
BBC blocking articles from UK residents - alex-warren
http://alexwarren.co.uk/2013/07/03/bbc-blocking-articles-from-uk-residents/
======
jpatokal
So the BBC is... weird. The majority of the operation is a taxpayer-funded
public broadcaster with a remit to produce high quality programming for free;
but there's a unit called BBC Worldwide whose job it is to battle it out in
the red-in-tooth-and-claw world of commercial TV programming, selling BBC
programmes overseas and minting money that can then be used to subsidize the
public broadcasting component.

While this sounds laudable as an idea, for this to work it also means that the
British taxpayer is not allowed to subsidize BBC Worldwide in any way. For
example, BBCW pays rent at market rates for its office space to the rest of
the BBC, even though they're in the same building, and they're virtually
prohibited from selling anything in the UK. Add in the fact that the rest of
the British media business is (understandably) quite pissed off about having a
competitor that operates under a different set of rules, meaning they watch it
like a hawk and squawk as soon as there's even a hint of unfair advantage, and
you get all sorts of bizarro-world conflicts and overblown solutions like this
that throw the baby out with the bathwater.

(Disclaimer: I used to work for a company owned by BBC Worldwide. This is my
personal opinion.)

~~~
dan1234
So, are UK residents prevented from looking at bbc.com URLs in case we
see/click on any advertising?

~~~
timthorn
No, it's in case the BBC URL substitutes for a UK commercial website.

~~~
mapgrep
But if BBCW is emphatically not subsidized as stated above, wouldn't it be
perfectly OK -- even more OK than regular BBC -- if it competed with UK
commercial websites? Since it's not got any "unfair" subsidy advantage?

Not trying to argue, just trying to understand the (bizarre) logic of the
blockade.

~~~
walshemj
one word "Murdoch"

------
tomelders
Please send an email to the BBC Trust asking them to reassess wether this
policy really is in the best interests of the BBC and the licence payer.

Please abstain from just complaining. The BBC is a complex beast and I
genuinely believe this policy was drafted with the BBC and the licence payers
best interests at heart, but perhaps they should take another look at this
policy and debate wether or not there is a better way to comply with the BBC
charter whilst not limiting access to content for license fee payers.

trust.enquiries@bbc.co.uk

You may also contact Maria Miller, who is the Secretary of State for Culture,
Media and Sport to perhaps urge the BBC Trust to look into this issue.

enquiries@culture.gov.uk

And it wouldn't hurt to CC your local MP.
[http://www.writetothem.com](http://www.writetothem.com)

~~~
asg
The anger by the OP and most of the commenters is misplaced. This is not a
decision solely by the BBC Trust, and was not done with the licence players
best interest at heart. This is the result of lobbying by newspapers and
commercial broadcasters. The theory is that compulsory tax (or license fee)
payers money should not be used to compete against commercial interests in
anything other than TV broadcasting. In the current political climate, this is
unlikely to change.

In fact, there was a concerted effort a few years back to shut down the entire
BBC News website.

~~~
gadders
The BBC has been out of control for a while now. They bought Lonely Planet and
sold it at an £80m loss, they claim to provide impartial news coverage but
clearly don't, and they have presided over a paedophile scandal that would
make the Catholic Church blush.

~~~
tomelders
The BBC runs the worlds largest news broadcasting organisation. It has 3,500
staff, has 44 foreign news bureaux, has correspondents in almost every
country, produces 120hrs of radio and television output each day, is the
largest news room in europe and runs on £350 million a year.

The BBC Natural history Unit produces 100 hours of television and 50 hours of
radio every year, and is the largest wildlife production house in the world.
It's work is watched by audiences around the globe and has won Emmys, BAFTAs
and Prix Italias.

It's sports coverage (when it can get the rights) is second to none. The most
long lasting and iconic comedies and dramas in British culture were created by
and housed at the BBC.

The BBC runs for £4.8 Billion a year. Compare that with sky that runs at £5.9
Billion a year. Everything on the BBC is free to licence payers. To get the
complete sky Package would cost you £66 per month AND you have to watch
adverts AND they still have Pay Per View for anything worth watching. Neither
ITV, Chanel 4 or 5 offer anything near the quality and quantity that the BBC
offer (Although Chanel 4 news is my second choice). And every other digital
channel is basically endless reruns of BBC programming (Switch on Dave, $5
says it's a Top Gear rerun).

I'll forgive them a few hiccups, and I expect a few hiccups considering it's
size and reach. Overall, I think they're doing a sterling job.

