The Communications Act: How an Outdated Law Keeps You Paying for a Future That’s Already Dead
The Law That Time Forgot
It’s 2025. You can stream UFC on YouTube, watch a NASA Mars feed on your phone, or view a live sermon from Lagos on a tablet. But if you dare to watch any of that in real time from the UK, congratulations, you may now be committing an offence under legislation written when MySpace was revolutionary and the Nokia 3310 was cutting-edge.
This is the absurd legacy of the Communications Act 2003, the law that defines what counts as “television” in Britain. Not based on content. Not on platform. But on live-ness. The simple act of watching something live, any programme, means you owe £169.50 a year. Not to the platform you’re watching on. Not even to the provider offering it, but to the British state, on behalf of a public broadcaster you may never use.
You pay Netflix £15.99 a month. That’s a choice. You pay the TV licence, or face the threat of prosecution. The blunt instrument masquerading as civic duty.
The Communications Act was presented as a modernising reform that unified five legacy regulators into Ofcom and aimed to standardise the management of TV, telecoms, and emerging media. However, beneath that façade was something more sinister. A subtle legal manoeuvre that redefined “television viewing” so broadly it could encompass every new medium while still maintaining a 20th-century funding model.
The term “television receiver” was broadened to include any device capable of receiving live signals, such as televisions, laptops, smartphones, and tablets. The platform doesn’t matter. The source doesn’t matter. If it’s live, it’s regulated. And that regulation demands tribute.
Netflix has so far avoided this trap by focusing on on-demand content. However, the moment it streams something live, such as a debate, a comedy special, or a football match, the entire platform shifts into licensed territory. You, the viewer, not Netflix, becomes liable. You’re the one being monitored for viewing. Netflix continues collecting its subscription fee while Whitehall observes your compliance.
This isn’t regulation; it’s a tax cloaked as a threat, enforced through legal ambiguity. The system isn’t too rigid. It’s excessively flexible, but only when it comes to enforcement. A live boxing stream on Twitch? Licence. A YouTube Live Q&A from a US senator? Licence. An ITVX livestream of a royal wedding? Licence. The BBC itself doesn’t even need to be involved. It’s all about catch-and-charge.
That’s the point. This isn’t about modernising media access. It’s about covertly maintaining the BBC’s revenue model. Instead of openly defending the licence fee, Parliament broadened the legal definition of “live viewing” to capture as many people as possible, especially younger viewers who no longer watch terrestrial TV and no longer view the BBC as central to public life.
Still, neither Labour nor Tories have the courage to touch it. Why? Because repealing Section 363 of the Act would mean confronting a question they’ve avoided for years: Do people still want to fund the BBC? And if so, how?
The status quo shields cowardice. It allows governments to stay detached from the licence fee while outsourcing enforcement to its outsourced contractors, disguising coercion with cultural rhetoric. Letters keep arriving. Threats keep landing, and the law keeps turning even as it decays.
The issue isn’t hypothetical. This isn't about some abstract regulatory principle. It's about how power, policy, and punishment still function in Britain. Flexible subscription models exist alongside rigid public enforcement. Monthly Netflix bills coexist with annual demands from TV Licensing. You can cancel one with a click. You face a criminal record to cancel the other.
Streaming data highlights the contradiction. Ofcom’s 2024 report reveals that 64% of UK adults use streaming services weekly, up from 52% in 2019. Among 16–34s, live TV consumption has dropped from 58% to 38%. Meanwhile, 72% of households pay for at least one streaming service, yet they are also told to pay a licence fee, even if those services are their only method of viewing.
What does that money support? According to the BBC’s own 2024 report, £3.8 billion per year in public funding is protected not by public mandate but by the threat of enforcement. Over 400,000 detection visits were carried out last year, resulting in nearly 50,000 prosecutions, not for tax evasion or fraud, but for watching something live without permission.
This is not how public broadcasting should survive. It’s a system of traps and assumptions, designed not to adapt to a digital era, but to police it. The more live content becomes the norm, across platforms and borders, the more the state doubles down on chasing people for viewing habits that no longer even relate to traditional broadcast television.
The law doesn’t ask what you watch. It only asks how, and if the answer is “live,” then it doesn’t matter who produced it, where it came from, or whether you even realised it was live. The government calls that a “television programme service.” Suddenly, you’re part of the old machine, whether you agreed to be or not.
This mess isn’t just outdated; it’s deliberately designed to stay that way. Every time live content is streamed globally, it pushes harder against the absurd boundary set by the Communications Act. Instead of resolving the contradiction, lawmakers pretend it doesn’t exist. They let the Act falter on. Dead law walking. Undead policy enforcement, still alive, only because no one will switch it off.
Why? To protect a model that can no longer justify itself.
So let’s call it what it is: a BBC protection racket supported by a law that criminalises broadband habits. The moment we accept that "live viewing" is no longer unusual, the whole illusion collapses. The TV licence becomes redundant. The BBC would have to compete. Politicians would have to justify their use of public media. Voters would have to decide what it’s worth, rather than being forced to pay for it.
That’s why they won’t touch it. Not because they believe in the licence, but because they fear the public won't. So instead, they hide behind a law written before Facebook existed.
Britain doesn’t need another review; it doesn’t need another inquiry into “public service media in the digital age.” It needs clarity. It needs transparency, and it requires a government brave enough to admit that you can’t criminalise people for how they consume information in the 21st century.
If Netflix decides to continue its trajectory of moving into live broadcasting in the UK, which it will, we’ll all finally see how redundant this law already is. The only question remaining is whether Parliament will have the courage to abolish it, or if it will continue to punish the future to subsidise the past.
Welcome to Britain, where your Netflix subscription comes with a side of prosecution.