BBC International News Site to be Blocked to UK us

I was actually looking for something else when I came across this story:

http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2681482,00.html

It basically says that when the BBC launches BBCNews.com later this year they want to be able to block this site to UK web users to 'maintain a distance between its publicly-funded and commercial services'. This seems similar to the BBC World availability debate that has been discussed here for a while. This article concentrates on the technical challenge of this sort of segregation but I think the principal is more important here.

This article is a bit old (1st Feb) so does anyone know anything else and more importantly what do you all think?

Seems stupid. Why don't they just do the other suggestion I heard kicking around of adding banner ads if we are viewing the current BBC News Online site outside of the UK and keep it bannerless for UK viewers.

If the banning of UK users to BBCNews.com goes ahead then I hope non-UK users get banned from BBC News Online.

Cheers,
Asa

i would think it would be to expensive for them to block it

I doubt it David. I think I can get a feature that can ban people viewing TV Home from, say, outside of the UK even though I'm obviously not going to try it!

Cheers,
Asa

Anyway, surely they would not LEGALLY be able to do this, as BBCNews.com articles will come from the same PUBLICLY FUNDED areas of the BBC that BBC News Online articles come from, they are not setting up a who new dept. for BBCNews.com, at least not from what I have read, I am sure that legally they would not be allowed to do this.

But using that theory, that should mean at the moment that people outside the UK shouldn't be able to view publically funded news articles on the BBC News Online site, which we know of course not to be true!

Cheers, Asa

Bit more info for you here:

http://www.mediaguardian.co.uk/broadcast/story/0,7493,431024,00.html

http://www.mediaguardian.co.uk/broadcast/story/0,7493,431578,00.html

Cheers,

Thankyou for the info Liam.

One point- we already do have an advertising funded BBC website in beeb.com- I realise that this is meant to be seperate from BBC online but has anyone noticed the little (dare I say it) advert in the bottom right hand of the corner of the BBC home page- and it doesn't say 'other online shopping sites are available'

Yes good point, the BBC have had no problems giving us a website where they can make money, i.e. buy selling things, yet are not going to give us something whereby we would be the only ones who benefit, nice plan........

i heard something somewhere, where they said they can scan IP addresses and block non uk from certain parts of the news site and other BBC funded sites

Noooooooo! News online is the only good News site out there....we can't lose it!

There are plenty of good news sites out there, you just have to look.
For example in my 'News Bar' on Neoplanet (an excellent browser! well worth the download www.neoplanet.com) I have

Sky News
PA/Ananova
Reuters
BBC News Onl.
ITN
BBC WS
The Independent
The Sun Online (Do not laugh, it is an excellent website actually, and perhaps on of the most influencial)
The Mirror
The Guardian
The E-Telegraph
MediaGuardian
The Times
The AP
ABC News
CNN
MSNBC
Fox News
CBS News

All are excellent websites, and if you really want it in-depth, then visit,

Europe.cnn.com