~~~
gadders
A lot of their output is excellent.A lot of it is "me-too" copying of
successful commercial formates.

However, all the points you make are unrelated to covering up of child abuse
by several presenters.

~~~
azernik
In your comment about the child abuse scandal, you were replying directly to a
comment about attempts to shut down the BBC News website; in that context,
your comments are going to be interpreted as being about the whole
organization, not just about a single issue. In that context, it's not
justified to then dismiss counterarguments (for the continued running of the
BBC) as unrelated.

~~~
gadders
I would have thought that policies and procedures for producing good
programming content are unrelated to whether it is OK to cover up child abuse
or not. You could run a perfect news organisation, for instance, but still
have a bad record on child protection. The two are unrelated.

------
ig1
The BBC are prohibited from running certain commercial services (of which
BBC.com is one) in the UK due to regulatory requirements.

It's not their decision.

You could of-course lobby your MP to get it changed, but I imagine there would
be substantial opposition from both supporters and opponents of public media
services to allowing BBC to run commercial services in the UK.

~~~
Fuxy
So showing ads is the problem right? Then don't show adds to UK citizens and
let them read the damn thing instead of blocking the article? Then BBC
International can charge BBC for showing "add free content" to UK citizens and
that would take care of the formalities.

~~~
_delirium
They are not allowed to do that, either, due to lobbying from the private
media companies. The companies managed to push through a rule that the BBC
cannot show any content in the UK whose _production_ was funded commercially,
even if they showed the result ad-free in the UK.

------
andrewcooke
_A BBC Worldwide spokesman said: [...]

'Under the BBC’s Fair Trading rules commercial websites are not allowed to
receive unfair promotion from the BBC’s public services.

'This prevents us from being able to provide Future content on BBC.co.uk.
genres._

[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2208251/Global-
BBC-w...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2208251/Global-BBC-website-
boasting-depth-analysis-cutting-edge-research-available--EXCEPT-British-
licence-fee-payers.html) (daily mail, so you have to scroll way down past the
righteous indignation to get the facts)

~~~
alex-warren
Surely they can still make the content _available_ even if they're not allowed
to _promote_ it on the public services?

e.g. I can still buy Doctor Who DVDs in the UK, even if the BBC can't
advertise them between programmes.

~~~
corin_
Not that it invalidates your point, but your example is a bad one - BBC can,
and do, advertise DVDs of their own TV series, in between programmes.

~~~
gadders
They used to advertise their own magazines as well.

------
tehwalrus
I don't know if any of the brits here have ever browsed the BBC from abroad -
when I was at COP15 in Copenhagen in 2009 (being at a political gathering, I
was on free wifi and news sites half the time) I was _shocked_ to see the BBC
news site with _adverts_ on it!

I was laughed at by the Danes, Swedes and Canadians I was with, because
obviously the BBC always had adverts on.

Seriously, if the law says the BBC _can 't_ show adverts in the UK, they
should make ad-free versions of the sites available, not an error message.

In fact, the issue here doesn't even seem to be adverts - it's that its a
bbc.com article instead of a bbc.co.uk one - i.e a commercial service that
isn't allowed to receive "promotion" here. As long as they don't link to it
from the UK sites, I don't see how they are "promoting" it; we all found that
link from a 3rd party source (i.e. HN) and wanted to read it! :/

~~~
ig1
The BBC brand is hugely valuable, letting a commercial site use it (even one
owned by the BBC) is clearly promotion.

~~~
tehwalrus
So the site would need to be whitelabelled? yea, that would be an unreasonable
cost I suppose.

Shame.

------
tonylemesmer
I wanted to read this exact same article yesterday, clicked on the link and
got the same "reason" page. I thought about configuring a proxy to try and get
it to load, but then thought "fuck it" and just gave up.

It is ridiculous and the lawyers that cause this to happen are so short
sighted about how the internet works that its laughable. However as my actions
show, it is annoying enough for people to give up and just accept it.

------
croisillon
I love the NYUD trick, but trying to look up nyud.net brings me to some parked
website, I don't know more about it.

A sensible worldwide url proxy-like would be great in order to bypass such
country-based accesses. Oh, and letme.in is for sale!

Wanna see the BBC? paste letme.in in the url ; wanna see french public TV from
abroad? do the same ; belgian public TV? go ahead

On a related note, lemonde.fr has similar weird rules (not state owned
though). Coming from google news you can't see the full article
[http://www.lemonde.fr/politique/article/2013/03/04/grand-
par...](http://www.lemonde.fr/politique/article/2013/03/04/grand-paris-la-
victoire-de-bertrand-delanoe-sur-jean-paul-huchon_1842275_823448.html) but
copy pasting the title in google
[https://www.google.at/search?q=Grand+Paris+%3A+la+victoire+d...](https://www.google.at/search?q=Grand+Paris+%3A+la+victoire+de+Bertrand+Delano%C3%AB+sur+Jean-
Paul+Huchon&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-
US:official&client=firefox-a&channel=rcs) you just have to click on the first
link to get the full article...

