Using iPlayer Overseas

[larry]

When attemping to use BBC's iPlayer overseas, it's only available to those within the UK - a licence payer issue, I guess. But even if you pay for a licence here in the UK you should be able to watch UK telly in Europe.

Any way I can 'fool' the browser/PC to think I'm still in the UK?

[NickFitz]

What method do they use to determine your location?

A lot of this shenanigans is down to "Rights Management" as it relates to the right to disseminate content only to specific geographical areas. They're probably using GeoIP data to implement this.

Therefore, assuming you have a system and an Internet connection running at home, one approach would be to use that system as a proxy through which to tunnel the connection.

As your IP address at home may be subject to change, you can use a system such as DynDNS to obtain a domain name that you can then configure your router to update to the new IP address as and when necessary. Most WiFi routers support this.

Ultimately, systems for controlling access to content based on the location of the accessor depend on the fact that most people don't actually know how the Internet works. If you know that (and it's surprisingly, and beautifully, simple) then it's not too hard to find a way around most things - that there t'Internet's designed to make it easy

EDIT: FWIW I know for a fact that certain UK broadcasters (explicitly not the BBC) have been required to implement such geographical controls over their streams by the Performing Rights Society - this was against their wishes, and such controls had to be implemented at their own expense. Apparently the PRS likes to impose rules, but chooses not to pay for the imposition thereof

EDIT AGAIN: When I said "explicitly not the BBC" above I wasn't saying that the BBC aren't subject to such gubbins, just that I wasn't referring to them. AFAIK the Beeb gets screwed over in exactly the same way by the PRS.

[NoddY]

Lease a virtual machine from a UK based company and run a proxy on it.

[pmeswani]

When attemping to use BBC's iPlayer overseas, it's only available to those within the UK - a licence payer issue, I guess. But even if you pay for a licence here in the UK you should be able to watch UK telly in Europe.

Any way I can 'fool' the browser/PC to think I'm still in the UK?

Find a public proxy server in the uk and point your browser to it.

[chef]

Find a public proxy server in the uk and point your browser to it.

try

217.65.158.65
port 8080

[thunderlizard]

But even if you pay for a licence here in the UK you should be able to watch UK telly in Europe.

I don't think that's true. Licensing has conditions, and restricting use to the UK is probaby one of them.

Though as it happens, you don't need a TV licence for iplayer anyway because it's not live.

[Sysman]

I haven't tried it myself, but apparently this works:

1. Sign up for the service and get it working while you are in the UK.
2. Use a UK based proxy when you are abroad

Reading between the lines, they do more stringent checks during the signup process than for normal playing (i.e. they possibly check against a list of UK based public proxies during the signup process, but not for normal use).

This effectively means that a UK TV licence payer doing stints abroad can use the service, but it keeps out the rabble from the rest of the world.

[chef]

I haven't tried it myself, but apparently this works:

1. Sign up for the service and get it working while you are in the UK.
2. Use a UK based proxy when you are abroad

exactly what i did using the proxy i listed earlier, works fine for me

[ASB]

EDIT: FWIW I know for a fact that certain UK broadcasters (explicitly not the BBC) have been required to implement such geographical controls over their streams by the Performing Rights Society - this was against their wishes, and such controls had to be implemented at their own expense. Apparently the PRS likes to impose rules, but chooses not to pay for the imposition thereof

I got moaned at by the PRS. I hold a PRS licence to allow my daughter to use some music in a public performance. She put a video of it up on you tube. The most recent comment was from the PRS.... (What I couldn't work out was whether we were actually under the terms of the license we agreed since that allowed public broadcast).

[larry]

Thanks for the info. I'll get some mates in various countries to try it out.