<div class="gmail_quote">On Fri, Jul 24, 2009 at 4:38 AM, Andrew Norton <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:andrew.norton@pirate-party.us">andrew.norton@pirate-party.us</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
<div class="im">Glenn Kerbein wrote:<br>
> The BBC's iPlayer is notorious. They refuse to rebroadcast their video<br>
> content over the internet to non-UK residents. I've run into this issue<br>
> several times personally, and have felt alienated by their lockdown on<br>
> (subjectively important) bits of culture.<br>
<br>
</div>Well, thats mainly down to how the BBc is funded. There are some<br>
commercial arms, but the TV shows on their main channels (including<br>
Newsnight, which is one of their flagship shows, as is paxo) is funded<br>
not through advertising, but through the TV license fee. As such the<br>
decision to allow only UK residents to watch, and to use the bandwidth<br>
they have to provide, is commensurate with the providers of the license<br>
fee that makes that possible. I really, personally, don't have a problem<br>
with this. If you really want to watch UK TV, you can either get a uk<br>
proxy, or find a uk tv show torrent site (there's a few)<br>
</blockquote></div><br>IMHO the problem it's not that they refuse to give the bandwith to the non-UK residents, but that they don't allow the non-UK residents to share and host the show.<br><br>The first can be seen as an economical issue ("free beer"), while the second whould be about a control measure ("freedom of speech").<br>