| 08:48 | <takkaria> | Philip`: live streaming video means you need a licence. trufact |
| 11:26 | <Philip`> | takkaria: Well, obviously not in general, but I'm thinking of the live streaming BBC channels |
| 11:27 | <Philip`> | since that doesn't seem much different to a PC with a TV tuner card plugged into an aerial, for which you do need a licence |
| 11:29 | <Lachy> | Philip`, since when do you need a licence to to have a tuner card in a PC? |
| 11:29 | <Lachy> | or, in which country? |
| 11:32 | <Philip`> | Lachy: Since probably 1946 |
| 11:32 | <Philip`> | in the UK |
| 11:33 | <Philip`> | http://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/information/index.jsp#link1 - "You need a TV Licence to use any television receiving equipment such as a TV set, digital box, DVD or video recorder, PC, laptop or mobile phone to watch or record television programmes as they're being shown on TV." |
| 11:44 | <Lachy> | oh, wow |
| 11:44 | <Lachy> | There are no such licences in Australia |
| 11:46 | <Lachy> | woah! So you pay £139.50 each year just for a TV?! |
| 11:47 | <Lachy> | is that per-TV or per household? |
| 11:48 | <Lachy> | how do they enforce it, since it wouldn't be possible to know whether or not you have a TV unless they inspected your house |
| 11:49 | <Philip`> | Per household |
| 11:50 | <Philip`> | They're not being too unreasonable - you get a discount if you have a black-and-white TV or are blind |
| 11:50 | <Lachy> | I noticed the discount for B&W, but surely everyone has colour these days |
| 11:51 | <Philip`> | In my experience, they enforce it by sending increasingly threatening letters telling you that it's a criminal offence to watch TV without a licence, and that's about it |
| 11:51 | <Philip`> | Apparently they do sometimes send people to check, but you can just tell them to go away and not let them in |
| 11:52 | <Philip`> | but I think they can then get a warrant or something, to allow them to search for illicit TVs |
| 11:53 | <koredn> | It is the same in germany - only it is about 400€ / year |
| 11:54 | <Philip`> | Hmm, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_licence#Germany says €204.36/year |
| 11:55 | <koredn> | OK that depends on some factors, like if you additionally have radio and so on... |
| 11:55 | <Philip`> | Ah, okay |
| 11:57 | <koredn> | Looks like I imagined the exact amount of money wrong... |
| 12:03 | <Philip`> | Do people complain a lot about the licence fee in Germany? |
| 12:12 | <Lachy> | So our taxes pay about $0.08 per day for the ABC, which works out about $30 per year, which is reasonable. But even then, I think that's only for people earning over about $50,000 per year. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_licence#Australia |
| 12:19 | <Philip`> | Is ABC's output good? |
| 12:22 | <Lachy> | yeah, it's pretty good for some people. |
| 12:22 | <Lachy> | They have a lot of programs aimed at kids or at the older generation (over 40s). I don't really like many of their programs myself |
| 14:29 | <ehird> | http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/2008/11/video-audio-and-cross-domain-usage.html Umm, what's next, doing this for <img> too? |
| 14:35 | <Philip`> | ehird: No, because that would break backward compatibility to an unacceptable extent |
| 14:35 | <ehird> | It doesn't exactly, you know, make sense. |
| 14:36 | <Philip`> | so instead we have more complex security rules for <img> (e.g. if it's cross-domain then you can't draw it to a <canvas> then read pixels back) |
| 14:36 | <ehird> | That's...really ridiculous. |
| 14:37 | <Philip`> | See this channel's topic :-) |
| 14:38 | <Philip`> | http://lists.xiph.org/pipermail/theora/2008-November/001958.html seems like a good description of the various relevant issues |
| 14:41 | <ehird> | Philip`: This'll screw up that amazon thing whose name I forget. |
| 14:41 | <Philip`> | S3? |
| 14:41 | <Philip`> | or CDNs is general, where you get someone else to host all your big media files? |
| 14:41 | <ehird> | Yeah. |
| 14:41 | <Philip`> | *in general |
| 14:41 | <ehird> | It'll be years upon years before they add the access control stuff, I bet. |
| 14:42 | <ehird> | so it'll slow adoption of <video> &c |
| 14:42 | <Philip`> | Access Control isn't hard to add - it's just a few HTTP headers |
| 14:42 | <Philip`> | and if their customers demand it, I don't see why they wouldn't be happy to add it quickly |
| 14:42 | <ehird> | Philip`: will their customers demand it? More likely they won't just use <video>, IMO... |
| 14:46 | <Philip`> | Amazon S3 apparently already lets you set custom HTTP headers for your files, so I think you could just add a "Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *" and it'd be fine |
| 14:48 | <ehird> | Oh, okay. |
| 14:48 | <Philip`> | Oh, actually, I might be wrong |
| 14:48 | <ehird> | Oh, okay. |
| 14:49 | <Philip`> | so I don't know really |
| 14:49 | <Philip`> | but if it's not possible already, it doesn't seem like the kind of change that would take them years to implement if you asked them nicely |
| 14:50 | <Philip`> | and once one person has asked, everyone else will be able to use that feature too |
| 14:50 | <Philip`> | and then they'll expect all the competing services to offer that feature too |
| 14:50 | <ehird> | mm |
| 20:11 | gsnedders | stretches |
| 21:07 | <takkaria> | Philip`: live streaming bbc stuff of any kind requires a tv licence |
| 21:10 | <Philip`> | takkaria: It's strange that they never advertise or warn about that with the streaming stuff on their web site - I guess they assume it's too minor a problem to be concerned with, since most people will have real TVs anyway |
| 21:12 | Philip` | presumes nobody would really be fined £1000 for visiting the BBC news web site and clicking 'play' on the video when they don't have a TV licence |
| 21:15 | <takkaria> | I saw a warning up on there once about it |
| 21:17 | <Dashiva> | What about us dirty foreigners? |
| 21:19 | <takkaria> | you probably get warned about something too |
| 21:20 | <takkaria> | dunno, never been a foreigner |
| 21:20 | <Philip`> | Oh, I've never noticed a warning |
| 21:20 | <Philip`> | Foreigners already get a different version of the news site, with adverts |
| 21:20 | <Philip`> | so I guess they remove the live streaming video too |
| 21:20 | <jmb> | they do |
| 21:20 | <Philip`> | (based on IP) |
| 21:20 | <jmb> | it looks truly odd :) |
| 21:21 | <Lachy> | what about us dirty foreigners with ad blockers? |
| 21:21 | <Philip`> | (What they need is for ISPs to provide an IP -> postal address lookup service, which can be correlated with the TV licensing database, to determine whether the user should be allowed to see the video or not) |
| 21:21 | <jmb> | cool. then they can lose that! |
| 21:22 | <Philip`> | Lachy: You're just leeches on British society |
| 21:23 | <Lachy> | actually, other than just now, I can't remember the last time I even looked at the BBC website |
| 21:24 | <Lachy> | although i suppose I have downloaded a number of documentaries |