My tone there may seem critical, it isn’t. I tried to access the service using the guide (like iPlayer should have been designed in the first place). It failed.

I am annoyed. I always trusted the BBC. The one voice that could be trusted. It still is that. But if you have to buy more things to get to that message then it defeats it’s own purpose. Content payed for by the subscription fee.

My two cents are that anyone outside of the UK should not be using this service. You have Hula and we can’t access it, but I don’t hear you complaining about that. So consider that before you say that my point is not valid. I would have no problem if you guys watched adverts to cover costs, but they are unlikely to do that. They should do this to allow you access but won’t. Look on the bright side. You can get it all on torrent sites and then buy it over iTunes if you like it.

My two cents are that anyone outside of the UK should not be using this service. You have Hula and we can’t access it, but I don’t hear you complaining about that.

Tell ya what, Brits could have access to HULU and Staters could have access to BBC, and then you’ll both have access to both!

Geolocation is completely utterly antithetical to the Internet. (Internet… International Network, remember?) It’s bad enough when Google tries to guess which “region” and language I “should” use based on my current IP address. It’s bad enough that people treat country code TLDs as anything other than cute domain name spelling tricks. But Balkanizing cyberspace based on antiquated concepts of borders and boundaries demonstrates a level of disrespect to netizens comparable to a bureaucrat drunkenly sleeping with your partner and then puking on her afterwards.

As such I see no reason for not taking whatever steps necessary to view UK TV while abroad as long as I pay for the license to watch it.

“You were willing to contribute to make the show exist, and it did! Why do you care at all what other people do or don’t?!”

Well you’ve got me there, I assume you let other people use your car once you’re done with it too? Cos once you’ve paid for it to exist, why should you care what other people do with it? And that band you’re in, they couldn’t care less if they sold one ticket for their gig, and then it was then copied 1,000 times, right?

“Someone had better tell all the television stations that rebroadcast BBC World!”

Yeah, they do that for free, you know. There’s no pesky licensing or contracts and stuff involved at all.

I assume you let other people use your car once you’re done with it too? Cos once you’ve paid for it to exist, why should you care what other people do with it? And that band you’re in, they couldn’t care less if they sold one ticket for their gig, and then it was then copied 1,000 times, right?

You are conflating copyright with property law. Either you’re purposefully being obtuse or you’re the victim of the linguistic framing of so-called “intellectual property”.

Physical property, such as a car or seating at a venue is constrained by scarcity. Information reproduces (as copies) when more people use it; more copies means less scarcity.

If I had a magic machine that could copy my car so you could use its duplicate, I’d certainly do nothing to stop you from doing so. This is also why in property law, “theft” is defined not by possession but “denial of use”. You only commit theft if your absconding with my television prevents me from using it, not simply because you have taken it. Again, if you used the magic machine to clone my television, theft has not occurred — which is why “theft” is an absolutely ridiculous word to apply to acts of copyright infringement, except to purposefully misdirect and mislead the issue at hand.

It would be curious then, if an idea, the fugitive fermentation of an individual brain, could, of natural right, be claimed in exclusive and stable property. If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property.

– Thomas Jefferson

I know it’s not exactly cheap but there may just be a market for it. Better than “either you don’t watch it or you’re a pirate,” right?

the hero falls afoul of both trade unions and the wealthy mill owners who attempt to suppress his invention.

BBC World is a commercial channel intended to be broadcast around the world. I pay $5.95 per month to get it via Real Networks. Unfortunately there doesn’t appear to be an alternative streaming source for it in the US. LiveStation beta carries it in other parts of the world but not in the US :-(

- where can I find any of the streams/downloads? When I go to bbc.co.uk, whatever link I follow, I can’t find a link to a stream anywhere? In fact, not even for the BBC world service a stream seems to exist?! What am I doing wrong?

- Can I watch my beloved Dr. who / Torchwood this way? But – same problem – on http://www.bbc.co.uk/torchwood no stream to be found. Well, would have been to good to be true anyway…

Of course, the people they have to satisfy are the media creators and they have to show that they’ve done everything reasonable to prevent the content getting out. It’ll depend if they consider a user agent check ‘everything reasonable’ or not. It’s not as if you can’t rip the DRM from the WMV files (which are higher quality).

We’ll see if the beta gets pulled on Monday morning, I was hoping nobody would publicize it, but that cats out of the bag.

Well, if you will run windows xp in duplo mode…

That’ll be because I write software for schools, 99% of whom run Windows XP with much the same settings. There seems to be a resistance to change defaults and, as such, my company follows suit. I’ll be sure to experiment in this way from my Ubuntu box next time =)

only shows 2 or 3 shows worth watching (a year or two after you get them)

Many of them are reformulated for PBS. Planet Earth, Ghost in Your Genes, and Simon Schama’s Power of Art leap immediately to mind. However I concur that the delay is dreadfully long.

