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Most Kiwis will recall the days of TV licensing, and those a little older than the average will recall when there was only a radio license.

The good old radio/TV licence was a legal requirement for anyone who had a device capable of receiving public broadcasts and to be caught without one risked a fine many times larger than the original fee.

Unlike the UK however, we had no ad-free public TV broadcaster so in effect we were being taxed twice to receive what was originally just one channel of entertainment.

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Fortunately, sanity eventually reigned, or perhaps it was found that the cost of enforcement exceeded the returns, and the whole concept of a public broadcast licence was dropped in Godzone.

The Brits however, have not been so fortunate and are still legally required to spend a pretty hefty sum ($30 a month) for the privilege of receiving any form of live TV broadcast, even live video streams through the Net.

Yes, that's right -- you read correctly.

UK law requires anyone receiving a live video broadcast to have a TV licence, even if they don't have a TV and even if they're just watching a bit of material streamed live over the Net.

Now I don't know about you, but I'd be mighty pee'd off if our government tried this kid of stupidity around here.

Broadcast licensing works just fine when the broadcasts concerned are constrained by distance -- but when it comes to the internet, it's just plain stupid.

There might be a case for a broadcast license when some of that money goes back into creating the content being viewed -- but when it's content provided by an independent 3rd-party who receives no part of the fee, well that's robbery.

In media reports today there appears to be some confusion over whether the "licence required" situation only applies to live UK TV broadcasts that are also streamed, or whether it applies to any live-stream regardless of its origin.

Silicon.com however, quotes the UK TV Licensing authority as saying that the licensing regs covers "any apparatus used for the purpose of receiving--by wireless telegraphy or otherwise--any TV program service" (emphasis mine).

Stupid pomme bureaucrats!

Some gear recovered
The cops called me last night and said they'd recovered some of the stuff stolen from my workshop on Queen's Birthday weekend.

Based on forensic evidence found at the scene, they had executed a search-warrant on a couple of houses and come up with quite a stash of ill-gotten loot.

Unfortunately the PC on which so much of my stuff was stored has been gutted, only the bare chassis remaining.

Some (but nowhere near all) of my tools were recovered but there's still thousands of dollars worth of stuff missing.

At least one of the offenders appears to be 17-18 years old and lives with his parents, who claim they were unaware of his nefarious activities -- despite the huge accumulation of "gear" in and around his sleepout and his late-night absences followed by the appearance of such loot the next morning.

Maybe if more parents took their role seriously we'd have fewer problems with crime and welfare dependence.

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