SMALL GLITCH IN IPLAYER: NOT MANY NOTICE

Today's change in the law requiring all iPlayer users to hold a TV license was not quite what some expected: the BBC still trusts you to Do The Right Thing. All that's needed is to tap on the message that you have a valid license, (right) and it goes away, forever. The reason for the failure to force checks and compliance is not hard to find. Any such measures would break iPlayer integration built into smart TVs, Sky, Freesat and YouView boxes. Increasingly using ease-of-use as a selling point, these devices integrate iPlayer into a timeline-based TV guide. It's certain that most, if not all, lack the means to log in and save iPlayer settings, even if viewers could manage to input an address, email and TV License number with a alphanumeric remote control.

It looks as though there will be a return of the mothballed camper-style TV detector vans (left) parked near homes to frighten non-holders of the license fee into paying up. The press reports of the capabilities of these new vans look to be exaggerated, as the law prevents interception of private data. Though they may have the ability to detect iPlayer packets being transmitted over wifi and triangulate to an exact non-paying address, a camper would be completely unable to detect an ethernet-wired computer using iPlayer without a license. The rules for students using iPlayer away from their parents' home will stay the same: OK so long as the device is running on batteries. The sobering side of this is the fact that TV licence evasion is still a criminal, not civil, offence, despite moves by some in Parliament for change.