Hacker News Reader

Comment by jzwinck | Hacker News Reader

Equally weird is that watching PBS content online is blocked if you're not physically sitting in America. For those who don't know, PBS is a US non-profit TV network, partially funded by the federal government and to varying degrees the states. Yet their website actively blocks would-be viewers outside the US, including US citizens (who are required to pay US taxes wherever they live).

Oh, and when I took my Korean-made but US-bought TV to the UK, guess what? Its Netflix feature stopped working completely.

Whether buying a DVD or streaming video online, I'm tired of not getting what I pay for.

View on HN

The PBS geo-blocking is reasonable to understand. Video streaming can get expensive and international delivery almost certainly isn't in the foundation's stated mission at this point. Things also get complicated when you consider that PBS is not just one non-profit, but many "member stations", each operated as a separate non-profit. It's not their main objective navigate through the difficult task of making international streaming pay for itself (i.e. through correctly targeted ad partnerships or additional fund-raising). It's easier to just block it.

But back to the numbers: I'd estimate that PBS is paying around $0.05 per show to stream. I'm basing this on CDN costs in the range $0.10/GB - $0.20/GB, the size of 30 minute shows weighing in between 125MB and 250MB, plus storage and admin overheads. I might be wrong, but it looks like they're delivering their bits via CloudFront[1] and so those costs basically double for viewers outside of the US and Europe[2]. Even if it's not CloudFront, the basic cost structures stay the same. Why on earth would they want to serve content to users who mostly aren't giving them money and are costing twice as much to serve?

One last point: the link below are for Downtown Abbey, for which PBS certainly doesn't have international streaming rights.

[1] http://video.pbs.org/videoPlayerInfo/2335534842

[2] http://aws.amazon.com/cloudfront/pricing/

>I'd estimate that PBS is paying around $0.05 per show to stream. I'm basing this on CDN costs in the range $0.10/GB - $0.20/GB, the size of 30 minute shows weighing in between 125MB and 250MB, plus storage and admin overheads.

If they actually own the rights to the show they want to distribute to the public for free and the primary thing stopping them is the cost of a CDN, why aren't they using BitTorrent? At least as an option that says "no CDN in your country, international users use this"?

My guess it that PBS still needs to control distribution of their content because it is still a valuable source of fund-raising revenue. Revenue from DVD box sets [1] and international licensing deals goes back into producing new shows. Setting their content free on BitTorrent would quickly erode the revenue generating potential of that content.

[1] http://www.shoppbs.org/home/index.jsp

The purpose of PBS is to take donations and public money and produce free content. I have a hard time believing that there are a lot of people who would buy a PBS DVD box set but decide not to because it was available on the internet -- especially since it's already available for free on the internet in their primary market, just not world-wide. Moreover, if they distribute using BitTorrent, they can include the usual "if you enjoy this program, please support it with a financial contribution" message, in which case the wider the programs are distributed the more people see the message and the more money gets donated.

The example I linked in another comment (www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/ancient/secrets-stonehenge.html) is blocked in Europe, despite your pricing data showing that it would cost PBS the same to deliver there as in the US. So I'm not convinced it's about delivery cost.

For clarity, let's not talk about Downton Abbey--that's a more complicated topic because it's not PBS-produced content as far as I know.

>Price Classes let you reduce your delivery prices by excluding Amazon CloudFront’s more expensive edge locations from your Amazon CloudFront distribution.

Sounds to me like it's completely trivial to restrict streaming to the cheap servers and everyone else will just have to cross more of the internet to get there. I seriously doubt that this is a notable part of their reasoning.

> Video streaming can get expensive

Then they should put their work in the public domain so people willing to support distribution costs could do so.

PBS does not get a lot of money from the federal government.[1][2]. Don't buy the republican talking points. But more importantly how is the geo blocking different from the blocking that the BBC does?

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporation_for_Public_Broadcas...

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PBS

I explained in another comment why BBC is different: when British citizens leave the country, they stop paying for the BBC (via taxes and via TV license). When US citizens live abroad, they keep paying, but stop receiving.

I have no idea what republican talking points you're referring to. Let's just stipulate that if the republicans say the same thing I say, it's a coincidence. I don't even live in the US.

"When US citizens live abroad, they keep paying, but stop receiving."

You keep referring to PBS as if it is a service provided by the government. PBS is not a government service, it is a private entity. Why do you think paying taxes entitles you to universal acces to PBS? My local university and the local fire department received some federal funding. A miniscule slice of your taxes paid for that funding. Do you expect to enroll in classes at Syracuse University for free now? Do you expect the Syracuse Fire Department to come help your cat out of the tree whereever you are?

