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BBC Begins Blocking VPN Access To iPlayer (torrentfreak.com)
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."
"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."
That's all well and good, but what about UK licence fee payers who are temporarily outside the UK? Shouldn't they still be able to access the content they are, after all, still paying for? Perhaps a more thoughtful process based on a log in, rather than just a blanket geo-block, might be a better solution.
One would think they would like to spread their culture and/or propaganda to as wide an audience as possible. I don't understand the desire to lock down their content.
On the Oregon Cost born and raised, On the beach is where I spent most of my days
They need to get paid. If they don't collect the UK's mandated license fee^H^H^H television tax for all viewers, they lose a big chunk of their income. And the sports teams, especially, charge premiums for live content. And easy access for numerous downloaders allows them to organize the content into something that *actually makes sense* instead of the completely crap BBC program scheduling and interface. *No one cares* when the 12 different showings of Doctor Who happened in your particular county and wants to spend 5 minutes drilling down to find them, they just want to see the latest episode, which Iplayer refuses to allow direct access to.
Frankly, that's what makes Bittorrent such a useful tool compared to IPlayer. Let someone else organize the episodes of Downton Abbey or the 47 other chickflick BBC shows, organize them into something useful, and *strip* the excessive Iplayer advertising!
EU, a continent with borders, at least for human smugglers, drugs traffickers, money launderers and undeclared workers, but playing a documentary or tv show from your neighboring country? Than you're an ordinary thief, a pirate, a criminal.
It's easier to kidnap an eastern European blond sex slave, buy a handful of Kalashnikov's in Bulgaria, buy some legal stocks with your black money in Austria, and sell your sex slave in a Dutch brothel, sell your weapons to some radicalized Muslims in Brussels and exchange your legal stocks for some British pounds in London, than it is to stream a freaking boring British TV show in France, even if the one who wants to stream the show is a Brit living in France.
Watch video streams? Are you crazy, you criminal?
Muslim immigrants? Well you take them and give them a warm welcome, and adapt to their culture, you racist.
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.
you should check your facts, Downton Abbey is not on the BBC
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
Dump the licence fee, switch to subscription, sell BBC programming to anyone in the world who wants it, stop forcing people in the UK who don't want it to pay for it.
The BBC are adamant that they make the highest quality programmes in the world, so I'm sure they'll have no problem finding new subscribers to make up for lost licence revenue.
Yeah they should load up their websites and apps with ads instead!
What could possibly go wrong...
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
its probably the 3rd party that already has the rights sorted in those other countries and have a revenue stream from them, its probably more profitable for the 3rd party to have separate licences.
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
There is a problem with the Copyright Holders wanting to have their cake and eat it.
The might license a show to be shown in the UK but not say in Spain. If you are in Spain then these copyright holders don't want you to see the show. End of story.
The Beeb is duty bound to try to stop this copyright infringement.
Then there are the Actors in their own shows. They get paid for the broadcast to the UK and get different rates for other countries.
It all gets horribly complicated.
So the easiest way is to try to block iPlayer from being used outside the UK.
They legally can't. The BBC has to pass the worldwide distribution rights of their shows to their for-profit arm BBC Worldwide which pays them ~20% of the revenues in return (the legal max due to how the BBC is funded). The BBC's special funding is also the source of a number of special headaches for them if the requirement for them to stay a non-profit were dropped they then could sell access worldwide. If you want to bitch about not gaining access iplayer bitch to BBC Worldwide that technically separate business that owns their worldwide rights.
As Anonymous Coward suggested, you could pester BBC Worldwide to create a subscription service to watch BBC-owned programmes and then tell us what form letter you get.
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.
The entire point of the license fee is that because everyone with a TV has to pay it (no matter their political affiliation), the BBC can be relatively unbiased in their reporting. The second you attach advertising or a subscription to it, they end up biased.
As a UK resident and license fee payer, I have no problem whatsoever with non-UK residents watching the BBC.. I don't really understand why the BBC has a problem with it, it doesn't affect the amount of money they receive so who cares who watches it?
But couldn't they make their program available outside the UK for a small fee and still not give a fuck about their non-UK viewers?
That way, it would be a win-win.
Yet still by a massive margin the least biased major news broadcaster in the English-speaking world.
The problem with that is that as soon as people can choose to pay it or not, the BBC has to pander to them to keep them paying - and they become biased. The reason that the BBC isn't as massively biased as CNN or Fox is because its funding is guaranteed, and it doesn't have to pander to audiences.
Money. They want more money.
No - because then you have viewers choosing to pay or not pay the BBC. As soon as someone can make that choice, the BBC has to bias their broadcasting towards keeping that person paying, in order to keep their funding high. The whole point of the license fee is to avoid that situation.
