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The BBC has to prove it's serving the entire UK. An anonymous RSS doesn't allow that. It's frustrating, but it's also inevitable from such a hostile environmen
by ta1243 3y ago
The BBC has to prove it's serving the entire UK. An anonymous RSS doesn't allow that.
It's frustrating, but it's also inevitable from such a hostile environment.
- alexsereno 3y ago“Inevitable” is doing a lot of heavy lifting in this comment
- ta1243 3y agoInevitable in that people in charge of the BBC want to prove that people (specifically an appropriate cross-section of the British public) use the BBC to keep the funding secure
- robertlagrant 3y agoThey could do that by entering the 21st century and having an IP-locked subscription system.
- Evidlo 3y agoHow does that get them subscription estimates?
- robertlagrant 3y agoThen they can make sure people in the UK have a subscription account.
- toyg 3y agoBecause every house has a single, unchangeable IP...? You clearly never worked in an ISP.
- robertlagrant 3y agoI definitely did not work at an ISP. But what I said doesn't require a static IP per house. Just GeoIP so non-UK residents are treated differently (unless they VPN).
- toyg 3y agoThe target is not to determine whether the client is in the UK, but whether the client is a specific license-payer or at a specific address. GeoIP doesn't help to get either of those datapoints.
- ta1243 3y agoEnforced by a proprietary app?
- robertlagrant 3y agoYes, called iPlayer[0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_iPlayer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_iPlayer
- ta1243 3y agoOr Sounds which is basically the audio version of iplayer
- robertlagrant 3y agoNo; inevitable is a claim, not a support.
- toyg 3y agoI don't think it's that. The real problem is that the BBC must be in a position whereby, should the government decide to link TV license and BBC access in a hard way, or (god forbid) fully privatise the service, they can flip a switch and make it so. So everything has to be behind a registration wall. They have been under 13 years of pressure from Tory governments, run by friends of Murdoch, who don't believe in free knowledge and public broadcasting; the BBC had to be seen to go in the general direction of preparing for de-facto privatisation. This is the result.
- ta1243 3y agoThe BBC has a history of fighting that -- when ITV Digital collapsed, the BBC was quickly out of the gates to get DTT decoders with no CAM modules as the norm. I think they missed a trick by not getting into the open HDMI dongle market, letting companies like Amazon take the initiative. We now see the result of those non-open platforms (amazon taking 30% of income as a platform provider etc), but with government interference as it is (remember it was Labour that stopped the BBC building an international streaming service back in 2009) I can see why.
- toyg 3y ago> remember it was Labour that stopped the BBC A New Labour government run by friends of Murdoch. You can guess the constant there.
- didntcheck 3y agoThey really jumped the shark when they made you have to sign in to the BBC News app. I uninstalled it and just decided to use my browser, and guess what, I now read the BBC less, so well done. But then I know I'm not the typical person on the street, so unfortunately this probably did yield a lot of new sign ups, under duress