BBC iPlayer could support proxy?

[NI2O]

I've been thinking about Auntie's DRM issues and also about some of the crap I read in this forum about how you "need to have a TV licence" to watch it.

Lets deal with the "licence" bit first. Utter crap! Total and utter crap in fact. The TV Licence is not a tax by and for the BBC. It's a tax allowing you the priviledge of watching TV in the UK. If you atch TV via your cell phone you need a licence. If you watch TV over the Internet you need a licence. If you watch TV in any form over any media you need a licence. This is the law. Anyone whom has been prosecuted for not having a TV licence (as I have more than once) will be in full affirmation of my comments.

Aunty is not restricting her services to licence payers. She's restricting it to the UK market so that she can earn more revenue in other markets with her programming. For example, we get to see Top Gear here in the US about 6 weeks after it airs in the UK. We have to pay to see it. The same is true in other markets where providers offer their programming to other outlets.

OK, enough ranting. Now onto my question/idea;

Could the iPlayer plugin be instructed to use a proxy server? This way one could watch UK content if the proxy was in the UK. The server uses IP geolocation as part of its DRM mechanism. As most users would have a 192.168.x.x address via a router the only place it could be done would be at the server end.

Mark

(whom now lives in the US where he doesn't give a #$%^ about the licence fee any more)

[tieke]

If you have a UK proxy set up, you could use proxifier to ensure GB-PVR uses it, although that would also affect any other GB-PVR access, (although if the iplayer plugin is the part that's doing the connection that might work). Would of course be simpler to include a proxy setting in the plugin, but I think smiler is unlikely to do this as he is explicitly stating this plugin is intended as an iplayer replacement and not intended to help bypass the beeb's geolocation.

(Just as a FYI, a mate and I set up a UK proxy on his home (UK) computer, as he frequently travels overseas and wanted to keep up with his programs. It works well, albeit slowly. He figured out that the geolocation check only happened in the initial download "handshake", so was looking at a way of changing from his proxy after the start of the download to take advantage of local faster download speeds, but as he is back in the UK at the moment, that project is on the back-burner).

tieke

[Dave_M]

What proxy would you use? If you have somone in the UK that can help you out then this may work. But if it's just some random proxy off a list, then it may be a pretty unreliable service.

Top gear is about the only thing I watch on BBC (apart from the upcoming formula 1). The best way of grabbing it in the USA would be to download it via bit torrent. Anything else you want to watch? It may also be available via bit torrent.