Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
...have to VPN in to the work network to deal with switches or to check the status of an outage, I'm automatically assumed to be a pirate?
Seems like the BBC is looking to piss off every IT department in the UK.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Why not go all the way and say VPN users are terrorists? Just like all news media outlets are property of their respective government.
... is to avoid your ISP from injecting their own ads into web pages, like Comcast does. I would not be surprised if some ISPs tried to block VPN access just so they can mess with your traffic.
The BBC may want strong geo-blocking but it is completely against the interest of you and I. Geo-blocking is not a right given by law it is just a consequence of license agreements (an indirect consequence of copyright law).
Why should I as an internet user be compelled to give you accurate information about where I am located geographically?
"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,"
It also helps me circumvent geo-blocking technologies, ie. access GOOGLE, from China. Ooooohohhhhh....the evil!
The old saying "The Emperor has no clothes" applies here. Copyright law is a distorted abomination. The terms of copyright are outrageous, a work created today will not enter the public domain in my lifetime because the length of protection is so corrupted. Since I will die before Alien (1979) enters the public domain then that means copyright is effectively unlimited. "Expiry" is a lie. Sane copyright law would see works enter the public domain after a reasonable amount of time such as 14 (original term) to 20 years (what would be acceptable). Not only would those works then be able to be freely shared but also new works, with new sane protection terms, would be able to be created in those universes. A new Alien movie which does not need the blessing of the old creators. 20 years is long enough, long enough for Terminator 2 to now be public domain and Skynet to be a free literary construct. When it comes to copyright laws another saying applies "unjust laws serve to bring all laws into contempt." A primer on the subject can be found here as a freely downloadable PDF: The Public Domain.
Shh.
The Slashdot summary essentially misses the point. It's not that VPN equals pirate, but that VPN use combined with heavy bandwidth should make them suspicious. Of course this means that the ISP should be monitoring the traffic in the first place. The whole thing is objectionable because it makes one private entity responsible for enforcing the legal/equitable rights of another, at their own cost.
Easily abused. No hollywood movie ever turns a profit on paper.
A direct effect if copyright was reformed to reasonable terms would very likely be a golden age for our culture. All of a sudden those pent up reserves of story craft would be unleashed in a myriad of creative expression and experience. Movies, Music, Books, Interactive Entertainment, everything that copyright currently hoards. New ventures into existing universes is one thing but the ad-hoc communities that would form around the freed works would also spur a renaissance in our culture. Old computer games could be packaged up in whatever emulation needed to make them operate on modern machines, freely distributed. Legitimate torrent sites could specialize in genres and not only host the information but also a chorus of discussion that would not have existed when the works were locked away. If our culture was a tapestry then releasing the flood would weave into it vibrant colour and pattern that is currently dulled and frayed. The only reason this is all prevented right now is regulatory capture by vested interests who choose to keep their penny rather than let a dollar fall into a collective grasp.
Shh.
Or more importantly contact you local member. Contrary to popular belief, politicians will listen, you just have to put it across the right way (ideally with the support of some local industry heavyweights)
The problem is BBC worldwide, it's a law unto itself and it needs to be reigned in. It's been doing things this last decade that are unacceptable, from buying companies it really should not be buying into because they're outside it's remit, to doing a real shit job of distribution, for example, shows paid for by the BBC license fee payer are sold on commercially by BBC Worldwide yet BBC Worldwide sells them in the US but not the UK so us in the UK who pay for the content in the first fucking case can't even buy Bluray discs of the content to keep like those in other countries can. I wanted to purchased Hidden Kingdoms on Bluray for my parents but BBC Worldwide only produce a US region version on Bluray and only sell it in the US even though it's production was financed by UK license fee payers - we can't get a copy except on DVD which completely defeats the object of such a show that's so heavily focussed on visuals.
This episode shouldn't be used to shame the BBC as a whole, it's at odds with what most people in the BBC proper believe, it's those at the top of the BBC responsible for reigning in BBC worldwide that's the problem - they let it go off and do it's own thing completely independently and it's gone feral and gotten rabies as a result.
Thus, if anyone does complain to the BBC about this I strongly advise you to lean towards making the point that enough is enough, BBC Worldwide needs to be reigned in and as it's whole owned by the BBC it needs to be pulled towards the views of license fee payers and not be allowed to continue to run amock doing it's own thing. BBC Worldwide makes a ton of profit for the BBC, but it can only do so because it's allowed to sell on content that UK TV license fee payers have paid for in the first place.
It's also worth noting that the BBC's charter is coming up for renegotiation soon too, so it's getting to the point where the BBC really can be forced to making sweeping changes or face having it's budget cut.
This is the problematic part from TFA: the BBC Worldwide indicates that ISPs should be obliged to monitor their customers' activities.
If anything, ISP's should be regulated never to monitor their customers activities - I really think ISP looking into what I am transferring should be illegal. Just like a phone company should never listen to my conversations, ISP should never look into my data.
What's surprising, based on this article, is the minimal checks that the BBC's geolocation blocking uses
Perhaps it isn't really too surprising - BBC being a public service organisation are probably not intrinsically in favour of blocking out viewers, and they have only introduced DRM because they are under constant pressure to do so, especially from commercial channels. This is just one example of how the influence of large, private corporations are hurting the interests of ordinary people; another example would be the way even BBC have felt they have to pander to the lowest common denominator by running repetitive crap like Eastenders and "talent" shows every bloody day. The BBC used to produce high quality, cutting edge television and pioneering concepts that might not always appeal to a broad audience, but now it's mostly soap operas and "reality" shows.
