple. If you watch Live TV, pay your licence fee - that's the law. If you watch things on iPlayer, cough up - you're enjoying the content, so pay for it.

If you have a moral position against it, campaign for a change in the law.

Capita will have investigative access to the iPlayer logs - if you have said you have a licence, and do not, that's good evidence to support the prosecution, is it not? Have they done that? Dunno - I suspect most non-loons fold when they bring that up.
Yeah nah, they don’t have any investigative access to anything, and also what mystical logs have you dreamt up in your head ??

randlemarcus

13,646 posts

260 months

Thursday 17th June 2021
quotequote all
cheesesliceking said:
Yeah nah, they don’t have any investigative access to anything, and also what mystical logs have you dreamt up in your head ??
They aren't the police, but surely iPlayer access logs are available to the BBC's business partner? If you use a random gmail, its going to be trickier, but if you use your name and primary email for both the licence (or not) and the iplayer account, it's not rocket science to tie the two together biggrin

rampageturke

2,625 posts

191 months

Thursday 17th June 2021
quotequote all
jondude said:
I do indeed think it is all snookered by data protection.

CAPITA(to Virgin): Can you give us the address attached to IP address blah blah
VIRGIN: No, due to data protection. Who are you anyhow?
CAPITA: We cannot say due to data protection.


Or something like that. smile

Virgin (any net provider) is not going to want to be seen as handing your personal details over so easily, it would petrify them (rightly) that customers would run away.
IP addresses also aren't people, they get shared around, reassigned, taken away from you unless you explicitly ask (pay) for them not to. There's no proof your wifi access point is yours either really, and they can't snoop in on it too (if they could, we'd have much bigger problems than crapita). AND there's no proof if was you who accessed your internet access point, as wifi can go through walls. All they will have is SSID, and guess what can be hidden and/or changed...

The only thing they might be able to "get" you on is your email address being used to access content since you have to sign up and then confirm your email (I think a confirmation is required). The conformation email will serve as proof that the owner accepted and accessed the content. But then prove the owner? It gets really messy, the whole thing is just stacked against them.

Edited by rampageturke on Thursday 17th June 16:14