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The closest thing I can relate this to in the UK is the way they handle TV licensing. That's another government sponsored organization seemingly designed to fi

The closest thing I can relate this to in the UK is the way they handle TV licensing. That's another government sponsored organization seemingly designed to find and harass false-positives with threatening letters. Yes, I own a screen. Yes, there theoretically exists a mechanism to hook it up so that it would receive broadcast television were you to broadcast any television in my area. But no, I'm not going to pay you for a TV License regardless of how many times you threaten to send somebody over to my house. Similarly, I pay Lovefilm, Orange.fr and the NFL directly for access to paid content. I streamed a Game of Thrones episode to my TV here in France last night, possibly making me the first person in history to watch the show legally. But when I head back to our house in England in a few months, I might want to watch the next episode so I'll download it. I have paid for access to it, but BT has no way of knowing this so they'll add me to their list of "Bad People". There's simply no way they can correctly track who paid for what, so it leaves us in a situation where, regardless of whether you have a right to the content you watch, you're still labeled a criminal. Kinda makes you wonder why bother paying at all if the end result is the same.

glomph 12y ago
You register like once and they stop sending the letters.
- jasonkester 12y ago
  We did. That just made them even madder because they knew we had a TV in there and now we were lying to them about it. They're definitely sending a guy out now, you'll see. We'd answer them and ask, yes, please do send somebody out. We'll show you around. That really pissed them off, since now we're not only lying but calling their bluff. Eventually after several months of this, a very angry looking man came to the door, stormed upstairs, looked around a bit, searched a few cupboards, and apologized. I often think that if they took the time and effort they spend harassing people who don't watch television and instead directed it towards making television programs that people might want to watch, they would actually get more people to pay them for a license to watch television.
DanBC 12y ago
Format shifting does make you, in their eyes, a bad person. The fact that you paid for it in one format doesn't mean you're legally allowed to format shift it, especially if by doing so you have to download a torrent which involves some amount of uploading. I am not saying that I agree with the laws.

glomph 12y ago

You register like once and they stop sending the letters.

jasonkester 12y ago
We did. That just made them even madder because they knew we had a TV in there and now we were lying to them about it. They're definitely sending a guy out now, you'll see. We'd answer them and ask, yes, please do send somebody out. We'll show you around. That really pissed them off, since now we're not only lying but calling their bluff. Eventually after several months of this, a very angry looking man came to the door, stormed upstairs, looked around a bit, searched a few cupboards, and apologized. I often think that if they took the time and effort they spend harassing people who don't watch television and instead directed it towards making television programs that people might want to watch, they would actually get more people to pay them for a license to watch television.

DanBC 12y ago

Format shifting does make you, in their eyes, a bad person. The fact that you paid for it in one format doesn't mean you're legally allowed to format shift it, especially if by doing so you have to download a torrent which involves some amount of uploading. I am not saying that I agree with the laws.