I have just registered on this lovely site for a good old moan.
I am from Germany (currently living in Ireland) and therefore the pleasures of the BBC are not for me to watch. I do understand that since the good people in Britain pay for the license they should get to keep the programs and not share with us online spongers and in most cases - eg HIGNFY - I am quite happy for them to keep it for themselves .
BUT there are exceptions, little gems like QI for example rightly belong in the category of productions that no one should be denied access to (I cannot remember having had to pay on my last visit to the National Gallery either. More so, I wasn't denied entry for not residing in London permanently).
If I may be cruel and quote Mr Stephen Fry himself here on that topic:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nz6par9TmRs&feature=channel_page
Well, nearly anyway.
I know that the BBC offers it's programs online as well, but only for the people in the UK and luckily they have very skilled technicans that prevent everyone from cheating through several dodgy proxy workarounds (and believe me, I have tried!).
Yes, I know DVDs are available for everyone, but COME ON! It's hard enough to wait a week till the next epsiode is aired, surely no one can expect us "rest-of-the-world" to wait as long as it takes till the DVD is available? And us fans tend to buy these anyway as well, so why can't we watch it beforehand, too? Where people in Britain conveniently put the kettle on and tune in at the appointed time, the rest of us is forced to operate outside the realms of legality and prowl through the internet in search of pirate websites offering the episodes, meanwhile testing our firewalls to their limits by hopping from one dodgy website to another in search for our weekly fix.
There is one Dutch lady who bravely operates an account on Youtube with Stephen Fry content only, that has been deleted by Youtube twice already. For the 3rd time now she has uploaded all these videos again but she is forced to give each episode fantasy names so as to prevent the cruel Youtube investigators* to find her out too easily (*I'm picturing nasty black-clad and chain smoking ex-financial auditors here with guild scars along their cheeks crouching in front of their haunched PCs with a sadistic glint in their eyes, chuckling with pleasure everytime they find a culprit and get to delete - in a matter of seconds probably - the account and with it all the hard labour the poor soul has put into it with only the good for the fellow humankind in mind). These fantasy names and absence of any QI related tags again is causing great difficulty for us admirers, as we have to descend into blackmarket spheres and rely solely on knowledge acquired through the web based grapevine to lead us on the right path.
Now, I know this is pretty much verbal diarrhoea as the world of copyright is a far too complicated and anal area to expect something beautiful and simple as a Stephen Fry online channel available for everyone to just happen (allthough like with the National Gallery, I am sure people will happily and of their own accord contribute payments to keep it up) but one is allowed to dream.
Speaking of which, I should probably go to bed now. If anyone bothered to read this: Thank you for your time and consideration. And may you live happily ever after!
