Originally Posted by
Tony Richards:
“Could it just be because it would be classed as an illegal activity? Do people in Spain pay a UK TV licence?
”
I think that I may have contributed to it being pulled as I asked some questions about how to change IP addresses to UK ones for people living overseas. I apologise to the forum in this case, I did not realise that this was against the rules for posting.
Changing to a proxy IP is not illegal, nor is receiving data that has been 'geo-IP'd' outside of the intended zone. The comments made about the licence fee are moral rather than legal: I am sure that the originator of this thread, domiciled in Spain, is paying a Spanish licence fee and probably not watching much, if any, Spanish TV. Furthermore I am sure most ex-pats would be willing to contribute to the UK licence fee if there was a mechanism to do so.
The reasons for such regional restrictions are very understandable & valid: sports contracts & perfomers' rights issues would be impossibly expensive for a pan-European audience. But on the other hand, there will always be a small percentage of expats who want to receive transmissions that are outside of the 'official' zone. For some companies this is not an issue (no problem getting Polish stations in the UK via PolSat), but for higher profile broadcasters like the BBC it comes down to a balancing act between the need to negotiate zone-limited contracts and their willingness to turn a blind eye to a few expats. I believe expats are rightfully justified in attempting to access these services as long as their actions remain legal, and therefore a forum such as this one is a useful platform on which to discuss the legal means of doing so.