Oh, they'll catch him at some point. They don't give up easily. You'd better warn him to have a good excuse for when they do catch him.

How about you never told me?

Last year the Billag website was talking about a mail campaign to target non-payers. I assume it's just a matter of time before they can contact everyone by mail.

Yes they will (like they caught me after 6 months while so far I only applied for Cablecom hi-speed internet), but the question is from what point on he has to pay for. From the moment he gets caught, or the moment he moved in (he might already live there for years).

This has been answered already in this thread.

If the answer was only having to pay from the moment that Billag discover that you haven't paid then there would be a greater incentive for people to do nothing and, as you put it, wait until you they caught before paying.

hi,
ive been reading this post and this topic with radio licence is really confusing. from what i understand if you have broadband and the software on the computer to stream then you have to pay... But doesnt all software (windows media player, itunes even flash shockwaveplayer..have the ability to stream??
Has anyone prooved that they didnt have the software to do this..or is there really no way out of this?

is there a list of the official software whihc would constitue having to pay the licence?

What we need here is a test case.

I may have been willing to do this but unfortunately:

I have a radio in my car
I do listen to internet radio

But, if you don't, then go for it !

I still feel I am a good test case, but noone replied... I havnt paid yet, and dont intend as I am pretty sure I have no way to receive radio/TV.

So Billag "caught" you? I hope you were charged back until the date you should have been paying from.

Are you one of those people who also refuses to pay for rubbish bags??

, I estimate about CHF 40,000 over 30 years...honestly, does Swiss television improve your quality of life that much?)[/quote]

Curious where you get your numbers..or your maths........I pay 115.50 per quarter....over 30 years that makes it CHF 13'860.
Its a tax...either its buried somewhere in your income tax, or its more transparent and more of a user pay tax like it is here.....Don't the Brits have a similar system..???

If I were you, I wouldn't pay either. I think you have got a really good case.

If Billag catch up with you, it would be interesting to see how they react.

So how many million have you got to fight such a case?

We all hate Billlag, and don't like their methods, but at the end of the day they are agents of the state, and the state wants the money.

I suggest you look in Google to see how much influence the RIAA has in the world, because I sincerely believe that that is where all this is coming from.

I wonder what they mean exactly by "programs that can get internet radio"... would Firefox qualify?

I am in a similar situation: no TV, no radio, just a computer with Internet (which, of course, can listen to radio streams) and have just moved into my flat (therefore expecting my first Billag bill with excitement...).

I certainly don't want to pay this fee (don't take me wrong, I think it's a fair system and I pay for my rubbish bags, but I also think this particular tax does not concern me), so we'll see what happens

Interesting. You must be one of the fortunate people who get their TV sets for free.

This is another argument that the Billag people refuse to understand when I waste my precious time talking to them and politely asking them to go away. It is totally misleading and wrong for them to tell me I could be watching TV for 115.50 (or whatever) per quarter. This is like saying I could own a car for the cost of an Autobahn vignette. Other traders have been taken to court and fined for less but Billag seems to enjoy a monopoly on misinformation.

If your ISP is cablecom you get TV channels as part of your subscription [http://www.hispeed.ch/Live_TV/]. So any cablecom hispeed internet customers would have little defence against Billag...

That's a good point.

I had forgotten about that stuff. It may be possible to get Cablecom to block it.

Surely Cablecom keeps logs of what websites I visit and what services I use etc. Let Billag sift through those if they feel like it. I have nothing to hide. Surely I am innocent until proven guilty so the onus of proof is with Billag.

This planet you're on, what's its name??

Well... I'm afraid it's enough for them that you have access to such things, not that you use them. Same applies for the TV by the way; they don't have to prove that you sometimes turn on the TV set that is in your living room...

Which isn't really the same thing, as most people don't have a TV hidden in their living room that they're not even aware of. Computers, however, tend to be loaded with bits of software that never get used and may have been pre-installed or got installed with some other package. I think most computers owners would struggle to provide a definite list of all software they have and explain exactly what those applications can and cannot do.

Basically nobody who owns an internet-connected computer can ever be 100% sure they cannot view some TV programs. So this means everybody has to cough up the full amount or stop using the internet completely, right? So it's not a crime to view TV without a licence but it is a crime to be theoretically able to do so. By the same measure anybody who is capable of holding a gun is guilty of hijacking. This is utterly ridiculous.