TV licensing...

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Mick F
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Re: TV licensing...

Post by Mick F »

Received another letter today addressed to "the legal occupier".
They're giving us ten days to get correctly licensed.
We are correctly licensed in that we don't need or want one of course.

If we do nothing, they're going to start a full investigation. (whatever that is)

I hope they let us know when they're going to be calling round, as I'd hate to be out when they do. :D
Mick F. Cornwall
mercalia
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Re: TV licensing...

Post by mercalia »

Mick F wrote:Received another letter today addressed to "the legal occupier".
They're giving us ten days to get correctly licensed.
We are correctly licensed in that we don't need or want one of course.

If we do nothing, they're going to start a full investigation. (whatever that is)

I hope they let us know when they're going to be calling round, as I'd hate to be out when they do. :D


were the other ones addressed to you by name? In my case they became anon and then they did a local search thru the electoral register to get my name a gain :roll:
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Mick F
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Re: TV licensing...

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The previous one was to The Occupier.
If they come round when I'm out cycling, they'll see the car and it's easy for them to find out the owner.
............ or is that privilege only open to the police?

Either way, they do some investigation and get our names easily enough. Electoral role and all that ........ or they could just pop in any of the local pubs and ask!
Mick F. Cornwall
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Re: TV licensing...

Post by rjb »

All those licence payers are subsiding that investigation. Get a licence then our bills could be reduced. :twisted:
At the last count:- Peugeot 531 pro, Dawes Discovery Tandem, Dawes Kingpin X3, Raleigh 20 stowaway, 1965 Moulton deluxe, Falcon K2 MTB dropped bar tourer, Rudge Bi frame folder, Longstaff trike conversion on a Giant XTC 840 :D
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Re: TV licensing...

Post by mjr »

Psamathe wrote:But a bit off-topic but, maybe urban myth or maybe "I fell for it" but apparently there is a TV channel now where young girls take their tops off and giggle about and blokes telephone them for a "chat". Joys of the Murdoch empire? Wonders of modern technology?

Not just "a" channel. There are many of them and it ain't only their tops! On Freeview, I think they stay confined to a range of high-numbered channels (in the 600s now I think - I noticed the new location after pressing P- too often while listening to the radio through the TV :shock: ) where they are easily ignored/missed, but on satellite, they've a bad habit of swapping IDs with lesser-known proper channels at retune events which means I've had a few surprises while zapping that made me force a retune (the box would usually retune in a day or two, otherwise). Wonders of modern technology - I don't know if they're paying Murdoch to be on his system as well as Freesat. I'm surprised they get away with it! I can only assume that official Freesat boxes don't do it much or maybe no-one's complained!

It could be worse: some ordinary entertainment, sports or shopping channels on German and Italian satellite TV switch about midnight to broadcasting what I'm fairly sure the UK would regard as illegal without subscription :shock: Be careful to check the Electronic Programme Guide before changing channel at night!
MJR, mostly pedalling 3-speed roadsters. KL+West Norfolk BUG incl social easy rides http://www.klwnbug.co.uk
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Re: TV licensing...

Post by mercalia »

rjb wrote:All those licence payers are subsiding that investigation. Get a licence then our bills could be reduced. :twisted:


not likely. you watch the rubbish, you pay for it.
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Mick F
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Re: TV licensing...

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mercalia wrote:
rjb wrote:All those licence payers are subsiding that investigation. Get a licence then our bills could be reduced. :twisted:


not likely. you watch the rubbish, you pay for it.
Yep.
We used to have a telly, then we saw the stupidity of it.
Even if the TVL was free, we still wouldn't have a telly.

When you could watch on demand iPlayer without a TVL, we watched one or two things, then stopped. Eventually, the BBC decided that we had to have a TVL for iPlayer, but it made no difference to us as we'd stopped bothering with it.

Netfix does it for us, plus DVDs and YouTube, but even then it's not every day - two or three evenings a week? Maybe five or six hours a week total. Not had it on for the last couple of evenings, and it won't be this evening either. As it's Friday tomorrow, we'll be socialising for the evening down at the Rising Sun Inn.
Mick F. Cornwall
mercalia
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Re: TV licensing...

Post by mercalia »

I mainly watched tv for films. I can get them now from places like CEX or Music magpie at low prices. esp at CEX. I dont generally buy dvds but their price these days for dvds is just 50p, they get so many of them - dvd quality is still better than standard tv that I had. I did pickup the whole tv series of Alias on dvd there for just 50p-£1 a series or Heroes on Blu ray for just £2 a series. Poundland is a good place also - today picked up the film Pixels on blu ray for just £1 I think it is new as has official seals on the cellophane wrapper, any way all the blu rays I have bought there have been immaculate as good as new. Its a good time to buy dvds/blu rays as many are moving to streaming services like Netflix
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Mick F
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Re: TV licensing...

