Beating streaming IP restrictions

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During the Olympics last year I postulated that one might beat the IP restrictions on streams at the awesome NBC Olympics site using SSH to a US web host.

This weekend the Formula 1 is on in Malaysia and some of my friends are big F1 fans so they want to watch the pre-race and qualifying coverage which isn't shown on free-to-air in Australia. They go looking online and it turns out the fine folks at the BBC will be streaming it live. Unfortunately, the streams are restricted to UK IPs.

In searching for suitable UK web hosts (suitable meaning of reasonable bandwidth & price) one of them stumbled upon pc-streaming.com. To save you a click I'll paste the relevant bits here:

NEW: PC-Streaming is proud to announce there new 1 Month UK PPTP VPN Holiday/Business account. Going abroad for that long awaited break in the sun? Yet another business trip abroad? Laptop in hand, broadband connection in your room. Then our 1 month Holiday/Business account is for you!

This category is for our Virtual Private Network (VPN) accounts. When you need a total solution for the security of your computer and all of your programs, chat clients, email, and web browsing/surfing, this is the account to get. With multiple country locations, there is plenty to choose from here.

Our UK VPN account is required to view `live´BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5 plus many more channels through the Zattoo media application.

Yes, you read that right. Their VPN & SSH services are marketed for the specific purpose of bypassing IP restrictions. :)

FWIW their service is fairly pricey and you can definitely find cheaper UK web hosts - its just interesting that a business has been setup specifically to help consumers beat IP restrictions. Content providers might just listen to the market and stop making their consumers jump through hoops.

Finally, its also a light jab at the remarkably ignorant Senator Conroy's Grand Internet Filtering Plan. Apart from helping users to view IP restricted content the above can also be used by citizens to bust past the inane attempts to filter The Interwebs.

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This page contains a single entry by goosmurf published on April 5, 2009 12:26 AM.

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