Millions of British people are already engaged in a cat-and-mouse game against online censorship, for one main reason - football (soccer).
If you're a British football fan and want to watch every live televised match, you'll need to pay £75 a month for subscriptions to both Sky Sports and TNT Sports. That won't actually allow you to watch all of the matches that are played, because for weird historical reasons there's a TV blackout on matches played on Saturday afternoon - even if you've paid for your subscriptions, you'll only be able to watch about half of all league matches on TV.
Alternatively, you can pay some bloke in the pub £50 for a Fire TV Stick pre-programmed with access to a bunch of pirated IPTV streams and a VPN to circumvent blocking, or get a mate to show you how to do it yourself - no subscription, no blackout. As a bonus, you get free access to Netflix and Disney+ and everything else.
Sellers of dodgy Fire Sticks occasionally get caught and imprisoned, a handful of users occasionally get nasty letters from the Federation Against Copyright Theft, but it's too widespread to really stop. Practically every workplace or secondary school class has someone who knows the ins-and-outs of circumventing DNS- and IP-level blocking; the lad who showed you how to watch live football on your phone or get free Netflix will be more than happy to show you how to access adult sites without verifying your age.
I've tried the "IPTV streams" to watch blacked out NHL games, and they are often terribly overloaded or just don't work at all. Not something I'd pay for.
Just search for the name of the sport and “bite” and you’ll find some sketchy successor of the original subreddits for pirated sports streams (“r/nflbite,” “r/nbabite,” etc.) Or find the latest streameast mirror which is usually the best.
Make sure your ad blocker is working. Then it’s just a matter of finding the best stream, extracting the playlist, and opening VLC.
I documented [0] some useful tricks for this technique and the comments also include more useful snippets and bookmarklets.
£75 a month seems very reasonable for sports nerds, compared to the cost and availability in the past
People don’t want to ly for content, that’s as old as the hills.
I don’t do sport, and I wouldn’t fund such a terrible exploitative industry (televised sports is all about getting people hooked on gambling), but I’ve certainly spent that much for entertainment I do like in the past - and far more. A night at the theatre will cost a lot more than subscribing to all the sports channels. A weekly cinema visit too.
>£75 a month seems very reasonable for sports nerds, compared to the cost and availability in the past
good that you ignore the actual point of the comment that you replied to
>That won't actually allow you to watch all of the matches that are played, because for weird historical reasons there's a TV blackout on matches played on Saturday afternoon - even if you've paid for your subscriptions, you'll only be able to watch about half of all league matches on TV.
The iOS instructions are the most onerous (IMO) but still easy enough to follow. It's 15 minutes of fumbling around for the non-technical person, then they're protected.
(Though, as others have pointed out, this is probably moot. The blocking is more effectively done by ISPs.)
>It's 15 minutes of fumbling around for the non-technical person, then they're protected.
You and I have very different ideas of what "non-technical" means. If it involves anything beyond pressing "download" on the app store, it's out of reach of the vast majority of users.
Fair enough, there's a wide variance there. I'd still hesitate to say it's out of reach for most people as they'll likely have someone they know who would be able to follow those instructions for them. For the purpose of being able to access something they used to be able to access, I think most people will be able to figure this out. The point is that it's one-and-done in most instances. (To that end there's a reasonable worry that OS updates reset these settings but that's kind of a separate problem.)
This. Practically the entire Middle East has blocks on sites like porn. Every household I know pays for a VPN that they share with all their family members.
Ehh, if a youth of digital piracy has taught me anything, it's that people will develop the necessary computer literacy to get the entertainment they want. Even if they've completely failed to develop that same skill in the pursuit of self improvement.
I feel that says something about human psychology. Probably something very unpleasant.
Human adaptivity is perhaps both our biggest strength and biggest weakness. It's the same force behind our greatest innovations and our greatest tragedies, and even fuels the apathetic indifference towards those tragedies, too.
Millions of British people are already engaged in a cat-and-mouse game against online censorship, for one main reason - football (soccer).
If you're a British football fan and want to watch every live televised match, you'll need to pay £75 a month for subscriptions to both Sky Sports and TNT Sports. That won't actually allow you to watch all of the matches that are played, because for weird historical reasons there's a TV blackout on matches played on Saturday afternoon - even if you've paid for your subscriptions, you'll only be able to watch about half of all league matches on TV.