But the BBC still can’t open up the iPlayer to the world, because the content producers won’t allow it. They can make a lot more money by reselling the programs in many different countries.

We pay for the BBC, you could get it for free aslong as (in adverst) revenue can be gained from you that would be of equal value. You see what I’m saying?

It’s like us getting PBS after you guys do all the funding drives. Funding drives that for the sake of my metaphor are mandatory.

I have no problem with you getting free BBC, aslong as I am not funding the bills for the rest of the world not to pay for it.

I think (as I have posted on the BBC site, or at least attempted to since you need the web master to allow the post to go through) that the system needs overhauled. It is based on outmoded concepts such as DRM and Location based broadcasting when it doesn’t need to be.

I mean it’s not like their shows can be downloaded off the Internet more easily than other ways allow. For example, Bittorrents with RSS feeds would allow you to download a program as soon as it is aired, using the software of your choice to do so.

The BBC may well find that it is investing in an industry that will go exactly the same way as DRM’d music. Nobody wants to be told how to do things so they will find better and easier ways to do it, that don’t include them.

I like that the BBC tries to lead inovation; in podcasting (which is notable not DRM’d) TV over mobile phone, the creaion of freeview and soon freesat. However, it is moving into the wrong direction.

*RANT OVER*

Unfortunately it’s a (not easily rippable) WMV stream, but it’s all available (except sport, but thats different, it’s a simulcast) and everywhere in the world.

Tommus, it’s actually a bit more technical than looking through the html to find the “src” tag.

In the comments section of the flickr page there’s a pretty good discussion, and the original blogger has put up a how-to page especially.

However, in the same comments section, there is a link to a very small python script to do the same, without resorting to user-agent switching, and in fact I couldn’t get his iPlayerURL script to work for some reason.

Here’s the python:

#!/usr/bin/python

import urllib

def mp4url_from_showurl(url):
page = urllib.urlopen(url).readlines()
for line in page:
if line.startswith(” pid : ‘”):
pid = line[17:17+8]
return “http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediaselector/3/auth/iplayer_streaming_http_mp4/%s” % (pid)

return None # not found!

print mp4url_from_showurl(“http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/page/item/b009372j.shtml?src=ip_mlt”)

You just change the bit in bold to the address of the program you want, save as a .py file and run it in the terminal, which returns the url plus the token you will need to download. then just grab the file in ur browser and watch in vlc..

But as for the release problems we have been having that for years with your shows so I know that pain. We routinely wait for all your media as long as that.

I heard a few years ago that 70 percent of TV torrent downloads were from Britain and that didn’t surprise me, we get the shaft.

The main problem however is that the BBC is stuck in the old way of doing things. Charging a mandatory fee to TV owners and showing it to those license payers. Now, with the Internet and easy distribution, there is obviously some infighting about what do do. With some claiming of the old folk thinking that ‘the colonies’ shouldn’t get the BBC for free. These are the kind of people that think TCP refers to a cream. The new agers, the iplayer inventors and alike, see a new golden age of broadcasting via new media channels. Though somewhere along the line it became perverted. Suddenly Microsoft were heroes in the EU instead of the vile criminals that they are, who are now trying to monopolize a new business.

Suddenly we have DRM, Flash and exceptions for iPhones because the management use them and everyone forgets that the BBC is not a business. It’s meant to broadcast media, that’s all. Why create bariers to the poor and other countries when we could use their income.

Why not sell it to Hulu and recieve a share of the profits? That is sheer genius, I am proud of that idea. So I’ll quit while I’m ahead.

There is no way this is intentional. People who use DRM are, in general, idiots when it comes to technology, otherwise they would no be using DRM in the first place!

No offence taken. ;)

Anthony Rose (ex-Kazaa, now the BBC’s Head of Digital Media Technology) talks about the different formats and flavours of iPlayer in this post about iPlayer on iPhone.

Alan Connor, BBC Internet Blog

I pay $5.95 per month to get it via Real Networks.

People use Real Player? Really? I mean, really???

Who are you people and out of what woodwork do you come from? Do you get to hang out with Elvis and Jimmy Hoffa for chicken and waffles at IHOP on weekends?

Lummy Al

FYI, I just checked to see if the hack still works, and as of this moment it does. I am downloading a show as I type.

I don’t know if it depends on which technique you use, but the python script I refer to above (#22) works fine.

Well done, you spotted a plain text URL in an HTML document… you do realise that the signals that come through the air can give you this exact same content? Possibly a bit technical for “bloggers”…

Thanks for your useful input. Yeah, it’s far too technical for me, and yeah, funnily enough the URL was just sat there, clear as day, on a static HTML document.

Yeah. Thanks.

(Psst! Here’s a hint in advance – as you read this, think about it being said in a sarcastic tone of voice. As another correspondent mentioned, details of what was necessary is on the Flickr page.)

Cool! I was lead to believe the ‘token’ was required too. I just tried your link and it downloads fine without it.

NICE