NHK to Crack Down on Non-Payment? I Doubt it.

Ha! NHK has started claiming that it will crack down on people who do not pay the monthly subscription fees. I wrote about that before here.

NHKの正体：http://yhsvtex.blogspot.com/2009_11_01_archive.html

From Variety:


Japan's giant public broadcaster NHK is getting serious about forcing scofflaws to pay TV license fees. As in the U.K. and Germany, all Japanese homes with a TV must pay to receive the pubcaster's two free-to-air channels, three satcasters and three radio networks. But an estimated million viewers or more are withholding the bi-monthly $32.21 fee -- unusual in the normally law-abiding country. Under Japanese law, TV households must sign receiving fee contracts with NHK and pay stipulated fees, but penalties for non-compliance are not spelled out.


The key part is this last sentence:

Under Japanese law, TV households must sign receiving fee contracts with NHK and pay stipulated fees, but penalties for non-compliance are not spelled out.

So, you can simply stop paying and tell them that you will accept the penalty.... There is none. Or, you can be very honest about it (like me) and simply throw away your TV and remove all antennas from your house and feel good about yourself when you honestly tell the NHK collector, "We don't have a TV, so we don't have to pay." That is what I recommend doing. 

TV is brain damage. I've written about that before at Lew Rockwell here and here.