Gulliver_UK

I have been wondering of late as to exactly what constitutes "live broadcast TV" anyway. Now that the (web) iPlayer offers the ability to pause, restart and resume individual programs as they are being streamed "live" then at what point does "live" become "on demand" or whatever. I expect both the procedural and legal standpoints are likely to be lagging behind the technological innovation (though you would assume that some agreements or understandings would have been reached before such features would be allowed onto the service).

Personally I buy a licence as I get good value out of the whole set of BBC services (web, radio, TV) - even though I don't own a traditional TV set. If on the other hand, you view the fee as more of an avoidable tax then I expect the chance of prosecution is fairly low if you are willing to put up with the inevitable periodic hounding by post etc.

I expect that if the current "unique" funding model persists then at some point your TV licence will migrate into being a joint licence and online account, with the live TV component of the online presence requiring your to login with this account in order to view. Hopefully then the territorial restrictions might also be removed (again... probably quite complex in terms of the licencing of programming from other makers).