How does the UK TV license apply to non-BBC live TV??

[His Lordship]

The TV licensing website guff states:

The law says you need to be covered by a TV Licence to:
- watch or record programmes as they’re being shown on TV, on any channel
- watch or stream programmes live on an online TV service (such as ITV Hub, All 4, YouTube, Amazon Prime Video, Now TV, Sky Go, etc.)
- download or watch any BBC programmes on iPlayer.

Now, as I understand it the TV License funds the BBC, and ONLY the BBC.
What the hell has it got to do with the other services mentioned??? they get nothing out of it do they??

Is this just a load of st?

[His Lordship]

Comstock said:

You need a licence to watch *any* live TV. Period.

But why?

I do the occasional live show via my YouTube channel, I dont get paid for them by the BBC, so I completely reject that this is a genuine legal requirement.

[His Lordship]

Comstock said:

His Lordship said:

But why?

Ours is not to reason why, my friend. That's the law.

His Lordship said:

I do the occasional live show via my YouTube channel, I dont get paid for them by the BBC, so I completely reject that this is a genuine legal requirement.

I'm not sure whether that actually counts as TV or if it's just broadcast channels. Taking it to it's logical extreme, does a video call on Skype count as TV? Televison, after all, just means 'distance vision'

Edited by Comstock on Thursday 23 January 16:24

For the first part I completely disagree with that mindset - if nobody questioned laws we would still be stoning women to death for showing a bit of ankle to her master's slave boy.


That is something that i am currently looking for a definition of, "TV" is used very specifically many times, presumably there muse be a legal definition of this that they are using.

(Yes, I'm bored at work...!!!)

[His Lordship]

Comstock said:

Who else gets it though?

Almost all of it goes directly to the BBC:

https://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/check-if-you-need-on...

Absolutely none of it goes to fund any of those online services.

The only thing I can think is where you are watching a live BBC programme via the Sky Go app for example, if thats even possible.

[His Lordship]

Comstock said:

I'm not sure anything else has been tested in court. If they tried to prosecute me for watching your live YouTube stream it would be quite an interesting case.

Indeed - And in the (rather unlikely) situation you did get fined for that, should I be the one to receive 100% of the fine???!!