Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

BBC to Require Users to Log in to Access iPlayer From 2017

posted by janrinok on Tuesday September 27 2016, @03:31PM   Printer-friendly
from the hammer-falls dept.

kazzie writes:

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.

Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
BBC to Require Users to Log in to Access iPlayer From 2017 | Log In/Create an Account | Top | 19 comments | Search Discussion
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

  • (Score: 2) by TheRaven on Wednesday September 28 2016, @08:59AM

    by TheRaven (270) on Wednesday September 28 2016, @08:59AM (#407292) Journal
    It's hard to claim it's a tax, when you can avoid it by not consuming the thing that it covers. I hadn't watched live TV for a while when they introduced iPlayer and I stopped paying the license fee in protest against them using proprietary technology that used public funds to distort the market. I almost started again when get_iplayer started working, but didn't because the BBC intentionally broke it several times. I actually haven't watched anything from iPlayer for a few months either, so when they changed the rules we decided not to bother with a license. If they'd make everything available using open standards and allow any third parties (not just those who agree binary-only distribution of trivially circumventable DRM that serves solely to limit interoperability) then I'd start paying the fee again. Until then, I won't pay the BBC to endorse specific vendors.
    --
    sudo mod me up
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  
    Total Score:   2  

  • (Score: 2) by gidds on Wednesday September 28 2016, @12:22PM

    by gidds (589) on Wednesday September 28 2016, @12:22PM (#407350)

    It's hard to claim it's a tax, when you can avoid it by not consuming the thing that it covers.

    Eh?  It would make just as little sense to say "It's hard to claim that Income Tax is a tax, when you can avoid it by not having any income.", or "It's hard to claim that Capital Gains Tax is a tax, when you can avoid it by not gaining any capital."

    In fact, according to Wikipedia the TV Licence fee is a tax — but differs from most taxes in that it's raised for a particular defined purpose.  It's collected by the BBC but paid into the Government's Consolidated Fund, and passed back to the BBC from there.

    --
    [sig redacted]