There are many broadcasting laws worldwide, many quite archaic. Even Radio Garden got meaningfully restricted in the UK (only licensed national radio stations are allowed by a high court ruling). I worry for projects like TV Garden but they are undoubtedly very cool.
A UK High Court ruled in 2019 that websites like TuneIn are distributing illegal music[0]. It went to appeals but the previous ruling was upheld. There hasn't been much clarification beyond that nor very clear enforcement. But the precedent this ruling set makes companies fear repercussions if they accidentally link to a stream that has content not licensed for the UK. To interpret this ruling broadly would be to break the internet[1]:
> The claimants say that a finding for the defendant will fatally undermine copyright. The defendant says that a finding for the claimants will break the internet.
As usual, this happened due to rather rabid approach to copyright by big American labels. They may be legally in the right, though their actions, as always, have meaningful negative externalities. How far they reach in this case is unclear, but TuneIn and Radio Garden both have blocked non-UK streams for UK listeners.
Why not? Public broadcast TV stations want to be viewed, just like web radio streams!
That said, the first one I tried (a German public broadcaster) was showing a static image of “this programme is currently unavailable for legal reasons”. (I believe they do IP-based geofencing for legal/broadcasting rights reasons.)
Yeah, just because a channel is public broadcast doesn't mean some of the content it shows hasn't been commercially produced, and a license purchased for that country's geographical area only.
I've tried watching some Italian TV channels, and some content was not available for streaming. It's a common practice here. It also applies to satellite-transmitted channels, they usually don't have the license to show some movies on that version (you can only see them on the terrestrial signal).
There was a high profile court case in about 2018 where a start-up was trying to sell rebroadcasted public TV and it was ruled illegal and held up on appeal. They even tried "renting" miniature TV antennae to users with the legal theory that they never made a "copy". Sad to see it was shot down.
This is very different though: The streams are provided by the broadcasters themselves, not by somebody that receives their signal and then rebroadcasts it.
If they didn't want their content watched abroad, they would add geoblocking or authentication. Some of the ones listed on TFA actually do that for parts of their program.
There are many broadcasting laws worldwide, many quite archaic. Even Radio Garden got meaningfully restricted in the UK (only licensed national radio stations are allowed by a high court ruling). I worry for projects like TV Garden but they are undoubtedly very cool.
Wait, what? Receiving foreign web radio streams in the UK is prohibited?!
How is that even enforced?
A UK High Court ruled in 2019 that websites like TuneIn are distributing illegal music[0]. It went to appeals but the previous ruling was upheld. There hasn't been much clarification beyond that nor very clear enforcement. But the precedent this ruling set makes companies fear repercussions if they accidentally link to a stream that has content not licensed for the UK. To interpret this ruling broadly would be to break the internet[1]:
> The claimants say that a finding for the defendant will fatally undermine copyright. The defendant says that a finding for the claimants will break the internet.
As usual, this happened due to rather rabid approach to copyright by big American labels. They may be legally in the right, though their actions, as always, have meaningful negative externalities. How far they reach in this case is unclear, but TuneIn and Radio Garden both have blocked non-UK streams for UK listeners.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TuneIn#Legal_issues
[1] https://excesscopyright.blogspot.com/2019/11/did-uk-judge-ju...
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Why not? Public broadcast TV stations want to be viewed, just like web radio streams!
That said, the first one I tried (a German public broadcaster) was showing a static image of “this programme is currently unavailable for legal reasons”. (I believe they do IP-based geofencing for legal/broadcasting rights reasons.)
You can watch NHK World from anywhere, they make it available on their website: https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/live/
They show the news at the top of every hour so we check in pretty regularly.
Yeah, just because a channel is public broadcast doesn't mean some of the content it shows hasn't been commercially produced, and a license purchased for that country's geographical area only.
I've tried watching some Italian TV channels, and some content was not available for streaming. It's a common practice here. It also applies to satellite-transmitted channels, they usually don't have the license to show some movies on that version (you can only see them on the terrestrial signal).
NFL season will likely stamp out the CBS and FOX streams in the US.
There was a high profile court case in about 2018 where a start-up was trying to sell rebroadcasted public TV and it was ruled illegal and held up on appeal. They even tried "renting" miniature TV antennae to users with the legal theory that they never made a "copy". Sad to see it was shot down.
This is very different though: The streams are provided by the broadcasters themselves, not by somebody that receives their signal and then rebroadcasts it.
If they didn't want their content watched abroad, they would add geoblocking or authentication. Some of the ones listed on TFA actually do that for parts of their program.