TDF no longer free on Xfinity/Peacock

TLDR version - “as of June 26, existing Xfinity accountholders will have to re-subscribe (to Peacock Premium) at the market rate ($5 a month or $50/year)”. Interestingly, Peacock Premium is only $3 per month on DirecTV.

Hard pass…I haven’t watched the NBC / Peacock coverage for a few years now even when it was free…no way I am paying to suffered through Liggett and Roll.

GCN + VPN for the win.

I’ve watched a few things on Peacock occasionally, but not enough to warrant another subscription.

Don’t think this strategy is gonna work the way they are hoping.

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TDF is the main reason I have a seasonal Xfinity TV subscription in the summer. This move will save me far more than $5/month.

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Yeah, I totally agree, but I’m one of those stupid people who isn’t willing to steal the content with VPN, so it’s either Peacock or nothing.

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I prefer to call it pretending to be in another place versus theft

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The Peacock app was not the best on my Mac. Not sure they made any improvements over the years. I went for broke and got GCN+ for 3 months. Pretty much covers the 3 major tours.

I prefer the term “virtual travel”. :crazy_face: :crazy_face:

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Do you pay for GCN? If so, you’re not stealing.

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The law doesn’t agree, but that really wasn’t the point of my post.

I object to your “theft” framing. It’s something between civil license/contract violation and copyright infringement (and probably far short of copyright infringement). Stealing/theft implies the “owner” has been entirely deprived of the item in question which is patently impossible with a streamed video program.

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How exacty does the VPN think work? I have no qualms whatsoever about ‘stealing’ digital content lol.

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Name the law you are breaking. I suspect we will be waiting a really long time for an answer.

And FWIW last year Fubo.tv had the NBC feed and I think a European feed. Last month I watched the Giro on Fubo, from the GCN and/or European feed (Matt Stephens was one of the commentators).

You might want to double check that. I’m an Xfinity subscriber and I got the message I’d need to start paying for Peacock. Really pissed me off. I may dump Xfinity later in the year, but I’ll probably suck it up and pay for Peacock until then. After that, don’t know yet.

The internet traffic from your computer is wrapped up and sent to a server in another country. From there is it unwrapped and sent out. To the recipient of your traffic it looks like you sent it from there. Replies to your traffic are handled the same way, just reversed back to you. In theory only the VPN service knows your home IP (although there are many ways this can leak out). Mostly this whole mechanism is driven by large databases of IP addresses and what country they “belong” to. My home router/firewall gets geography IP info from from MaxMind. A lot of web functionality behaves differently based on where your accessing it from.

An example of the kinds of things this does, if you VPN into France then go to google.com, the page will be in french. In the case of video services they will check the IP address your traffic is coming from against the list of valid countries for video replay. You can get more sophisticated buying lists of IP addresses that belong to VPN services and refuse to serve those (doesn’t Netflix do this to prevent VPNs?).

I would suspect using a VPN to access content that you are not entitled to in your region runs afoul of various copyright right laws…but I couldn’t tell you which ones specifically (think of the usual disclaimers at the end of NFL games, etc)

Legality aside, you are clearly accessing content that is not meant for viewing in your region. In the US NBC / Peacock has the exclusive broadcast rights to ASO races.

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In simple terms imagine all the Internet traffic from your house was first sent to France, so that it appeared you were sitting in France using the Internet.

Thats what a router can do.

Imagine all the Internet traffic from your computer was first sent to France.

Thats what your computer can do.

I’m not a lawyer, but as far as I know:

  1. I’m unaware of any state or federal laws in the US prohibiting use of VPNs
  2. I’m unaware of any state or federal laws about using streaming services over a VPN
  3. I’m unaware of any copyright or Intellectual Property laws regarding this in the US
  4. So if 1 and 2 and 3 are true, this becomes an issue between you your streaming provider. In this case GCN+, which may or may not prohibit this in the terms of service.

I was eating lunch and reviewing the GCN+ terms of service on my iPhone, which required opening 3 web pages, and I didn’t finish. In those 5 minutes I was unable to find restrictions in the terms of service. But it was over lunch with my iPhone and I may not have reviewed all the pages/docs.

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The other guy had a good description of VPNs in general. But for the TDF specifically, GCN+ carries the european feed of the race but it’s only available for subscribers in certain countries. So when you use a VPN you can trick GCN into thinking you’re in the UK or France and it will present to you the programs that are available to French viewers (like the TDF).

It can also work for Netflix and other services that might only have rights to specific movies or shows in specific countries.

Broadcast rights are very clear. The ASO wants to create a bidding war, and awards the highest bidder exclusive rights for a territory.

And again, from a consumer point-of-view… assuming there are no laws prohibiting territory restricted consumption over a VPN, the only issue is violating the terms of service with GCN+. And since you’ve paid GCN+ they don’t have a lot of motivation to terminate your subscription. You can imagine contractual obligations to ASO, but if NBC isn’t raising hell to the ASO, then the ASO isn’t going to raise hell with GCN+ implementing technology controls to stop it.

Basically, the technology is likely ahead of any laws prohibiting consumption of territory restricted content over a VPN.

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Well, we have no idea if they are or not…but violating the ToS with GCN is definitely not the only issue. NBC has the exclusive broadcast rights…and really that is the central issue.

Again, legality aside, using a VPN to get to GCN content is clearly “wrong” in the strict definition…but I’m not judging anyone over it (especially since I do it! :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:)

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Maybe. You are assuming that you as a consumer have some legal obligations (Pbase’s “illegal” comment) to uphold the territory broadcast restrictions in the agreement between NBC and ASO. Are you aware of any federal or state laws that would obligate you as a consumer, to the territory broadcasting clause in the contract between NBC and ASO?

I’m being completely serious. The technology may in fact be ahead of US Federal and State laws. Which then leaves it as a potential contractual obligation between ASO and GCN+.

(lol I’m writing 2 contracts right now - and again I’m not a lawyer, I’m a technical sales engineer)

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