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Comment by aes256 | Hacker News Reader

I suppose this is similar in principle to the Top Gear magazine.

It's not funded by the licence fee, but by revenue from the commercial arm of the organisation, BBC Worldwide. It's not as though those in the UK who pay the licence fee have a right to view the content free of charge.

Presumably the international version of the site is supported by advertising (as many other BBC online properties are), and someone decided it would be better to just block UK users' access to this content than to provide it to them with advertising, creating no end of confusion...

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It's not similar because folks in the UK can still buy the Top Gear magazine. They can't access it for free, but they can pay for it, because it's not funded by their licence fee.

This is not funded by the licence fee, but people in the UK cannot access it at all. They don't have the option to pay for it if they want to consume it.

A better solution would be to make these pages accessible from the UK but serve adverts and have a persistent alert bar at the top which explains why it is served with adverts.

I'm guessing that they're more keen on avoiding the tabloid headlines ("The BBC is dead: serves adverts on website for first time") than providing the content.

I work for the BBC and can confirm this.

The content on /future is generated and created by BBC Worldwide and thus, unavailable to the UK because of this...

They can't show adverts on this page and allow people from the UK to see it because this would cause confusion and make people wonder where their licence fee is going.

That still makes absolutely no sense.

The BBC use location services to show adverts on the BBC news website, they could equally use the same services to not show adverts on this site.

It's just plain shoddy thinking.

They can't. The content isn't owned by BBC UK, it's owned by BBC Worldwide, and BBC UK would have to: pay to licence the content from BBC WW or BBC WW would have to display ads.

Sorry I can't reply to you sthulbourn but go here:

http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/

It's a BBC worldwide website, working in the UK, using the BBC brand (e.g. the logo), showing adverts to UK people.

At the bottom of the (very good) content it says:

"BBC Worldwide is a commercial company that is owned by the BBC (and just the BBC).

No money from the licence fee was used to create this website.

The profits we make from it go back to BBC programme-makers to help fund great new BBC programmes."

That's essentially the same message used as the explanation as to why I can't use the bbc.com/future website. Confusion has not abounded, the world has not ended.

The UK-blocked "future" website continues to make no sense to me. I can't see how this is not daft.

The same is true of the Top Gear site: http://www.topgear.com/uk/

> They can't show adverts on this page and allow people from the UK to see it because this would cause confusion and make people wonder where their licence fee is going.

This is one of the dumbest things I've ever heard.

The BBC absolutely could serve this content, with a persistent explanation of why this page serves adverts with its content.

Essentially the BBC is not confident in its own ability to design something which communicates a simple message ("This content is produced by a BBC subsidiary which is not funded by the licence fee, and we therefore have to pay for it by placing adverts on this page"). Having seen the incompetent UX work the Beeb have done on their homepage in recent years (BBC Sport redesign, anyone?), I can understand why they don't have that much confidence in their own abilities.

It's a shame that the BBC's arbitrary fear of confusion, which is fundamentally rooted in their own inability to manage expectations, is preventing millions of people from accessing interesting content.

> Essentially the BBC is not confident in its own ability to design something which communicates a simple message ("This content is produced by a BBC subsidiary which is not funded by the licence fee, and we therefore have to pay for it by placing adverts on this page").

On the contrary, I would argue it is more a case of the BBC lacking confidence in the ability of the general public to understand such a message.

The problem is exacerbated here (unlike in the case of Top Gear magazine, the BBC Good Food website, etc.) because the /future page is not an obviously distinct entity.

> I would argue it is more a case of the BBC lacking confidence in the ability of the general public to understand such a message.

Whichever it is, they're going about it entirely the wrong way. Is there a solution which most people could understand? I bet there is. Farm it out to five or six top UX people and I don't doubt that they would come up with a dozen beautiful and workable solutions.

The BBC shouldn't be censoring its/its subsidiary's output because of the stupidity of the general public.

I'm pretty sure the BBC aren't allowed to make a profit from ads from UK viewers.

They soon will. In the UK there are two versions of the BBC. The main one charges a 'licence fee' if you own a tv and another one called 'channel 4'. Channel 4 is part funded out of general taxation and part funded by ads. They will soon be forced to merge because the internet is bringing the licence fee racket to an end. The BBC is desperately trying to work out a way to tax ISPs !

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