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Comment by shocks | Hacker News Reader

>> We're sorry but this site is not accessible from the UK

-__-

Likewise. This is the rationale:

> We have an unusual requirement when it comes to developing the BBC website – it carries advertising internationally but not in the UK, and we have to build and design for both these situations simultaneously. The site carries advertising internationally so that UK licence fee payers don’t cover international costs.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/help/site_versions.shtml

So essentially the reason that we cannot view the page is because we would see adverts when we have already paid for the content. What a Kafkaesque situation.

I would rather see adverts than nothing...

Given that they can already determine the country of origin by the IP quite effectively, I don't see why they don't just hide the adverts for UK viewers. This is a good example of well-intentioned insanity.

I disagree on "quite effectively"; they don't let me see quite a lot of content from work because they think I'm not in the UK, even though I physically am a licence payer in London.

To add to the insanity though, I can't see this article either.

I'd like to see their budgetary proof that not a penny of license-payer money was used on this. What about overheads (Light, Heat, Power, Rent)? Do they partition those out? I doubt it.

Do you have to pay separately to see the adverts? :-P

Orwell learned about Big Brother when he worked at the BBC, that's where the phrase "Big Brother" came from.

http://www.corbettreport.com/episode-253-the-bbc-exposed/

I think it's that the BBC is actually precluded by charter from carrying advertising in the UK, so they don't have any choice in the matter.

The raw content of the page is basically just this image: http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbc.com/future/img/tomorrows_world.jpg

Thanks. :D

So clearly some of the license fee payers money is going towards this article, since that picture is hosted on the bbc.co.uk domain.

Except they probably have an internal hosting arrangement in place. Pushing funny money around isn't limited to multinationals.

So, the article misses one important prediction:

By 2015, IP and ads have divided the internet in seperate, national/corperate-defined segments ;)

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