ISP kills off country-ban dodge after just 48 hours

A new ISP has withdrawn its "global mode" that allowed punters to evade country-based blocking of web content - just 48 hours after switching on the service. FYX launched just two days ago, telling New Zealand residents that they can now access geo-blocked internet services. However, it informed customers today that "there are …

[Winkypop]

It's not that kind of ISP

Because, sadly, it's not that kind of world.

[Anonymous Coward]

Something that would be an advantage to the public and a disadvantage to big media corps got pulled?! Well frankly I am aghast.

[joeW]

Only one thing for it

Shine the Orlowski-Signal at the sky - quickly dammit, I need to know why geo-blocking is actually a brilliant idea that only filthy freetards have a problem with!

[ppp.an]

blah

GeoIP is also used for target advertisments. I live in the Netherlands, yet do not speak Dutch. There are advertisments all over my screen (perhaps more so than most countries given the Dutchmens' love of trading) and don't have a clue what is being offered. I think GeoIP is great :D I shall be saddened when they cotton on to this. The downside is that many gmail settings are forced into Dutch, so I cannot use these, which in turn means I stopped using Gmail, which turned out to be a good thing :D

[JetSetJim]

Re: blah

Not that you're likely to return to GMail, but you can force it to think in "Yank" mode, which is a reasonable approximation of english. Otherwise I'd be stuck with the French interface

[TeeCee]

Re: blah

Yup, spot on. The real fucktards in this area are MS with their "Live" services. You can set the language, but it has a habit of reverting to its geo-derived default at the drop of a hat.

Speaking as an expat, I'd like to find the person responsible for IP geolocation and remove his bollocks with a blowtorch.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: blah

i live in hong kong and most of the ads on rarely used facebook are in chinese despite my language preferences in english...

makes you wonder just how much data mining they really do on their users.

not $96 billion worth...

[toadwarrior]

Re: blah

They don't care. They shown the ad to a certain number of locals which means the company who bought the ads has to pay up.

[alain williams]

Globalisation

Remember boys and girls that globalisation is for the big companies to take advantage of, not for the rest of us. It is, apparently, OK for the big boys to buy where things are cheap and then sell at different prices according to what the market can bear and so maximise their profits. They don't like it one little bit if we buy where it is cheap.

The use of GEOIP is much the same.

[roomey]

Action against GeoIP

I feel that the use of GeoIP is fairly distasteful in most situations, and strikes me as limiting peoples choice solely for the economic gain of a few companies.

What would be a good way to effectively protest against GeoIPs? I imagine Boycotting would not be so effective, but is there grounds to right letters of complain to those who use it?

For example, would UK taxpayers be justified in writing to the BBC to ask them to allow users from around the world access iPlayer?

-Paris, cause there's no Geo IP filter there (sorry, can't help myself)

[Richard Crossley]

Re: Action against GeoIP

Yes if they stump up the Tele Tax.

[Adus]

Re: Action against GeoIP

I'm a Brit who lives in Canada, I'd happily continue to pay my UK TV License to get access to all the content on the UK iPlayer.

Unfortunately it's not that simple as the BBC doesn't make all the content it broadcasts and doesn't have worldwide rights to it.

[andrewsi]

Re: Action against GeoIP

If it's any consolation, you can access the BBC's radio output from anywhere in the world on iPlayer.

[hayseed]

Re: Action against GeoIP

There are still limits on the archived material on radio 3 :(

[ElReg!comments!Pierre]

Re: Action against GeoIP

TOR lets you choose the exit node and I think Vidalia has an option to just chose the country.

Although you might have to wait for some time before your GeoIP-restricted cats jumping in a laundry basket finish downloading...

[PyLETS]

Re: Action against GeoIP

Use IPV6. The minimum allocation is a /64 where you get 2**64 addresses. You can then sell the 2**64 - 256 or so you don't need, so long as you can route the traffic to the ones you sell. There will be so many people doing this that big media won't be able to keep track of who is doing it any more and it will be cheap as chips.

[ZeroSum]

So why do VPN providers continue to fly under the radar?

PPTP and openvpn providers have been providing paid geo-block evading services for years.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: So why do VPN providers continue to fly under the radar?

i suspect because they are located in countries where the "masters of the universe" aren't allowed complete dominion over the interwebs and your connection is encrypted to their server so when you say "connect me to country Y" it is a dutchmen or swede that is doing the talking and not a lowly native of country X. Fortress Linux is building one right now with heavy encryption and user protections for instance and they are located in the nederlands where their domestic laws and international treaties differ greatly from country X

[ZeroSum]

Re: So why do VPN providers continue to fly under the radar?

No, it isn't that. The providers have their servers located in places like the UK (handy for BBC iplayer) and the USA.

I suspect the real reason is that this NZ crowd were to explicit about what they were doing and if they had kept it on the down-low they'd have got away with it.

[malter]

Offering more freedom as a service and it gets shutdown. What is this world coming to? Good thing my VPN provider hasn't been sued into oblivion... yet.

[Anonymous Coward]

1) Arbitrary feature R is added to arbitrary technology, which has similar features A through Z

2) Media industry realizes that feature R can be used to deny access to its product to large areas of the world for no apparent reason; has sexual event in trousers

3) ISP offers service which doesn't include feature R

...since when did it become illegal to not offer feature R, one among many in an arbitrary technology, just because the media industry happens to like it? Is there some universal law now that everyone is required to keep providing any feature / protocol / capability that I, as a business, find useful for whatever purpose? That would be quite useful!

Put another way - suppose that geolocation was accurate down to your home address. Now suppose that media companies wanted to deny access to content to, say, people in poor neighborhoods (that seems like the kind of thing they might do). Is it now illegal for your ISP to allow you to turn off the 'broadcast my personal information to everyone' feature?

Sigh.

[ZeroSum]

Not accurate

Normal Internet routing overloads location information in IP address assigned by IANA->RIR->ISP->End User. So when an ISP offers a geoloc evading service they're creating a new feature which is not part of the basic technology to trick the content provider about the country the use is in.

It would be very easy for the content providers to clamp down on this by denying access from all IP ranges used for tunneling/vpn services.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Not accurate

Be that as it may, whether it's not implementing a feature or end-running it, geolocation is not and was not intended to be a form of content protection. Just because it -can- be used that way does not suddenly make it illegal to not use, any more than it would suddenly be illegal to turn off the GPS in your phone if I found a way to use -that- for content protection.

Which, of course, drills right down to the fundamental absurdity of anto+circumvention laws in general.

It's illegal to climb a wall to steal someone's house. It's not illegal to own a ladder.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Not accurate

Err. *Rob* someone's house. If you're capable of stealing the whole thing, you presumably don't need a ladder.

Also 'anti-circumvention'.

I blame the PlayBook.

[P. Lee]

But what's the leverage?

If you're being universally stuffed, what do you have to lose?

Pressure put on ISP peers to be uncooperative or did it just not work?

Perhaps itunes servers are locked to an ISP? So non-cooperation results in no itunes.