Why? The licence fee payers don't get to decide on BBC programming.
Don't like it? Oppose the licence fee like millions of us already do.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
BBC.
Ding! Downtown Abbey was an ITV (UK) and PBS (USA) show.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
I think that would be Al Jazeera as the least biased.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Please take this to its logical conclusion and cease all operations. kthx.
Requiem for the American Dream
They should stop creating content and destroy the archives - you can never be too careful - there are potential viewers around every corner.
Requiem for the American Dream
Yes. Millions of Top Gear fans oppose paying the BBC license fee.
(And they have done so since long before Clarkson punched a producer and was sacked.)
They don't need ads; They could just sell subscriptions as was suggested by the AC.
But ads would fit the pattern!
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
Well rather less so since they sacked Jeremy Clarkson.
What part of "subscription" sounded like "advertising" to you? They should charge the same 145/year fee as the tax, to anyone worldwide who wants to pay. Bit more than Netflix, but perhaps better content.
And don't kid yourself that the BBC is unbiased - they're biased in the way they choose to be, which is different.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
... the BBC isn't as massively biased ...
It sounds more like the BBC is just biased in a way which you happen to agree with. Forcing their audience to pay anyway just substitutes the bias of the journalists or their bosses for the the bias from needing to be useful and relevant to the people watching.
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
The "anyone who wants to pay" part is the problem. As soon as people can choose whether to pay or not (be they subscribers or advertisers), the BBC has to start tailoring their product to match the people making the choice to pay or not. As soon as that happens they have motivation to bias their reporting.
No, the BBC does a reasonable job of being unbiased. They don't get it right all the time, and certainly, in general they have a slight leftward lean, but they do a far far far better job than any channel beholden to people who can choose whether to pay or not. You only need to look at CNN's coverage of who won the democratic debate as an example of how bad it can get if you're beholden to people choosing to pay you.
They tried that before, but some terrible fans^W pirates restored almost everything they broadcast.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
They have worked it out. They are happy with the status quo.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
So their concern comes down to people accessing content that they aren't paying for? Then charge for access. They estimate 60 million people outside the UK are accessing. That's a large potential market.
I'm currently paying for VPN service to watch shows with iPlayer. I would be happy to just pay them directly.
Imagine a company were to set up a roadwarrior style VPN in their UK office (which for the sake of argument assume a TV licence) for their UK staff who are visiting abroad to access IPlayer from their hotels in the evening. How would the BBC be able to tell that those staff were accessing it via the VPN and not from computers directly connected to the office LAN?
I live in a country with a similar problem, where our national TV broadcaster gets to squeeze money out of you for having a TV. It has been suggested that they could encrypt their content and people who pay their fee (and hence have a TV) get a free decoder card. For some odd reason they opposed it quite vehemently.
The cynic in me would say that they know that NOBODY would get the useless card to decode a program nobody watches.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Lasts time I read/watched Al Jazeera I thought Fox News or msnbc. Levels of bias. Some individual reporters were good but on a whole not really unbiased.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
In some cases that's true but the real reason is domestic politics. Here in Oz we have the ABC/SBS which is modelled on the BBC and is almost as old as the BBC. We used to have TV/Radio licenses when I was a kid in the 60's but we dumped them decades ago, it's an antiquated system based on the idea that TV/Radio's are a luxury item. People who pay license fees believe they own something and don't think others should get it for free (UK), people who pay for the same thing via taxes may object to doing so but do not care if others use it (AU).
As with the UK, the ABC/SBS is set up and run as an independent statutory body and is by far the most trusted news outlet in the country, this is despite recent attacks on its integrity from Murdoch's newspapers and his pet politicians. That tactic doesn't work very well with Aussie voters because most Aussies have seen the ABC attacked as biased by ALL sides of politics, its track record over the decades has earned our trust, we value its existance much more than the politicians who determine its budget.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
But I said "and still not give a fuck about their non-UK viewers". Even if they do not care, they would get more money than they do now.
I would agree that Al Jazeera does an excellent job on stories about most of the world. When covering the middle east, however, they are pretty much the official voice of the Muslim Brotherhood, being owned by the government of Qatar, and are about as biased as you can get.
The "anyone who wants to pay" part is the problem. As soon as people can choose whether to pay or not (be they subscribers or advertisers), the BBC has to start tailoring their product to match the people making the choice to pay or not. As soon as that happens they have motivation to bias their reporting.
