Accessing a restricted BBC site from the UK

I was just trying to read an article on faster than light travel on the BBC website and I got the above message.

We’re sorry but this site is not accessible from the UK as it is part of our international service and is not funded by the licence fee. It is run commercially by BBC Worldwide, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the BBC, the profits made from it go back to BBC programme-makers to help fund great new BBC programmes.

I don’t see why I can’t access the site from the UK. However it is funded from abroad, surely they can use that to fund it in the UK as well. If they have to put an interstitial page warning that the article contains adverts and explaining why, that’s fine, but to deny me access to it and make me to connect to a VPN or use a proxy.

I wrote an article about using proxies and VPNs to access The Pirate Bay and some of it applies here. The easiest way I know of to access the restricted site is to add .nyud.net to the end of the domain part of the URL as that will proxy the site.

So to make this work in the UK, you can just do this:

Original URL: http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20121003-can-we-travel-faster-than-light/1

Proxied URL: http://www.bbc.com.nyud.net/future/story/20121003-can-we-travel-faster-than-light/1

I hope that helps someone else.