~~~
rb12345
I found that [http://www.bbc.com.sixxs.org](http://www.bbc.com.sixxs.org) was
far faster than using Coral cache, but that assumes that you have access to
IPv6. You can't chain the IPv4 proxy to it by the look of things
([http://www.bbc.com.sixxs.org.ipv4.sixxs.org/](http://www.bbc.com.sixxs.org.ipv4.sixxs.org/)).

~~~
croisillon
OK, so NYUD and SIXXS are "tunnels"
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunneling_protocol](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunneling_protocol)
which seems to work similarly as a proxy...

~~~
rb12345
Both are proxies of a sort. They're effectively websites with a wildcard DNS
entry and the subdomain is then used to determine the remote site. In
nyud.net's case, this is located in their CDN before the real site is
contacted. In the case of sixxs.org, the site is contacted directly. The
difference is in the DNS entries. _.ipv4.sixxs.org returns an IPv4 address
and_.sixxs.org returns an IPv6 address. Once connected, if the Host: header
ends in ipv4.sixxs.org, the proxy connects to the remote site over IPv6; if
not, the proxy connects over IPv4. The end result is that you get a proxy that
lets you access the IPv6 web without IPv6 (and the IPv4 web without IPv4).

~~~
croisillon
Cool, thanks for the explanations!

------
Helpful_Bunny
This falls under exactly the same Laws that prevent a UK resident viewing
Channel 4 content on YouTube. (Or, try asking a German why so much of YouTube
is "dark" to them, specifically Corporately sponsored music channels).

It has nothing to do with your license fee, and everything to do with the
(vastly complex and totally out of my expertise) realms of International
Copyright / Licensing Laws.

As ever, these things are really not simple enough to be covered by a blog
post. Yes: the BBC's default page should be totally transparent (i.e. "You
cannot view this because of agreement X, Y, Z", however, there's probably a
clause in some contract preventing them from stating it - and no, that's not a
joke) but this really is _not_ the droid you're looking for to rant at.

Hint: If you're in Australia, the entire works of George Orwell are public
domain; in the USA and the EU, this isn't the case. And yes, we need a serious
shake up of the entire structure to progress, but this isn't the wet-stone to
sharpen your axe on, trust me.

Ask why Disney gets 70+ years of Copyright, it's a far more egregious case.

------
edward
I wrote to my MP. This is his reply:

10 July 2013

Dear Edward,

Thank you for writing to me with your concerns about why a particular BBC
article ([http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20130701-why-you-feel-
phanto...](http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20130701-why-you-feel-phantom-
phone-calls/all)) cannot be viewed in the UK.

It is the case that some international BBC content cannot be viewed in the UK
because it is not funded by the licence fee, but instead by BBC Worldwide
which is a commercial enterprise.

I appreciate that this is frustrating but because BBC Worldwide is run
commercially there is no obligation for the BBC to make international service
content available in the UK.

Thanks again for bringing your concerns to my attention.

Yours sincerely,

Julian Huppert Member of Parliament for Cambridge

------
xedarius
It's a little like the BBC world service news, which is pretty good
(especially compared to sky and cnn and so on), except you can't get it in the
UK ... it even has the same presenters that are on the normal BBC 24 News, and
10 o'clock news! It's weird to say the least.

But it gets even more weird, as programmes made by the licence pay version of
the BBC appear on the world service news. I was watching it a week ago in a
hotel room and noticed they were showed Click, a programme made by the BBC in
the UK. So what is that doing being shown on the commercial arm of the BBC?

~~~
objclxt
> So what is that doing being shown on the commercial arm of the BBC?

BBC World News is distinct from BBC Worldwide, they're different commercial
groups. It has a much closer relationship with BBC News, which is publicly
funded. BBC Worldwide exists to make a profit, whereas BBC World News is
commercially funded but not profit driven. It's...complicated.

~~~
xedarius
Thanks, it certainly is :)

------
pedromorgan
So this stuff we are "forced" to pay for via the TV licence, but we cannot
see..

Think the BBC should be privatised.. TopGear is worth a few million for a
start...

