Daniel Shensmith is a barrister-at-law in England and Wales, specialising (as far as I can tell from his professional website) in family law, minor criminal matters and some contract law. On 27th March 2026, he posted a video on YouTube regarding the UK Television Licence.

At 18:10 in that video (he is quite the loquacious presenter, so he does repeat himself quite a bit and his videos can therefore be quite the slog) he said this: “The offence is that you are watching [a live programme of some sort]: that is the wording of the legislation”.

I took exception to that, because that is definitely not the wording of the legislation! The relevant legislation is Section 363 of the Telecommunications Act 2003 which actually states:

A television receiver must not be installed or used unless the installation and use of the receiver is authorised by a licence under this Part.

Installed or used, not “watching” or (as he later goes on to elaborate) “viewing or recording”.

I took exception to him literally claiming “the wording of the legislation is X” when it absolutely is not. I wrote a comment to his video: “how can you completely misrepresent what the legislation says at 18:10 ish? The offence is not watching or viewing. It’s, explicitly, to 'install or use'”. He apparently took exception to the word “misrepresent” there, though I have no idea why: maybe it means something felonious in legal circles? To me it just means “you said it wrong”. If you declared the sky to be green, I'd say you had misrepresented the nature of the sky!

Anyway, he replied to my comment objecting to the word “misrepresent” and then claiming “The key provision is Regulation 9(1) of the Communications (Television Licensing) Regulations 2004, which makes clear that installing or using a television receiver is only caught where it is done *for the purpose of receiving television programme services.*

He actually misrepresents the law again in saying this. The actual regulation in effect today is the 2016 Communications (Television Licensing) (Amendment) Regulations 2016, but as that merely lightly amends and incorporates the 2004 regulation, I'll let the mis-citation pass.

The key part of the 2016 regulation is, however, Regulation 6(1):

(1) Subject to paragraph (2), in Part 4 of the Act (licensing of TV reception), “television receiver” means any apparatus installed or used for the purpose of receiving (whether by means of wireless telegraphy or otherwise (a)any television programme service, or (b)an on-demand programme service which is provided by the BBC, whether or not the apparatus is installed or used for any other purpose.

There are those words “installed or used” again! The word “receiving” also gets a look-in. But at no point are the words “viewing”, “recording” or “watching” used. So Daniel is again wrong to claim the legislation says “X” when it in fact doesn't mention “X” at all.

For reasons known only to Daniel, he decided to release a second video a day later, titled "TV Licensing Myth DEBUNKED", with a thumbnail exclaiming “There's always one!” (the “one” he refers to is me: I was somewhat flattered, as I've never had a video addressed to me personally before!). What the thumbnail and his commentary seems to mean is, “There's always one person who picks me up on my errors and points them out”, but that of course is not what his passive-aggressive presentation purports to say!

In this second video, he goes on a wild ramble involving laptops and people making a cup of tea whilst a live program plays on their tablet: all irrelevant. The “myth” he claims to be debunking is that merely owning a TV is enough to require a licence: something I never suggested to be the case and know for a fact to not be the case. So Lord knows what Daniel was aiming at, but his aim is as good as mine at a game of darts after the 9th pint of the evening.

The question he opens that second video with is, however, worth quoting in full:

Is it true or is it a myth that if you have a TV apparatus that is capable of receiving a live TV signal that you need a TV licence?”

If he'd asked, I'd have told him the answer is emphatically “no”. I never suggested otherwise.

At 1:28, he says “Let me tell you why I said the law says the offence is 'watching or recording live TV', because that is what it means…”. My point here is: it's not what the law says. It's also not only what the law means, as I'll come on to: but at least he's acknowledging at this point that his earlier video was an explanation of what he thinks the law means, not what it actually says. Progress of sorts. As he then says at 1:33 “whether it says [what I claimed it said] word for word or not is another matter”! A nice admission, finally, that what he claimed the law to be was very definitely not “word for word” accurate!

At 1:37, he admits “even the TV Licensing website clarifies that the offence is to 'watch or record' live TV”. It would perhaps be churlish to point out to a barrister that a website isn't the law. But it isn't, and what the TV Licensing people put on their website to explain to the general public what activities require a licence isn't what the law actually is. But at least he's fessed up where he's getting his wording from!

At 2:39 he gets to the crux of his argument: the 2004 regulation makes using the TV “for the purpose of receiving any television programme” require a licence. He emphasises the “purpose” bit and repeats that at 3:06, finally delivering the punchline at 3:12: “Purpose means intent, it requires intent”.

After this, he gets completely side-tracked onto the matter of laptops, so I won't dissect his second video further at this time. But let me explain why Daniel has completely missed the point.

How does a TV set plug itself into an aerial socket and tune itself to British TV frequencies? My answer to that is: it can't. TV sets these days have an 'initial setup' procedure where you set your country and then get it to auto-tune the frequencies, you first having plugged the TV into the aerial socket by hand. Those are all purposeful actions, done by you. If a TV set is thus configured, deliberately and purposefully, to display live TV, that's all the “purpose” the 2004 and 2016 regulations require.

To be clear: buying a TV does not require a licence. Unpacking the TV does not require a licence. Setting the TV upon a console or table of some sort does not require a licence. Plugging the TV into the power outlet does not require a licence. Even plugging the TV into the aerial socket does not require a licence. But you do all those things and tune the TV set in: licence required, even if you never look at the TV ever again.

So the statute says “install or use”. When Daniel says the offence is “watch or record”, he is talking about the “use” part of the statute. How do you use a TV receiver? By watching what it displays in real-time, or by recording its output to some medium. So yes, absolutely: watch and record are part of what the statute says is “use” and the regulations call “receiving” and “use”. We don't disagree on that at all, in fact.