They already bias their reporting, so no flaw there. Maybe they'd change to a bias less in sync with your own? The world would keep turning. As far as all other programming, the more they make it appealing to viewers, the better.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
All media has bias. It's inherent in the role of choosing stories to emphasize and how to cover them. People naturally choose what interests them, what they think is important, etc... People generally don't recognize it when they mostly agree with the underlying premise it's based on and thus consider it reasonably "unbiased".
By default, I'd expect the BBC's reporters to have at least an "educated brit" bias, for example. Likely average left-wing politically (with probably a few noticeable exceptions, even more noticeable for their rarity) of the general population based on their chosen profession.
Insisting the BBC is unbiased says more about your own cultural background and personal biases than it does about the BBC. It's like the old joke about how the intelligence of someone is defined by how much they agree with me on everything...
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
There is a problem with the Copyright Holders wanting to have their cake and eat it.
The might license a show to be shown in the UK but not say in Spain. If you are in Spain then these copyright holders don't want you to see the show. End of story.
How can this possibly apply to, say, Radio 4?
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
If limiting access to just the UK license fee payers is so important, why is it that BBC Radio is free to listen to online worldwide?
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Just like with the ABC and Australia, it is the least bias media we have thanks to everyone funding it. The sad part is the conservatives hate it, they tried to kill it recently because they thought it should be a propaganda tool (they actually said it should always be promoting the government of the day!). We got that leader kicked out, along with his attempts to kill the ABC, still hear the mumblings from the right that it is a left wing bias source even after every independent review stated otherwise. Reality just has a left-wing bias (at least in terms with what is classed as right wing today in Australia, anti-caring, us-vs-them, the poor deserve it etc..)
Presumably they have a database out there of everyone who has paid their TV license. So the BBC could have a registration page where people input their details including their TV license number and (if the details are correct) would let them in.
That way Brits overseas who have a paid up TV license are able to watch BBC stuff but those who don't have a TV license (including those in the UK) aren't able to watch it.
As the summary said, IPVanish must've had a trick up its sleeve. I can confirm that I'm downloading a BBC program(me) using IPVanish, although I actually live in the U.S.
CAPTCHA: imperial
Stop trying to prevent me from watching it. Let me pay the damn license fee for a legal login to that player that is not geo-locked.
If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
Money grabs which don't have to exist encourage piracy, so that's dumb.
"Baaaa you sheep"
Obviously, just sheeps that pass in the night.
"The BBC is already exceptionally biased without advertising. Any claim to the contrary is absurd."
Don't you just love sweeping statements without a jot of justification, and a dash of pompous bombast thrown in for good measure?
Seriously, BBC, the market for bowlderised regional-market crap is negligible when our alternative is to pirate your genuine high-quality content. We'll pay for it!
But you won't bloody sell it to us. Ergo VPNs and torrents.
They don't get it right all the time, and certainly, in general they have a slight leftward lean, but they do a far far far better job than any channel beholden to people who can choose whether to pay or not.
From my perspective, they don't have a leftward lean as much as they have an authoritarian, pro-government lean. That may have something to do with them being "beholden to people who can choose whether to pay or not."
Superficially, the left appears more authoritarian, but that's only because the right prefers to distribute the authority (and thus diffuse the accountability) through the private sector.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
Al Jazeera is deeply liberal. It just has a much more serious and less clickbaity tone than so many other liberal news sources these days (Salon, anyone?)
Whether this liberalism is for propaganda purposes or not is left to the reader to decide.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
I am a US citizen, born and raised. And I despise American TV.
It's SHIT. 98% of everything on US TV is shit. Plain and simple.
I subscribe to Dish AT250 and it's SHIT. So called "reality" shows.
The "Science" channel? Where's the science? A bunch of washed up entertainers reviewing youtube idiots, explaining why a shot to the nuts hurts.
The "Learning" channel? Really?
And on and on and on.. What pisses me off is that I have to subscribe to the top tier to get the slightly less shitty channels. $110 a month this costs me.
I also have Amazon Prime which I got for the shipping. I don't really find much to watch on there but I will be watching the Top Gear boys for sure.
I have Hulu Plus and Netflix. Meh.. I also allow my best friend to watch it so it gets some use.
I waited and waited for HBO NOW to come to Roku. I got tired of waiting and bought an Apple TV 3. About 2 months before they announced the ATV 4.
That's ok, I'm buying an ATV4 and a Roku 4 soon anyway. So Dish wanted $20 a month for HBO, that's what it cost me to watch Game of Thrones. As soon as the season was over I canceled it on Dish. Now I pay monthly and ongoing for HBO NOW through Apple. I watch it several times a week.
But overall, I'm extremely disappointed with American TV shows, movies and channels.