You mean the company that had widespread child abuse in its building for decades and everyone looked the other way? That BBC?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
The BBC is essentially a well-funded mouthpiece of the British Government.
I find it best to ignore them and look for less-biased news sources.
(Or at least to counter-balance the news with sources that don't have British affiliations.)
The BBC is a well funded vocal and much respected international public service broadcaster, but it is also a corporation, independent from direct government intervention which means that the Current Tory government cannot muzzle the BBC when it launches into stinging criticizm of the Government any more than the New Labour government could. So while there is certainly room for reform in the BBC let's be careful that it is not used as cover by the Tory government to build into the BBC a mechanism by which criticism of them and their cronies can be muted.
If they were socialists, they wouldn't be paying themselves exorbitant salaries, they'd be spreading the money around.
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.
This statement:
"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."
Doesn't appear to be remotely close to what the topic claims:
"BBC: ISPs Should Assume VPN Users Are Pirates"
Quite the opposite, it very clearly that "some users" use it for multiple purposes.
Yet that hasn't stopped anyone here from simply assuming the article header is correct and complaining. Which is precisely why everyone ignores nerds.
Although its not the primary reason I use VPN, I'll admit it...yeah, BBC, I live in the US and I use it to watch your programming. Because US factual and documentary programming sucks. And BBC America is a fucking joke. Just to name a few off the top of my head, if a BBC program has David Attenborough, Monty Don, or Fred Dibnah in it, I'll watch it. Even if its a show about watching paint dry. So instead of trying to find ways to lock out people like me, why don't you turn it in to a money making opportunity...shut up, take my money, and sell me a TV license.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
No it's not, that's why even now it's well established that there are Russian regulars in Ukraine, the BBC still errs on the side of caution by calling those that are established as such "rebels" rather than "Russian soldiers" or similar.
The BBC may not fit your particular bias, but it's actually fairly unbiased - it takes immense caution before taking sides as in the example above. In fact, the BBC ended up in a massive fight with the government some years back precisely because it called out the then government over it's lies that led to the Iraq war once it had actual evidence so to call it a government mouthpiece is a bit of a joke. It does back up British values certainly, but that's a different thing - if you're looking for it to support Putin's or China's authoritarianism then no, it wont do that. There is certainly still some bias at the BBC in some areas - for example, coverage involving their own journalists is pretty poor, when Alan Johnson was kidnapped in Gaza they had daily coverage of it but stories about a kidnapped aid worker that were running at the same time went lightly reported which always struck me as a pretty blatant failure in objectivity but all in all it's very much a top tier news source in terms of quality and objectivity.
Likely when you say you're avoiding bias, what you really mean is that you don't like unbiased or low bias news and you're actually looking for confirmation bias and want something that will back up your own predetermined biases, and, well, have fun with that if that's what you're after, that's not what the BBC is, nor what we would ever want it to be.
just to clarify how they are under pressure from "commercial channels": they sell the shows to be shown on commercial(and publicly funded by other countries, but sell to them anyways) channels under exclusivity deals, so the drm/location limits are put in place to protect commercial interests of the BBC.
otherwise they wouldn't need to give a hoot if people worldwide were viewing their stuff, but if they let everyone in say Finland view the bbc feeds on iplayer how the fuck would they sell their content to the Finnish broadcasting company or the Finnish commercial channels? they wouldn't, so they do this to protect that revenue stream just like any other commercial company.
and the extra money generated thusly goes on for making shows nobody in UK even wants to look.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
But what exactly are you going to say? Despite the inflammatory slashdot summary the quoted text from the BBC submission only says that pirates use VPNs. This is not at all the same as saying that all VPN users are pirates. The troubling part is that they are advocating that ISPs should throttle and disconnect users based on accusations from other companies which, as we have seen time and time again are often inaccurate.
So lets go after the real issues and not invent new ones based on deliberate misinterpretation since the latter will result in loss of all credibility and leave the field wild open for really draconian suggestions.
There is nothing wrong with them charging worldwide for their content, but using geolocation as your only means of authenticating whether the user has already paid is rather braindead.
If they were socialists, they wouldn't be paying themselves exorbitant salaries, they'd be spreading the money around.
Socialists do not spread their own money around...
Gentlemen, gentlemen... please calm down! You are talking past one another. The terms "left" and "right" are archaic, dating back to the French National Assembly of 1789. At that time "left" meant progressive, radical, secular, revolutionary; while "right" meant conservative, monarchic, religious. All of that is so far behind us that it's pretty much irrelevant nowadays.
The BBC is *pro-establishment*. Partly because it had a nasty near-death experience when it tried to tell the truth about Tony Blair and the Dodgy Dossier: the director-general had to resign, heads rolled, and since then everyone has known that the only thing to do is parrot the government line. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_...
The BBC is also pro-establishment because of its membership. It leans very heavily towards well-educated, middle-class, liberals who (rightly or wrongly) try very hard to be politically correct at all times.
These facts confuse anyone who tries to apply old-fashioned categories like "left" and "right". The BBC seems to be "right" because it's pro-establishment; but it also looks "left" because it's politically correct. However, I find that if you assume the BBC will always speak truth to power you will be absolutely wrong. The BBC will, in fact, tell power exactly what it thinks power wants to hear. Because, to be honest, that's how you get on in life these days.
From what I hear, things aren't all that different in the US media.
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.