Alternatively, you can pay some bloke in the pub £50 for a Fire TV Stick pre-programmed with access to a bunch of pirated IPTV streams and a VPN to circumvent blocking, or get a mate to show you how to do it yourself - no subscription, no blackout. As a bonus, you get free access to Netflix and Disney+ and everything else.
Sellers of dodgy Fire Sticks occasionally get caught and imprisoned, a handful of users occasionally get nasty letters from the Federation Against Copyright Theft, but it's too widespread to really stop. Practically every workplace or secondary school class has someone who knows the ins-and-outs of circumventing DNS- and IP-level blocking; the lad who showed you how to watch live football on your phone or get free Netflix will be more than happy to show you how to access adult sites without verifying your age.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/illicit-streaming...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_football_on_television...
I've tried the "IPTV streams" to watch blacked out NHL games, and they are often terribly overloaded or just don't work at all. Not something I'd pay for.
Just search for the name of the sport and “bite” and you’ll find some sketchy successor of the original subreddits for pirated sports streams (“r/nflbite,” “r/nbabite,” etc.) Or find the latest streameast mirror which is usually the best.
Make sure your ad blocker is working. Then it’s just a matter of finding the best stream, extracting the playlist, and opening VLC.
I documented [0] some useful tricks for this technique and the comments also include more useful snippets and bookmarklets.
[0] https://gist.github.com/milesrichardson/4661c311199b98023701...
£75 a month seems very reasonable for sports nerds, compared to the cost and availability in the past
People don’t want to ly for content, that’s as old as the hills.
I don’t do sport, and I wouldn’t fund such a terrible exploitative industry (televised sports is all about getting people hooked on gambling), but I’ve certainly spent that much for entertainment I do like in the past - and far more. A night at the theatre will cost a lot more than subscribing to all the sports channels. A weekly cinema visit too.
>£75 a month seems very reasonable for sports nerds, compared to the cost and availability in the past
good that you ignore the actual point of the comment that you replied to
>That won't actually allow you to watch all of the matches that are played, because for weird historical reasons there's a TV blackout on matches played on Saturday afternoon - even if you've paid for your subscriptions, you'll only be able to watch about half of all league matches on TV.
Copyright and censorship involve similar technological issues, but the ethics and legal aspects are totally different.
https://mullvad.net/en/help/dns-over-https-and-dns-over-tls
The iOS instructions are the most onerous (IMO) but still easy enough to follow. It's 15 minutes of fumbling around for the non-technical person, then they're protected.
(Though, as others have pointed out, this is probably moot. The blocking is more effectively done by ISPs.)
>It's 15 minutes of fumbling around for the non-technical person, then they're protected.
You and I have very different ideas of what "non-technical" means. If it involves anything beyond pressing "download" on the app store, it's out of reach of the vast majority of users.
Mulvad is totally non technical, you just download it and press “connect” and boom you’re on a vpn?
Is that really so complex the average person can’t do it? It’s less complex than sending an email.
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Fair enough, there's a wide variance there. I'd still hesitate to say it's out of reach for most people as they'll likely have someone they know who would be able to follow those instructions for them. For the purpose of being able to access something they used to be able to access, I think most people will be able to figure this out. The point is that it's one-and-done in most instances. (To that end there's a reasonable worry that OS updates reset these settings but that's kind of a separate problem.)
My dad can hardly use a mouse, but the systems I put in place for him are pretty complex. He has no idea.
In countries like Iran 80%+ of the population knows how to.
It’s all a matter of incentives.
This. Practically the entire Middle East has blocks on sites like porn. Every household I know pays for a VPN that they share with all their family members.
Ehh, if a youth of digital piracy has taught me anything, it's that people will develop the necessary computer literacy to get the entertainment they want. Even if they've completely failed to develop that same skill in the pursuit of self improvement.
I feel that says something about human psychology. Probably something very unpleasant.
Human adaptivity is perhaps both our biggest strength and biggest weakness. It's the same force behind our greatest innovations and our greatest tragedies, and even fuels the apathetic indifference towards those tragedies, too.