iPlayer & the TV Licence

I mentioned yesterday that I'd watched a programme on BBC1 but I was vague as to how. Those of you who've read this blog from the days before blog365 will know that my relationship with TV Licencing is not good and as we don't have a licence and culminating in my appearing, with Jake, in the New York Times.

So can I legally watch BBC programmes on iPlayer without a licence (which is how I watched Britain's Lost World)?

The legal advice in the past has been that you can watch programmes which aren't streamed live without a licence but for live streamed programmes you do need a licence. So this lead to the slight farce that I couldn't watch The Nine O'Clock News live but I could legally watch it five minutes after the programme ended.

Well based on this ruling I assumed that I could watch the programme but today I checked and found this blog entry from Ashley Highfield who is Director, BBC Future Media and Technology. So he's Da Man. He confirms you don't need a licence to watch iPlayer content so long as it's not live. He doesn't seem to concerned about that. Yet.