BBC: ISPs Should Assume VPN Users Are Pirates

An anonymous reader sends this news from TorrentFreak: After cutting its teeth as a domestic broadcaster, the BBC is spreading its products all around the globe. Shows like Top Gear have done extremely well overseas and the trend of exploiting other shows in multiple territories is set to continue. As a result, the BBC is now getting involved in the copyright debates of other countries, notably Australia, where it operates four subscription channels. Following submissions from Hollywood interests and local ISPs, BBC Worldwide has now presented its own to the Federal Government. Its text shows that the corporation wants new anti-piracy measures to go further than ever before.

The BBC begins by indicating a preference for a co-operative scheme, one in which content owners and ISPs share responsibility to "reduce and eliminate" online copyright infringement. ... "Since the evolution of peer-to-peer software protocols to incorporate decentralized architectures, which has allowed users to download content from numerous host computers, the detection and prosecution of copyright violations has become a complex task. This situation is further amplified by the adoption of virtual private networks (VPNs) and proxy servers by some users, allowing them to circumvent geo-blocking technologies and further evade detection," the BBC explains.

Comments

Contacting BBC, via VPN

[Taco Cowboy]

Methinks BBC did what they did on the advise of their lawyers, and I am sure that there are still plenty of good people within BBC who can discern good from bad, right from wrong

So ... why don't all of us contact BBC and tell them what we think ?

Their website is at http://bbc.com/

You can contact them via http://www.bbc.co.uk/faqs/cont...

Or file a complaint at http://www.bbc.co.uk/complaint...

Their worldservice email address is at worldservice.letters@bbc.co.uk

Their FB page is at https://www.facebook.com/bbcwo...

Let them know, let BBC know how wrong they are about VPN

Re:Contacting BBC, via VPN

[Kjella]

There's also that despite their public funding, which means they could give their content away for free, then instead try to leverage it for profit as hard as they can.

Tax some (UK population) and give benefits to others (rest of the world) is not socialism, generally the rule is everybody pays and everybody gets. If the former doesn't hold, you can't expect the latter to hold either so I perfectly understand BBC Worldwide charging for their content.