You may soon need to get a ‘TV’ licence for your laptop and tablet

Do you watch TV shows on your laptop or tablet or similar device? Then we've got some potentially bad news for you...

According to sources at the Irish Independent, Communications Minister Denis Naughten is looking to expand on the definition of 'TV licence', which will include any devices above 11 inches that you watch content on. So while that might mean your mobile phone and some smaller tablets won't be effected, it does look like it will involve charging usage on your desktop, laptops and larger tablets. This new plan could generate as much as €5 million extra per year for RTÉ, and it follows the hugely negative backlash to the proposed plan to double the cost of the existing TV licence. One in ten Irish households don't have a standard TV set-up, with more and more people moving to the internet to get their TV fix. The current definition of a 'television set' as "any electronic apparatus capable of receiving and exhibiting television broadcasting services broadcast for general reception" according to the Broadcasting Act of 2009. However, Minister Naughton is looking to remove an exemption which states that "non-portable television sets capable of exhibiting television broadcasting services distributed by means of the publicly available internet" to be removed and for portable devices to also be included. But with millions - literally, millions - of devices with access to RTÉ's content via the internet in Ireland alone, and many of them being entirely mobile, there is no word yet on how the company plan to police this particular plan to assign every user the €160 annual charge.