BBC Begins Blocking VPN Access To iPlayer (torrentfreak.com)

Posted by timothy on Saturday October 17, 2015 @04:40AM from the repurposed-the-cat-detector-vans dept.

nickweller points out Ars Technica's report (based on news initially on Torrent Freak) that The BBC has begun to block VPN users from its iPlayer video streaming service. From the article: Naturally, VPN providers are already working on a fix for the block, with IPVanish already claiming it has found a way around it. Earlier this year, a GlobalWebIndex report claimed that up to 60 million people outside the UK had been accessing iPlayer. The BBC disputes this figure however, saying: "These figures simply aren’t plausible. All our evidence shows the vast majority of BBC iPlayer usage is in the UK. BBC iPlayer and the content on it is paid for by UK licence fee payers in the UK and we take appropriate steps to protect access to this content."

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Re: Don't care by pjt33 · 2015-10-17 05:32 · Score: 3, Interesting

The reason they've always given is that some of the stuff they broadcast is third party content for which they've only bought the rights to distribute within the UK. Apparently it's too much effort to set up a system whereby they classify content as "OK to distribute worldwide" vs "UK-only" and allow foreigners and ex-pats to watch the former category.
Re: Don't care by mindmaster064 · 2015-10-17 05:58 · Score: 3, Interesting

What they don't get is people watch programming through the VPN because they have other way to get it.... If they spent half as much of this effort by negotiating with Netflix or Hulu for US customers to get these shows streamed we wouldn't care about VPNing them through iPlayer and still "paying for them..." It's just the typical ass-backwards corporate thinking at work.