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Following the recent closure of a legal loophole that meant the UK's TV license only applied to live-streaming of BBC content on the iPlayer (meaning you didn't need a £145.50 license to watch catch-up programs), the BBC has announced that it will be requiring all users to log in to view programs from 2017.
All users of the BBC's iPlayer service will have to log in with a personal account from early 2017.
Users of BBC services can already create an online account - known as a BBC ID - but this is not currently required in order to access iPlayer.
In another change, from Tuesday BBC ID holders will have to add a postcode to their account information.
The BBC says the information won't be used for [license] enforcement - but adds it may be in the future.
With young people watching less and less "live" TV, the key to ensuring they are even aware of what is on offer is to find out who's watching, track their tastes and try to tempt them with programmes that reflect their age and where they live.
It's unclear at this point how this will affect people using the get_iplayer script to download programs without requiring Adobe Flash / Air, but I'm confident the maintainers will find a way to keep going.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 27 2016, @08:58PM
The famous 'tv detector vans' were always a hoax btw. Do some research ;).
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Wednesday September 28 2016, @11:14AM
Back in the days of valve technology and cathode ray tubes, detector vans could very easily detect a television set that was being used. We discussed all of this [soylentnews.org] a few weeks back. [soylentnews.org]
It was still possible with early LED monitors but eventually ceased to be cost effective. Maybe you are too young to remember such times, in which case perhaps you ought to do some research.