I’ve been trying to keep up with some of the ABC’s programs while I’ve been over here, as a way of staying in touch with news from back home: Insiders is great for politics and Offsiders for sport, and both of those shows are available to watch via a flash player on their respective websites. There’s no IP blocking at all based on location.
That free-for-all doesn’t extend to ABC iView, however - the Aussie version of the BBC’s incredibly successful iPlayer. Perhaps a condition of using the distinctly Apple-like product name, both products use strict location blocking: when I was back in Australia over summer I couldn’t watch BBC programs, and now vice versa.
This hasn’t really bothered me up until this past week, when it emerged 4 Corners - the only current affairs program worth its salt in Australia - was to do an expose of sorts on the bad behaviour of rugby league players. My club, the Newcastle Knights, featured prominently in the documentary (partly in a positive light, from what I gather) and so I was keen to see the doco that had Twitter going mad on Monday night.
But unlike usual, the program wasn’t available for viewing on demand and can only be watched through iView. Or, as the ABC put it, “For legal reasons, this report will only be available on the free internet broadcasting service, ABC iView.”
So I used the medium that Oprah endorses, Twitter, to ask the Managing Director of the ABC Mark Scott for clarification. Alas, I just got a reply from another ABC employee telling me nothing I didn’t already know - “we can’t provide as vod for legal reasons”. There has been no reply to my further enquiries about just what this legal reason is.
Does anyone have any idea? Could it open up the possibility of defamation actions in other countries? It just seems strange to me that if something is fit for broadcast in Australia legally, involving all Australian league players, why there’d be a legal concern about showing it elsewhere. I’m half expecting it to pop up on torrent sites anyway…
(On a related note, Channel 9 isn’t using any IP blocking on Matthew Johns’ interview with A Current Affair overnight.)
5 Comments on “The silent documentary”
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Daily News About Abc : A few links about Abc - Wednesday, 13 May 2009 19:29 says:
[...] The silent documentary [...]
Posted on May 14, 2009 at 4:33 am.
connect the dots…
it’s probably because the story involves a possible crime in new zealand.. and ABC lawyers don’t necessarily want it to be shown in NZ.
Posted on May 14, 2009 at 12:23 pm.
Fair point - but the incident happened seven years ago and no charges were laid, so the only applicable law I could think of would be defamation. Perhaps the woman in question only agreed to be interviewed if it wasn’t going to be shown in NZ?
Either way, I’d still like to see it.
Posted on May 14, 2009 at 12:28 pm.
perhaps, or also maybe because some of the participants are yet to be identified… leaving open the possibility that NZ police could still lay charges if more evidence emerges
funny though, because the full program transcript is readily available… much like the underbelly snafu it’s more of our legal system struggling to keep up with the internet media
Posted on May 14, 2009 at 12:32 pm.
Indeed. The Underbelly ban certainly gave BitTorrent usage in Victoria a boost!
Posted on May 14, 2009 at 12:41 pm.