Well this is peak. For years now, Iplayer has been the savior of many a hungover student looking for a documentary to zone out on. It’s where soap fiends get their Eastenders fix and bare UK and US dramas are available without ads. And it’s about to become very bait.
When Iplayer first came about you were able to watch catch up TV freely and only need a TV Licence to watch live. Then a few years ago as streaming took over it was introduced that you would need a licence to watch Iplayer at all, but went off an honour system of simply clicking “I have a TV Licence”.
Now, in order to use the site, viewers will have to create an account linked their email address and sign in in order to have access. This means it will be a lot easier to trace who is using the site and whether they have a TV Licence or not.
A BBC representative, Andrew Scott, said, “By matching email addresses we may be able to identify someone who has told us they don’t need a TV licence while at the same time having signed in and watched iPlayer.
“So we will now use this alongside our existing enforcement techniques to help identify people who are watching licence fee-funded content without a licence.”