Sky BT and other ISPs trying to ban Kodi and now streaming sites

Status
Not open for further replies.
What I want to know is can they ban VPNs? VPNs have legitimate uses too. Would a VPN ban be possible?

Possible, but difficult. Commercially it would be stupid.

The majority of uses for VPN is for people accessing work, or for a smaller number of more techy people, connecting into home while out/away. If Sky blocked VPN completely then I would not be able to work from home. Given that I do emergency IT cover I could only do this by sitting on site, rather than doing gardening and checking in once per hour. It would have such an impact on my life that I would drop Sky in seconds. Even if that involved paying up a contract for x months it would be worth it. I am certainly not unique in this as home working is becoming so much more common now, they have to allow it otherwise their broadband business is finished.

From the technical point of view, VPN is not one thing like web/http is for example. There are many different ways to encrypt and tunnel your traffic, but normally the average user does not know, they just use a wizard to configure it. There are certain protocols such as p2pp, ipsec and l2pp. These could be blocked, though IPSec has other uses than just VPN so that would be difficult. Another protocol which is becoming very common is SSL, where it uses the same port and protocol as a https server (look at the top of your screen, you are using https now). That is a lot harder to detect and block without blocking access to any secure website. My work is in the process of deploying a SSL VPN right now, just because of the ease of service and the fact that it is more likely to be permitted through hotel/pub/train firewalls.

I have just done a packet capture of the packets and you can tell it is not web requests by doing deep packet inspection. To do that on the fly for a big ISP requires some very big expensive hardware. They would have to process every packet going through one of their main connection points, which is millions of packets per seconds.

The other method is SSH. Normally SSH is a unix thing that allows someone to get a remote command prompt on a unix or linux server. However you can tunnel other traffic over this connection. SSH has so many uses in the world, from remote workers to people running websites. They can not detect if web tunneling is running over that.

There is also another option for people, proxies. There are all sorts of way to proxy traffic if you have a server not controlled by those ISPs anywhere. To set up something bespoke you could even have a webscript. There is stuff out there, but I reckon I could write a cgi script in 1-2 hours that would forward all requests to starstreams, meaning I would just have to visit a particular page on my remote website to see starstreams appear. I rate my self as a reasonably good network engineer who has never written anything like that. If I could do it in 2 hours, how long is it going to take people running these sites who is commercially motivated?

It is an arms race where there is only going to be one loser - Sky.

I would love to pay £3-4 per game for a quality stream of every Sunderland game and I don't think I'm alone in that. You can get loads of TV content free with Kodi and although I installed it one day for a look, I tend to just watch Netflix. Never a problem with it, never had to scrape around looking for a decent quality stream without foreign subtitles etc, it just works with a nice interface that I can chromecast from my phone. That is worth paying less than £10 per month. I'm lazy and to me the convenience is worth more than the cost. I will not subscribe to Sky sports to pay lots for a service that does not show what I want to watch. Waking up to this is the only way Sky will ever win.
 


THIS.

I don't get how these articles keep saying "if you want to watch the football, buy a legal sub". ERM, NO. You don't show the games that I want to watch. Its not even a matter a price, its that it isn't even available.
I said on another thread. I'd happily pay for footy with sky if they had more Sunderland games on. I don't give a shit about full match replays after 8pm or whatever bollox they have, I also don't want to watch Man Utd and Spurs every f***ing week. I will not pay for a service I don't use
 
  • Like
Reactions: PTR
I said on another thread. I'd happily pay for footy with sky if they had more Sunderland games on. I don't give a shit about full match replays after 8pm or whatever bollox they have, I also don't want to watch Man Utd and Spurs every f***ing week. I will not pay for a service I don't use
I don't watch ANY other football than us, and England tournament matches. So why on earth would I want to pay about £50 a month to have sky and BT in my house?
 
I don't watch ANY other football than us, and England tournament matches. So why on earth would I want to pay about £50 a month to have sky and BT in my house?

