As Family Historians, surely we should all have learnt by now to refer to the primary source. Here is the quote from the Green Paper: 4.22 In future, if a large number of people are downloading audiovisual content from the internet, and watching it on their computers or mobile phones, rather than using traditional TV and radio services, it may be difficult to collect and enforce a licence fee based on television ownership. 4.23 In that world, different funding models may have to be considered. If the licence fee was to be retained, the means of collecting it might have to be changed – so that it became, for example, either a compulsory levy on all households or even on ownership of PCs as well as TVs. see http://www.bbccharterreview.org.uk/have_your_say/green_paper/gp_funding.pdf Michael Williamson -----Original Message----- From: TebbuA@aol.com [mailto:TebbuA@aol.com] Sent: 21 March 2005 12:14 To: SOG-UK-L@rootsweb.com Subject: [SoG] Something more to worry about! Those of you who have read the latest ed'n of Computer Active ( March 2005, page 7 ) will no doubt be alarmed by gov't proposals to licence PCs. This came to light in the recent green paper on the BBC's charter. It seems that we are downloading too much from the BBC for free and are making it too difficult to collect licence fees. ( What happened to all those lads in vans hiding around the corner? ) The proposal is to charge the same as the TV licence fee sometime after the renewal of the BBC's charter in 2006. Think about the implications for business and education, let alone our researches. As these things are not dreamt up overnight we can now perhaps understand why Mr Blair was so keen, a couple of years ago, that we should all have internet access! Don't forget The Medal Cards! Mike Tebbutt.