~~~
BgSpnnrs
No thankyou. BBC worldwide does just fine earning from the channel's exports
and otherwise the BBC maintains a fine standard of ad-free media.

~~~
6d0debc071
Then let those who want the BBC pay for such a thing. I see no good reason why
I should have to subsidise your tastes.

------
cpursley
A government controlled media outlet? How is this possible (sarcasm). I in
general like the BBC, but this should not be a surprise.

------
joefarish
If you bookmark the JS below you can create a 'button' to convert bbc.com
links to bbc.com.nyud.net links as suggested by the OP:

javascript:window.location.href=window.location.href.replace("bbc.com","bbc.com.nyud.net");

A better solution would be a greasemonkey script/browser extension but this
does the job for now :-)

~~~
derpenxyne
Chrome extension: [http://goo.gl/VsD5s](http://goo.gl/VsD5s) :)

------
wrboyce
This just reads to me as generic nerdrage and/or an attempt to gain some
internet points by piggybacking an earlier discussion on HN.

It would be far quicker to view the article via Coral Cache, the Way Back
Machine or some other proxy, and it would be far more effective to write to
the BBC Trust and/or your local MP.

------
derpenxyne
A Chrome extension that solves this issue:
[http://goo.gl/VsD5s](http://goo.gl/VsD5s). Extract the files, head to
chrome://extensions > Load unpacked extension and select the folder.

------
mmahemoff
The confusion is because of the name.

If they called their international subsidiary, "Super Mega Global Worldwide
Media Corporation", it wouldn't seem any more or less ridiculous than anyone
else doing geo-targeting.

~~~
corin_
Anyone else doing the same gets the same level of ridicule. It's not even the
same as the likes of Netflix where there are all sorts of third party stake
holders, licenses, etc. - BBC owns this content. Why would anyone other than
BBC not get criticised if they did this?

------
fmax30
Weird .nyud.net (coral cdn ) doesn't work from my network with any website.
Damn you Pakistani censorship :< .

------
motters
If it's not funded by the license then that suggests that part of the BBC has
been quietly privatised.

~~~
bobthedino
The BBC used to have a lot of commercial divisions, or wholly-owned subsidiary
companies: BBC Resources Ltd, BBC Technology Ltd, BBC Broadcast Ltd, and BBC
Worldwide Ltd. Of those, the first three have been sold off, leaving only BBC
Worldwide.

------
apricot13
THIS! In the last few years the BBC have produced nothing but period dramas
and drivel all of it aimed at the american market. Why make quality british
programming for the British market any more when you can make a 'UK series' (6
eps) and make pure profit in the US market.

~~~
megablast
So the BBC is no longer producing content for BBC 1 and 2 in the UK?

Don't be ridiculous.

~~~
apricot13
I never said I didn't like it, I said it was drivel. I'm quite partial to the
odd well produced period drama.

What I'm trying to say is that recently they tend produce content with a mind
to how the US will receive this new content. Dr who, top gear and downton
abbey for instance. All of these are popular in the US and while that isn't a
bad thing (more money to the BBC to hopefully make more content) what I
disagree with is that all they produce is more of the SAME content. They've
lost innovation and only make content in a few genres with recurring themes.

>> Please don't project your own opinions onto the rest of the UK. how is my
stating a personal opinion 'projecting my opinion onto the rest of the UK'?
Isn't the point of a discussion to discuss your personal opinion or must I
refrain from commenting because I happen to think strictly come dancing is a
pile of poo and you think claudia 'needs a haircut' winkleman is brilliant? :D

~~~
IanCal
Have you heard of BBC4?

~~~
udp
Literally the only channel I ever watch on television. It's pretty sad that
the interesting documentaries have to be relegated to a separate channel so as
not to confuse anyone watching BBC 1 or 2 (and BBC 1 and 2 get the HD
versions, damn it.)

------
Nursie
I noticed this the other week when there was a link from fark.com

It's utterly ludicrous.

------
microcolonel
Even funnier, Canada can read these articles as well, just not the U.K. ;)

------
Kiro
I've read the reason several times and I still don't get it.

~~~
venomsnake
BBC is forbidden to show ads. There are ads on BBC future. So BBC cannot show
it in UK.

Now one would think that they could you know - strip the ads and not show them
for UK IPs ...

~~~
IanCal
They'd also be held to other requirements though, for example if an article
were seen to be promoting a particular brand, etc.

bbc.co.uk does exactly that, there are ads shown externally but not
internally.