I'm paying 48/month currently through an old staff offer for Sky Q - full silver 2tb, with extra box and we watch almost NOTHING on the premium channels. Only got it for the crack to see what it was like. It's very good, but come the end f the deal it'll go the journey.

I'll either just use the Vu+ Solo 4k sat box directly, or just integrate into the kodi PVR ,to have an all in one solution.
 
I don't watch ANY other football than us, and England tournament matches. So why on earth would I want to pay about £50 a month to have sky and BT in my house?
And they only play a small amount of our games, maybe 5 per season. So you have to pay a 12 month membership of £600+ to watch 5 games. Then add to that, if BT sport has our game there's another £30 a month.
 
And they only play a small amount of our games, maybe 5 per season. So you have to pay a 12 month membership of £600+ to watch 5 games. Then add to that, if BT sport has our game there's another £30 a month.

BT Sport isn't £30pm is it? For some reason I thought it was about half that.
 
I find it strange to see people happy to spend hundreds on monthly car payments and iPhones but not to pay for Premier League football.

I pay £100 a month for Sky and BT, why should I be subsidising the thieves?

You either pay for it or you don't have it, trying to justify stealing is ridiculous!
:lol::lol::lol:
 
happened with websites when they started blocking them.

found this gem / windup

http://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Security-matters/Bypass-blocked-websites/td-p/3279352

Due to my favourite website, 123movies.to, being blocked.

I was wondering if there is a way to make some sort of agreement or something to bypass that block by paying to Virgin Media so that they personally unblock that website for me.

However, if that's not allowed, is there any websites like 123movies.to which are not blocked and which I can legally go on to and watch my favourite movies for free?

I've been using torrent sites for donkeys years now, 3 of the sites I use have been blocked, I used to use a VPN but opera browser comes with one (just needs enabling in settings)
 
I've been using torrent sites for donkeys years now, 3 of the sites I use have been blocked, I used to use a VPN but opera browser comes with one (just needs enabling in settings)

I use chrome & some free VPN to access the blocked sites . seen talk of this new kodi version having a vpn like option :lol:before its even started they'll be scratching there head's, so let em waste there money going to court. but its money well spent on looking like there doing something.

kodi will cripple sky if they can't do out about it & bt will snap up rights .

but thats karma TUFF sky.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-17494723

A News Corporation subsidiary company used a computer hacker to sabotage Sky TV's biggest rival, BBC Panorama has reported
 
Last edited:
Digital watermarking and forensic software is starting to be shipped in the chip (SoC) hardware of consumer devices..

http://www.verimatrix.com/press-rel...-integrated-next-generation-samsung-smart-tvs


'..This will ensure that the 2017 line of Samsung smart TVs comply with the Ultra HD (UHD) and 4K content guidelines set by MovieLabs’ Specifications for Next Generation Video and Enhanced Content Protection...'

Looks like the big players are lining it up with the new 4k UHD premium content services that are only just starting to ramp up.
 
Last edited:
Digital watermarking and forensic software is starting to be shipped in the chip (SoC) hardware of consumer devices..

http://www.verimatrix.com/press-rel...-integrated-next-generation-samsung-smart-tvs


'..This will ensure that the 2017 line of Samsung smart TVs comply with the Ultra HD (UHD) and 4K content guidelines set by MovieLabs’ Specifications for Next Generation Video and Enhanced Content Protection...'

Looks like the big players are lining it up with the new 4k UHD premium content services that are only just starting to ramp up.

Aye, the pirates will never crack that like.
 
I'm sure it can be cracked, but looks very difficult. The end device is the key target which makes pretty unsustainable for any 'pirate' to hash a unique key for my *specific* front room TV..

They'll work it out like, or crack it TV end, or key share.
 
It's an interesting subject..

Yeah, it is. They keep coming up with new methods and they always get cracked. DVD, BRD etc etc. Even Sky got hacked with card sharing, obviously that won't last much longer either though as they're offering anyone with an SD box a free HD box now.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Back
Top