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Comment by nubela | Hacker News Reader

Hah, this is weird. I created GAC, and submitted this a few hours ago, but got not much love. And now you have some :) Anyways, the server is having a serious hug of love. Things are slowed down now.

Anyways, AMA!

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PG, if you are reading this, I sent you an email. I first built this with getgom.com (Singapore), its moderately successful, but the market in Singapore is too small. With this, I understand that technologies of proven concept, when applied to a large market, can work effectively well.

As a programmer, this year, I launched 7 projects, this is one of them. The rest are of random successes. I would like to get in contact, cheers.

All the best for your products and projects, current and future. When I first saw this topic, I thought the name was familiar.. then I remembered having saw it first in /r/singapore, where you announced GOM and 6900000.

You're helping a ton of people out while taking quite a bit of risk. You're a good man.

The only thing I know to be unlawful about the site is that you have no contact details - your whois says it's a "non-UK corporation", is it really? It sounds like it's just you?

Anyway, commercial operations in the EU must have contact details listed to comply with the EU E-Commerce Regulations (2000), you also need to say if prices include VAT. Many, many websites fail on this but as you're sticking your neck out it seems it's something you could immediately be charged with.

It's complex though - http://www.out-law.com/page-431 gives good details.

Note the regulations are written so as to apply to commercial activities on the net, this includes personal websites, for example.

You can probably avoid that one by being wholly based outside the EEA and having no controlling staff within the EEA.

This isn't legal advice.

@nubela: if this service can be used to bypass BBC content restrictions, you're going to have a bad time. A lot of BBC content can only be viewed within the UK, so if you can use GAC to access this content abroad, the following will happen:

- they can contact nominet to get your personal data

- you will likely get a letter from their lawyer

- you may get your .co.uk domain taken away

- you may be asked to hand over your entire database of users

- you may be sued for damages.

IANAL, just FYI.

Have you got any precedents for this happening?

It looks like it only works for blocked sites. I assume that BBC content restrictions wouldn't look like a blocked site to this.

Why would this be any different from someone outside the US using a proxy to access BBC content say via GigaNews Vypr and their UK proxies? It's not like the underlying stream and any DRM is being tampered with, in which case the above might happen.

As an aside, if you're in the UK there are a other independent ISP's who provide unfiltered internet access [1]. I've used Andrews and Arnold since 2009 and can't fault them. Yes you pay a bit more each month, but you know that old adage about "you get what you pay for".

[1]: http://aa.net.uk/kb-broadband-unfiltered.html

Maybe you can help me. I actually paid for the licence this year but during the summer I moved to some other country and thus I'm unable to listen to the BBC radios. Is there a (legal) way around this?

Licenses apply to locations. You bought a license for your previous dwelling - you can get a refund for the unused part but other than that I don't know of any legal method to access BBC's domestic offerings from outside the appropriate geographic area.

Don't take this as gospel, I've read the laws that apply to TV licensing a couple of times but I'm not an authority on it.

Pffft. Let me tell you about this so-called refund. I applied for said refund of UK TV license after leaving the UK at the end of September. They told me they could only refund unused _quarters_ of the license, meaning that they would only refund me from the start of December (well in the _future_ at that point). Then they had the hide to tell me that because I was applying for a refund from a _past_ date (Sept) I had to prove that I was no longer in the UK. I sent them a lease, and a letter from my employer in my new country which they required by snail mail. They rejected it and told me they needed a final gas bill from the UK or something equivalent, which I again had to send by snail mail. I wrote them a letter about how the TV license was "a national disgrace, isn't it", and "should be abolished, shouldn't it". So glad to be out of Cameronland.

I see. Thanks!

- What proxies are you using?

- If you set up your own proxies: How do you handle the costs?

- If you use someone elses proxy: How do you make sure they always work for your users?

- Does you extension only proxy blocked traffic? How do you know what is blocked? Is there an official list?

I'm using Squid to serve proxies, albeit a modified Squid.

On your 3rd point, it has a list, as well a manual activation button. It proxies only blocked traffic.

- So traffic must be really cheap, where you host your proxies? How much is it?

- Can you tell us how much traffic you had already?

the cost and the possibility of prosecution for supplying illegal material are two obvious downsides to this - keep in mind that uk law makes bestiality porn highly illegal for instance, whereas it's legal or easily available in other parts of the world - and also something that people are sometimes curious about

This UK filter is explicitly not about blocking illegal material, but to block legal website which are deemed by the government as inappropriate for watching. Its an requirement put on ISP by the government, and covers porn, music videos, magazines and newspapers. For now, the focus seems to be on the first item, but the Bailey Review want much much more.

Illegal material has been blocked since 2004 and onward by most UK ISP's, mostly under the umbrella argument of stopping child pornography. The Wikipedia page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_the_Uni... can provide much more details, like the desire to block content ranging from Fashion sites to those describing Alcohol.

the problem i'm describing is that some sites are legal overseas but not here - if this proxy also bypasses cleanfeed there could be problems - well i imagine what would happen is that it'd get added to the list of banned urls

>This UK filter is explicitly not about blocking illegal material, but to block legal website which are deemed by the government as inappropriate for watching. //

It's not about blocking legal websites it's about filtering content for general users and allowing continued unfiltered access for those who wish to have it. It's like putting plastic wrap on pornography magazines in Newsagents - it doesn't stop you getting it it just stops it being seen by those who don't want to [or can't] purchase it.

You may say that's semantics but if you can still access the material legally I don't think you can call it blocked.

There are blocked sites too but they've been legally judged to be contributing to illegal/unlawful activity in the UK - eg ThePirateBay.

How are you going to handle the eventual addition of your proxies IP addresses to the block list?

It feels like this will quickly become a game of cat and mouse with the block list managers.

i suppose looking at what people do in china is an idea - iirc the filtering equipment is going to be supplied by huawei who also make the chinese great firewall stuff

so does this depend on your server? i've read your site - but i'm not clear if this routes traffic through your server or not

Indeed it does, it uses proxies. Private proxies to be exact.

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