[tor-relays] BBC and UK Lottery blocking ip addresses running relay nodes

Stephen Mollett molletts at yahoo.com
Wed Sep 17 16:57:00 UTC 2014


Hi all,

Just to add another data point on the BBC/Tor situation, I've just had a
reply to a case I opened with BBC Audience Services which sounds very
discouraging - it appears to be a matter of deliberate policy:

"Thank you for contacting the BBC iPlayer support team.

"I understand you’re experiencing problems accessing BBC iPlayer as
you’re told that you are outside of the UK.

"Please note that if you run TOR, then I’m afraid as per our development
team’s confirmation you’ll not be able to access BBC iPlayer. If you
continue to use TOR then your IP address may be blacklisted against UK
only services across bbc.co.uk."

I made a point of stating explicitly in my original case filing that I
run a middle relay and that no traffic exits from my node to the BBC's
website or to anywhere else, along with a link to my node's stats on
blutmagie confirming the (non-)exit policy.

At times like this, it's a pity iPlayer isn't a paid service - I could
at least get some satisfaction out of cancelling my subscription...

Time to use a UK-based proxy service for my iPlayer access, maybe? :)

Stephen


More information about the tor-relays mailing list