I've watched a LOT of BBC material and it's great. I love their science shows where they teach real science without hand puppets and crayons. Think Through the Wormhole with their idiotic animations. Brian Cox vs Morgan Freeman. WTF? Morgan Freeman is not a scientist. Not even a little. Also TTWH is always going on about the "god" thing which is extremely annoying. So much about that show is crap.
I know that there BBC TV License fee is £145.50 a year which is $224.64 in USD. $18.72 a month. If I could have full access to the BBC library through iPlayer I would be happy to pay them that. One thing to consider is that I wouldn't have access to live OTA TV like a resident would so perhaps bring the fee down a little. $15 a month for iPlayer only access would be more than fair and I would be more than happy to pay the BBC. And I don't want Americanized shows, I want pure British content. No American influence, no commercials, no banners covering the lower third of the screen with little people jumping up and down waving and blowing shit up to let me know about a different program coming up 2 months from now. Just the show. I love British humor, I love British culture. I want to see the world through their eyes and experience British life vicariously through Brits because there's a zero chance that I'll ever get to travel there much less live there.
I'm too tied down to life here (family and property) and I just can't travel. British television gives me the chance to learn new things and to see outside of the Americanized bubble that we are trapped in.
I am not defending this short sighted, old fashioned approach but the TV channels, online outlets like Amazon, Apple, Google and DVD/Bluray distributors would go crazy if they setup a legimate way to sell to global audience.
I use VPN against censor and packet logging government and it always made me curious about BBC and other large networks turning blind eye to well known IP blocks. IMHO VPN just postponed the revolution which should take place in commercial video broadcasting for a long time coming. Mp3 piracy woke up the audio industry and now with current bandwidth, 4K and H265, it is time for TV industry.
How exactly do you expect to block every VPN? How do you determine what connections are VPNs and what aren't? I don't get how a country that is so tech savvy can be so tech stupid.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
How does people accessing from outside the UK have any affect on how much the BBC is paid? They receive the same income from the TV licence payers whether or not people access iPlayer via a VPN.
So, the BBC is basically now in a position where it is taking money off the UK licence payer and giving it to multinational commecial enterprises to make programmes for which it only has the UK rights. Where the BBC has been making and exporting its own formats (eg. Strictly Come Dancing / Dancing with the Stars) it has been criticised by conservative politicians for being too populist and unfairly competing with commercial broadcasters for "their" audience.
It does appear that there is a political determination to turn the BBC into something like PBS - domestically-produced dull, worthy, talking-head programmes with a few higher-budget internationally-produced dramas interspersed with desperate appeals for money.
All media has bias. It's inherent in the role of choosing stories to emphasize and how to cover them. People naturally choose what interests them, what they think is important, etc... People generally don't recognize it when they mostly agree with the underlying premise it's based on and thus consider it reasonably "unbiased".
That can easily be compensated for by having a diverse content generating team. It is true that every story has a bias of some form, but in many ways freely funded independently operated media outlets show less overall bias than any alternative. Compared to the likes of CNN or Newscorp the BBC is effectively as unbiased as it gets, and they often do a good job of writing examples that come from both sides of major debates.
piracy will happen regardless
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
I live in Europe and am well accustomed to state media (and I'm also not a capitalist, at least not by US and UK standards).
My point was very simple, but I will try to make it even simpler for you. BBC now gets X money from UK residents via the usual fees for state media. If they sell their program to viewers outside the UK as they already do now (BBC worldwide), only more liberally and with full access to their program, they would get X+Y funding and would not have to change their program direction even a bit (assuming they're a bunch of reasonable adults). They could even spend Y money on charity without jeopardizing their independence even a tiny little bit.
If you're so worried that BBC could become biased by the additional Y money, then why would you defend the current bizarre construction with BBC worldwide instead of the obvious solution to make their program available to viewers outside the UK for free?
My version of capitalism is Skandinavian socialism with strong anti-cartel regulations and customer protection laws, but otherwise minimal interference of politics with economy. And no, I won't stop pushing my version of capitalism on the rest of us.
Awesome share indeed.
Yeah they should load up their websites and apps with ads instead!
What could possibly go wrong...
Where did you get that conclusion from the parent post?
What a big pile of bollocks that was, little Englander. I suspect you see race everywhere you look, on account of how weasley and embittered you are. Keep voting Farage mate, you'll get rid of all those brown-skinned people some day.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
The BBC is already exceptionally biased without advertising. Any claim to the contrary is absurd.
Nope.
I just dismissed your unevidenced assertion without evidence.
Either you're a Tory, in which case you hate the BBC generally, but specifically because it's Red, or you're a leftie, in which case you hate it because it's Conservative.
So own up, which one-eyed biased ideologue are you? I have to be honest, I'm guessing the former.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.