Geo blocking and Australian streamers

January 4, 2018 5:35 PM

Australia has two excellent free on-demand streaming services via the two government supported broadcasters, the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) and the Special Broadcasting Service (SBS). The ABC streaming service, iview.abc.net.au, is advertising-free and requires no login. The SBS service, SBS On Demand, contains ads and requires a login. Both of these services stream a lot of excellent domestic and international productions which I would like to bring to Fanfare attention, but I don't know if they are geoblocked to regular viewers outside of Australia. Are they?
posted by Thella (5 comments total)

SBS's Terms & Conditions have this:

You may view Material through SBS On Demand in Australia only. SBS uses geoblocking technology to prevent access to such Material outside Australia. You may only view Material in geographic locations where we offer SBS On Demand service and have licensed such Material.

I haven't taken a look at the ABC terms but the link you provided says this:
ABC iview is the free internet TV service of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, available within Australia.

I sympathize, because there is heaps of great local content here in New Zealand too. I've taken to linking to YouTube uploads; they're legally dubious and often incomplete, but they're the best we've got most of the time.
posted by Start with Dessert at 12:49 AM on January 6, 2018 [1 favorite]

I don't believe iView is blocked - I know a feminist writer I admire has a great love for Media Watch, an ABC show that sardonically points out factual and ethical breaches in the rest of the news media. It's quite the thing, and really only possible on something like the ABC.

Institutionally, the ABC has no need to geoblock, because they don't have to justify their audience numbers to advertisers and they're fully funded by the Australian taxpayer.
posted by Merus at 4:58 AM on January 30, 2018

(On the other hand, I can't get my Australian connection to connect to iView through a VPN, so maybe it is geoblocked after all.)
posted by Merus at 5:12 AM on January 30, 2018

Iview is geolocked. There's content they've bought which they only have the right to stream within Australia and content they've produced they've sold the right to stream elsewhere.

You can download Media Watch outside iview.

http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/video/
posted by onya at 9:31 AM on February 3, 2018

Thanks folks.
posted by Thella at 12:22 AM on February 7, 2018