By limiting his description of what the offence is to 'watch or record', however, he has completely neglected the significance of the 'install' prong of the Act.

Why does that matter? Because, behind walls, curtains and locked doors, I'd argue that it is practically impossible ever to prove that someone 'watched' live TV, beyond a reasonable doubt. Most convictions on that charge are down to self-incrimination, because if you keep your mouth shut about your viewing habits, there's no way anyone could state with certainty what you 'watched'. The 'recording' bit is hard to prove, too: sure, they could seize the USB stick or hard disk you record to -but if it was encrypted? It's not impossible, but it's definitely a hard nut to crack… and probably way more effort for the authorities to go to than a conviction and a few hundred pounds of fine is going to be worth.

The 'install' prong, however, is much easier to 'get you' on: all someone has to do is walk up to your TV set and switch it on. If it displays a live TV programme, the case against you is made out. You can swear until you are blue in the face that you never actually watch live TV, but it won't avail you: because the second prong of the law that Daniel failed to mention means that they don't need to ascertain your actual viewing habits. Your equipment's configuration is sufficient to prove 'intent to view' and 'capability of viewing'. “Installed” is good enough to get you convicted.

I suspect Daniel barked up the wrong tree with me because he thinks I meant “if the TV is capable of receiving live TV, licence required”. I can't imagine why he'd think I meant that, because it's such a vacuous statement. All TV sets, by definition, have the “capability” of receiving live TV. They wouldn't be of much use if they didn't! But that is their “latent” capability: it's what their electronics are inherently capable of. That capability, however, has to be 'actualised' or made manifest by someone plugging it in and tuning it in to appropriate frequencies. My claim is that a TV whose capabilities have been 'actualised' in that way requires a TV Licence. Daniel's mis-statement of the law would suggest it does not. Daniel is wrong on that point, because the law, in black and white, says more than he claimed it says.

Funnily enough, his waffling about using a laptop to receive live TV signals becomes important in this context. A laptop (or computer, phone or tablet) is not inherently capable of receiving live TV signals over the air. They can display live programming by processing a stream of data -but they deal with streams of all sorts of data and there's nothing that makes a Sky News broadcast any different from a Daniel Shensmith YouTube video: it's all just data! My point here is that there can't really be “install” issues with computing devices. They naturally have the ability to display video streams. They do it without any intent on the part of the user: one click and live TV can start displaying. Nothing needs to be especially plugged in. No special aerials are needed. No particular 'tuning' is necessary.

So the law's two-prong approach, of “intent or use”, is really rather cleverly written. For old-fashioned TVs, the “use” prong is very hard to prove, so they'll rely on the “installed” prong. For computers, laptops and tablets it's exactly the opposite way around: intent is non-existent, so they'll have to rely on the “use” part of the offence.

That's actually trivially easy to do for computing devices, though: streaming video requires packets to be sent to a known IP address, for starters. Now, IP addresses are not really specific enough to bang particular individuals up to rights… but they are suggestive. More importantly, however, if you have logged in to iPlayer, they know precisely which account is accessing which exact content. Their terms of service make it plain that you're not supposed to share your login details with anyone else: so if “userX accessed live content”, that's you and you're responsible for it, even if you claim (as Daniel perversely suggests will be a winning argument) you were in the kitchen making a cup of tea at the time.

Non-BBC services that offer live content (such as Amazon Prime Video) also store records of who accessed what content, when: so proving “use” is trivially easy for any on-line source of live content.

You see why I thought it important to state what the law actually is? If you say it's “watch and record”, you've limited it to “use” and proving use of a traditional TV is monstrously hard and might give people a false sense of security. If you say it's “install or use”, you are not only more accurate in terms of the words actually used in the legislation, you're making it clear that the offence has two prongs and you can be skewered on either: traditional TV will probably skewer you more on the “installed” side of things than the “use”; laptops, tablets, phones and computers will probably skewer you on the “use” side of things, rather than the “installed”. The point remains that because it's a two-pronged piece of legislation, they can get you either way.

Daniel Shensmith may be an excellent barrister for all I know. But he's sometimes a lousy communicator and, especially on this occasion, he has missed the very careful way the law has actually been written. No, plugging a TV into the wall has never been and never will be a licensable act: but deliberately tuning it in is (and always has been). It's purposeful and easy to prove and it matters not one whit whether you've actually viewed the results of your careful, deliberate installation. The law says you don't have to have done, to require a licence.

I'll conclude by mentioning that I do own a TV set of the traditional type (if LCDs can really be called 'traditional'! God, I feel old!!). It sits in the Summer House, plugged into an old Mac Mini, with its audio output being fed into an old hi-fi system and a pair of speakers. I can play music on it on a Summer's evening, with Giocoso; I could even watch a movie out there, using Emby. What I can't do is ever, possibly, watch live TV on it. Why not? Because there's no aerial in the Summer House, so there's no aerial socket to plug it into. What's more, when I ran that TV's 'first setup' routine, I declared I was in Australia: the auto-tuning process it then went off to do resulted in a total wall of snowy white noise, with no possibility of actual program reception. That TV set also has the BBC iPlayer app built-in: it's conceivable that I might be able to watch BBC programme content on it via that mechanism …except I can't, because I deleted my BBC account back in 2018 and if you are unable to log in (“deliberately”) to the BBC, you can't ever view any iPlayer content.

So: a TV set deliberately and intentionally installed in a way to not receive live TV signals; and a deliberate deletion of the one account I'd need to view streaming content from the BBC: I won't be convicted on either the “installed” or “use” prongs of the Act.