The irrational fake-libertarian does not care for such arguments. They freak out if minuscule amounts of their money go to something they don't support, and expect loads of control in exchange for this transaction. Did you know if I buy a burger at McDonald's I can totally boss around that entire company? Except it's not really the price of a burger that entitles me to do so; I can just leave some change in the take-a-penny tray.

That's because you're not paying to buy a copy of the content. You're leasing it from them, apparently.

I'm not really sure what you mean here. In the PBS case, I cannot possibly (legally) access the content my tax dollars pay for, because they block it on their site, and I don't live in the US now. It hardly seems like a lease if there's no way I can ever access the assets...it's more like I'm paying for something but getting nothing.

In the Netflix case, the problem is that LG sold me a TV which unbeknownst to me always advertises itself to Netflix as being "in the US." This means that when it is not physically in the US (according to its IP address), Netflix sees a discrepancy and blocks it from accessing any content--US or otherwise. Apparently LG fixed this bug within the last year, but there's no update available for my TV (despite it having online firmware updates for other reasons).

In the PBS case, I cannot possibly (legally) access the content my tax dollars pay for, because they block it on their site, and I don't live in the US now.

According to http://www.pbs.org/funding, tax dollars pay for about 15% of the budget across all PBS stations. And a large part of that money goes to ensuring that local stations can exist in places that they otherwise couldn't. While tax dollars are helpful, in no way are they paying for that content in the same way that the BBC is funded by people in England.

In any case the reason for that geographical restriction is that PBS makes money from selling access to popular shows like Sesame Street worldwide. They could not make that money if organizations in that area had no incentive to pay for it.

...it's more like I'm paying for something but getting nothing.

My taxes help to pay for the system of embassies and consulates that provide a support network for people like you. Since I live in the USA and have no plans to travel, I'm getting nothing from that tax money.

Welcome to a fundamental fact of taxation, most of what our taxes pay for does not directly benefit us. Nor do we individually have any say about how that is spent. Once it has been taken by the government it is in no real sense "ours". Get over it.

> Welcome to a fundamental fact of taxation, most of what our taxes pay for does not directly benefit us. Once it has been taken by the government it is in no real sense "ours".

That makes sense for things that are targeted at a particular audience, geography, etc. But television? They had to spend money to implement the blocking feature, and seemingly for no additional money they could let people in Europe watch. I'm not asking for special treatment. And I'm not interested in watching Sesame Street, but rather programs which are not offered for sale (I'd even pay $0.99 per episode, if I could).

As a side note, if you want services from a US embassy, you often have to join a days-long waiting list, and then pay rather high rates for the services. Contrary to popular belief, it's not a place you just walk into because you're a citizen and they do things for you. It's more like a state-owned Kinko's plus law office in a prison-like setting. I appreciate your point about your taxes paying for them, but you should know they aren't giving me anything for free in there.

You still don't get it.

PBS is not a government organization. It is a private non-profit organization that is free to do what it wants. In this case you have a classical problem. Developing quality programming has a fairly high fixed cost and low marginal costs. Yes, they could cheaply give it to you, but if they did then they would lower the incentive for non-US organizations to absorb some of the fixed costs.

The fact that they do not sell it to individuals who want it is a sign that they are missing a great business opportunity. It is stupid. But again it is not government stupidity. (And for the cost of an EC2 instance to use as a proxy, you can get around the geographic restriction.)

And what about the tax money? Tax money that goes to PBS stations largely goes to the geographical problem of supporting local PBS stations in locations that do not have a sufficient donation base to pay for it themselves.

Welcome to the new Internet. Now featuring borders.

Yup, that is a feature and for our own "good".

The clean technological solution to roaming US citizens is national ID with a federal government CAS API. I'm guessing people opposed to intellectual property would appreciate that even less.

I'm in Tokyo, and streamed an episode of PBS' FrontLine from pbs.org only last week/the week before last.

Try this: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/ancient/secrets-stonehenge.html . It is blocked in both London and Singapore; if it's available in Tokyo then perhaps you have an odd IP address (giving wrong geolocation), or PBS likes your islands better than mine.

That is also blocked in Tokyo: "We're sorry, but this video is not available in your region due to right restrictions."

The PBS thing is roughly the same situation as the BBC outside the UK, AIUI.

The BBC is different, actually. If you're a UK citizen, you do not have to pay income tax while you live and work abroad. And the BBC is funded partly by an explicit "TV license" payable by any household that has a TV in Britain. So again, if you leave (or just get rid of your TV), you stop paying for it. So maybe it's OK if you can't watch it then (bollocks still, but justifiable bollocks).

How much money do you think PBS gets from federal tax dollars?

Just enough money to keep it under control

Im sure the BBC had some way of enabling licence paying Brits abroad to still use iPlayer. Could be completely wrong, but some bell relating to this is ringing in the back of my mind.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com