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Yep. :D

We had a good stock of DVDs. I say "had" because the majority of them went to charity shops. Our iMac is having difficulties playing discs now, so it probably needs some TLC or a new superdrive. Meanwhile, we have a portable superdrive that plugs into our MacBookAir and we can copy the DVD using software, then transfer the resultant MP4 to the iMac and store it on a portable HD to watch it at our leisure.

What we're watching on the odd evening, is a boxed set of the first three series of Doc Martin. Rather funny and a little annoying knowing Cornwall as we do. The accents are generally comical, and some of the settings aren't even in the Port Isaac locality.
Mick F. Cornwall
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Re: TV licensing...

Post by [XAP]Bob »

Whilst I have no objection to copy a dics to a more accessible format... You really ought to keep the disc, not sell/pass it on.

And UK copyright law is an ass and considers the act of making the DVD accessible a crime in itself - but if you retain the original disc I doubt that anyone would get anything to stick,
A shortcut has to be a challenge, otherwise it would just be the way. No situation is so dire that panic cannot make it worse.
There are two kinds of people in this world: those can extrapolate from incomplete data.
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Mick F
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Re: TV licensing...

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We gave them away, or at least the ones we didn't want to keep for sentimental reasons.

I actually don't give a toss about copyright laws. You buy the disc/tape and it's up to you what you do with it.
If they don't want us to copy stuff, they should make it impossible for us to copy. If they don't or can't, they must obviously be accepting of the situation and expect it.

I was brought up in the generation of listening to Pick of the Pops on the radio and taping it to play endlessly in the car.
Ditto playing our singles and LPs and taping them. We used to swap tapes with our friends and they would play them.
How many times did people tape the telly movies and programmes? Swap them, give them away?

Did anyone complain?
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Re: TV licensing...

Post by thelawnet »

Mick F wrote:We gave them away, or at least the ones we didn't want to keep for sentimental reasons.

I actually don't give a toss about copyright laws. You buy the disc/tape and it's up to you what you do with it.
If they don't want us to copy stuff, they should make it impossible for us to copy. If they don't or can't, they must obviously be accepting of the situation and expect it.


They did try.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeCSS
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AACS_encr ... ontroversy

Essentially it is impossible to prevent copying of home media.
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Re: TV licensing...

Post by mercalia »

and they tried harder with Blue ray bit it was still broken - but the software that will do it has been driven back to China eg DVDFab - one of the very best blu ray rippers that will use your Nvidea graphics card to do most of the work so that even an old pc like mine C2009 will still rip a blu ray in about 20 minutes rather than hours
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Mick F
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Re: TV licensing...

Post by Mick F »

It's the same with Garmin maps.
You can copy them and give the copies away. I've done that more than once, and the Garmin maps I have in my device is a copy of the originals. I bought the originals from Garmin at full price, copied them, then sold the originals at half price. I've given away copies of the copies a few times. The maps are a tad out-of-date now, but adequate for my use and I have no intention of buying up-to-date maps. As they are out-of-date they ain't worth much.

If movies (on whatever format) are offered at charity shops for a quid, does it really matter if you copy it and give the movie back to the charity shop so they can sell it for a quid again?

So long as you don't make money on this copying malarky, there's no harm done. Once you set up a business selling pirated stuff, you standing into danger with the authorities.
Mick F. Cornwall
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Re: TV licensing...

Post by [XAP]Bob »

The harm is done because you then have ten people with a copy of the product when they have only paid once.

For people who make their living producing maps, or films, or books, or software that is a serious issue.

The garmin example is a good one, particularly since there are now free (as in beer, as well as speech) maps available for basically the whole world.
Copying the commercial maps cannot be justified any more. Either buy the commercial map (because it’s worth paying for the extra work) or don’t, and use the free one instead.


Do I really care? Probably not as much as I should (given that my income depends on part on copyright law being enforced), but enough to suggest that keeping the DVDs isn’t unreasonable.

Given your attitude to copy protection... if Incan break into your house and take Mercian and Moulton, then Inshould be free to do so - you didn’t make it impossible....
A shortcut has to be a challenge, otherwise it would just be the way. No situation is so dire that panic cannot make it worse.
There are two kinds of people in this world: those can extrapolate from incomplete data.
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