Link is in the third post of this thread..

I have a number of expat friends who use my VPN server to view BBC iPlayer from Greece, Spain and elsewhere. I pay my license, so it matters not to me that I may be detected using iPlayer, even when I am not.

The BBC could avoid all this 'policing' if it were given permission to make iPlayer a subscription catch-up service. This need not affect the license system, which should be retained at all costs. It is essential that we avoid the dumbing down that would occur if commerce became the most important influence on programming decisions and programme making.

Rather than being concerned about the 'smoke and mirrors' detection methods - easily defeated by a simple and minor MTU change, personally I find it worrying that the legislation that permits Capita (a private contractor) to monitor private communications is RIPA.

You seem to be suggesting we should then pay both the licence fee and a BBC catchup fee. That's a daft idea.

And if one were to set one's WLAN MTU to an oddly small size... say for argument's sake 400 bytes, how would that work? Add up the fragment sizes?

It's just bluff and bluster as an excuse for the door knocker's they employ to use as a ruse to get inside the premises of the tiny percentage of premises (I think I read it's less than 2% of households now) that do not have a licence.

RIPA is the key here.

Even for someone who pays the licence fee, I find this worrying.

I don't often use iPlayer on a mobile, but say I was using a hotspot and watching the Olympics whilst sitting in the park on my PAYG phone, paid with a voucher in cash - how can the detector van know I have a TV Licence?

They can't, but as there's pretty well zero chance of them identifying you in the first place, I can't see it happening unless they have people out there looking over shoulders.

Eventually this can only work if iPlayer has to be registered. In principle it ought to be possible for individual iPlayer apps/plug-ins to be authorised on a per-device basis against a particular TV licence. There could be a limit on the number of devices per licence. It would require legislative changes, but it's surely possible.

The only problem would be if there are legacy devices out there that don't have the technical ability to be updated to a player app/plug-in that can store the authorisation,

Of course this is a bit of a pain, but hardly different to any other content paying authentication system.

It would be perfectly feasible for a TV licence to allow for the authorisation of iPlayer on a number of mobile devices, perhaps with an ability to extend that number on payment of a per-device fee.

cf Apple's Family Sharing.

The BBC have now issued a press releases which explicitly states that any detection of the unlicenced use of iPlayer will not work by eavesdropping WiFi packets (although they do not discuss details on how they might detect unlicenced use).

This only confirms what made sense to anybody who actually cared to think about it. Any attempt to use mass WiFi "packet sniffing" to detect use of iPlayer was technically hugely challenging (due to WiFi encryption, sheer volumes of information and that mobile devices are licenced by the owner's premises, not place of use).

I would maintain, however, that there is scope for controlling licencing or, maybe, location detection using iPlayer apps & plugins as there are geolocation APIs which, of course, work best with GPS enabled devices but are not wholly dependent on them. However, an iPlayer authorisation system linked in to a TV licence would surely be the better option.

Edited by deleted (Mon 08-Aug-16 09:25:57)