Region-Locked Content Drives UK Users To Try a VPN (itproportal.com) 57
An anonymous reader writes: A new report has revealed that VPN usage in the UK has increased with almost one in six people now using a VPN alongside their internet connection. According to YouGov's 'Incognito Individual' report, 16 percent of British adults have used either a VPN or proxy server. This up-tick in users trying a VPN was often the direct result of trying access region-locked content or websites. Of those surveyed, 48 percent of respondents admitted to using a VPN or a proxy to access content they would otherwise be unable to view. VPNs are often used by security conscious individuals who are concerned with their privacy and not having their browsing data logged. YouGov's report found that 44 percent of VPN users utilised such a service for better security and that 37 percent did so for improved privacy.
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Businesses that rely on geo locks? Those businesses should die off.
And secondly, there were no such things as geo locks on the internet 10, 20 or 30 years ago so why should there be now? As a matter of fact there were no businesses that rely on geo locks at all. What's this crap about?
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Then sell it to me in the US and let me worry about my local laws when I "import" the content.
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Then sell it to me in the US and let me worry about my local laws when I "import" the content.
The Berne convention is a treaty that permits you to buy content for personal use abroad and import it.
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Then what the hell is the problem of the GP?
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You're putting the burden on whoever's in easy reach. Same shit as yelling at the messenger. Yelling at customer service to change something they don't have authority to access.
Meatspace operations are subject to those laws. Targeted operations are subjected to those laws.
I have zero obligation to put DRM or locks on my content published to the open internet. The "offenders" are the ones who get policed about their local laws.
Oh but it's hard to find out who's doing what? I don't care. You're the ones who w
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Well, I live in Europe (Poland) and while I do perceive German/French governments as "leftist", I enjoy much more freedom than those who live in USA.
Movies here do not have to conform to puritan tastes of east-coast zealots (if there is one thing forbidden -> fascist/nazi symbols; that's one thing you can have in USA that you can't in Poland (unless it is put in certain context... which is debatable; but hey, it's easy to understand that we don't want PR of a group that tried to eredicate our entire nati
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Ah, and we don't have to deal with the fear of offending some sexual/racial/intellectual minority. We do not have to prepare a proper mix of actors (oh, I wonder how many European Africans and European Asians (or should it be.... Continental Africans? Nilfgardian Africans? Rivian Asians? ....) there will be in the upcoming Netflix series...). We don't go through reeducation classes, because here we believe it is somehow obvious that rape is bad and we don't need additional training in the subject....
So be c
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I agree with most of your comparisons to the US, but I would like to point out, as I am from another EU country, that Poland together with Hungary have your own set of problems with regard to free speech and democracy.
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I do not think it is businesses driving this for purposes of somehow making money. As for the purposes of complying with regulation. If UK visitors have some special rule that must be applied to them or otherwise that company cannot do business in the UK. They will have to use some sort of geo lock to show a faithful effort at compliance.
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Aww, your business model fails when the internet touches it? Looks like your business model is shit.
The Peter Pan tax (Score:3)
Say there were a country whose law stated that anybody reproducing, importing, or exhibiting a copy of a film adaptation of Peter Pan in that country must pay a tax, and this tax made it unprofitable to offer the film for all-you-can-watch streaming. Would that mean the law is shit? Or would it mean that all-you-can-watch streaming in general is shit?
It turns out that there is such a country, by the name of Great Britain. Its Copyrights, Designs, and Patents Act recognizes a right to a royalty payable to th [wikipedia.org]
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I dont like it, in fact I hate it, but given one of the biggest uses of VPN is watch other market licenced content on netflix etc., I can totally understand the streaming companies decisions. Of course they have to region lock content. Otherwise they have no fucking content.
should (Score:2)
Businesses that rely on geo locks? Those businesses SHOULD die off.
I'm afraid those businesses haven't read RFC 2119 [ietf.org].
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Mainly because it also implies the poster understands that 'their may be valid reasons not to comply, the full implications should be understood.'
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> As a matter of fact there were no businesses that rely on geo locks at all.
Sure there were... they relied on the inconvenience of international delivery to allow for regionally-tiered pricing of physical media.
You may blame the distributors, but in a lot of cases they're not the owners of the IP, and may only have a distribution deal covering a particular region, or they've landed the distribution contract on the basis of the ability to achieve maximum profit on a per-region basis.
Ultimately, responsibility lies with a combination of the IP holders being greedy, but also with large wealth and cost of living disparities between different portions of the globe.
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As a matter of fact there were no businesses that rely on geo locks at all.
At the time, the home video business broke the world into NTSC vs. PAL vs. PAL-M vs. SECAM vs. MESECAM.
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What's this crap about?
Needless to say (but I'll repeat it anyway), as long as we are chained to an ISP the situation cannot get any better.
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What the fuck are you talking about? Can you watch Tom&Jerry cartoons with the infamous blackface running gag (Tom looks into a teapot, Jerry blows up a cracker in it, boom, Tom looks like a N-word parody) on TV? I can. Show me one network in the US that would DARE to even come close to showing something like that.
When was the last time you saw a nipple on US TV? And I'm not talking about "nipplegate", the big scandal that was more considered a scandal for being a scandal over here. Fuck, our ads have m
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I genuinely laughed out loud at that one. The "leftist government of the UK"?! Our current government is pretty far right of centre. In fact it's got more right of centre in the past few years as it tries to take over the position of far right parties like UKIP.
And it is that hard right government that has been introducing more and more censorship, often in the name of protecting people from bad thoughts like porn and "extremist" writing. It also strongly supports copyright enforcement and consumer abuse, w
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Roll your own for self, friends, and family (Score:1)
https://github.com/jlund/streisand [github.com]
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And you're licking every other butthole that butthole has licked. Or something.
"The Net interprets censorship as damage ..." (Score:2)
"... and routes around it." - John Gilmore
In this case "The Net" is a system including, not just the equipment, protocols, and administrators, but also the users. But it's another case where John's aphorism was dead-on.
Bull (Score:4, Insightful)
Most users use a VPN in the UK to access the porn, that the ISPs must block by law.
It's a bit of a stretch to call the region-blocking.
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Technically that would be cock-blocking.
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There's also sport that isn't shown live on UK TV, (but is on NBCSN etc.) *Grumble* Saturday 3pm football matches *grumble*
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in US i use VPN to comcast sniff block. i don't even connect outside US.
just a fuck you to comcast.
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Don't know of this porn block by law my ISP has that you talk about. There's a setting or check box I had to select to opt in if I recall correctly but then most ISP's used to have "family" filters you could opt into anyway. It's a minor difference in practice and I still get the same ol' filth down my tubes.
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YMMV (Score:2)
Play globally or gtfo (Score:3)
It's the problem with the UK rights market (Score:1)
We make some of the most amazing TV, however because of that, the rights holders want to hold on to distribution as long as possible. When I'm away with work, it never stops amazing me just how much more of the content I'd want to watch at home is available on Netflix, Amazon et. al. abroad. Not just the shows available, but the latest series of those shows, often over a year before you can watch them in the UK on the same services.
M
Here's me breaking into Jail... (Score:2)
...while everyone else is breaking out. :)
Because, living in exile, I miss the BBC.
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