I use a VPN with GCN+, they have almost all the races available for road and cyclocross. You can look up which countries each race broadcast is available in, then set your VPN to that country and watch the race either live or a replay.

Are you in Canada ? What VPN do you use .

Thanks .

I'm in the US and use NordVPN. All of the grand tours, most of the road monuments, and all of the cyclocross world cups are geoblocked to Europe, so I use the VPN pretty frequently with GCN+ and haven't had any issues yet. GCN+ has both a mobile app and you can watch it through the web browser on your computer. I've set up a VPN client directly on my Asus router so I can cast to my TV from my phone/computer to watch the races.

Do you ever question the legality or ethics of what you are doing?

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"Go yell at an M&M"

No.

How do you like NordVPN? Recommend it?

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the world's still turning? >>>>>>> the world's still turning

It works well on all of my devices, so I can't complain. I bought a 3 year subscription a couple of years ago during one of their holiday sales, $150 I think. They have good documentation for setting up VPN profiles for a router.

I browsed some comparison write-ups and I did a free trial before I subscribed, so would definitely recommend doing your own research since there might be some new services available now.

In what context do you see the behavior as problematic? The poster did in fact pay for it by subscribing to GCN+.

I also use a VPN, I use Surfshark, if you use the code Dowsett (yeah that dowesett) you get like 2 years for $30 bucks or something. (feel free to DM me if you need more info)

As for the ethics of it, I agree that it's slightly cutting some corners, but I am paying GCN so I feel ok about it, I also pay NBC/Peacock and they actually have allot more races then you would think (at least they did in 2021)

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http://www.instagram.com/cyclewise

I'm in Canada. I use NordVPN and GCN+
WORKS AMAZING.
I always just connect to a UK proxy and I'm in business.

Watched an SBS feed once by connecting to Australia. I really should check for TDU replays this week...

LIving in Canada, a VPN is the only way to get any kind of cycling coverage. We don't even get the TdF on Sportsnet anymore.

Is there a reason that these races are geo-blocked? Are there any terms & conditions that call for the subscriber to provide honest answers as to their location? I know at least one content provider that considers it a violation to misrepresent your home country.

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"Go yell at an M&M"

There you have:

http://www.cyclingfans.com/

Just use a VPN for the country.

Love Shean Kelly's comments.

Who's Shean Kelly?

From Canada, PIA VPN and whoever is broadcasting from France.

Occasionally Belgium or Australia, but I have an easier time understanding French than Australian.

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Lol, Android keyboards...
Sean Kelly

He he. I assumed it was a typo, but for a moment there I thought it was a new mutation of Séan. Shaun is kinda forgivable to make it more intuitive for English speakers and avoid non-standard characters, but Shean!

With respect to legality, there is nothing inherently illegal about using a VPN in most countries, including the US and Canada. In other words, it's perfectly legal and often recommended by security organizations and government agencies.

The ethics of using a VPN is a completely different and personal issue and depends on how it's being used. In the context being discussed here, using a VPN almost certainly violates the terms and conditions of GCN+. I haven't read them in detail, or at all, but would be surprised if it's not mentioned. Some people have no issues whatsoever ignoring T&C's, other people not so much.

Personally, I don't use a VPN simply because I'm too damm lazy to figure out the process involved and cheap to pay the costs. Plus, there's nothing I don't already have access to that it would give me access to by using it.

That's my point. VPNs are fine; it is the content provider who is the target of the theft in these cases. It really isn't different than pirating copyrighted material like movies, or getting copies of software without paying the developer. Will you get caught? Most likely not, but it's what you do when nobody is looking that defines your character.

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"Go yell at an M&M"

Just extending the 'legality' discussion. The reason that GCN geoblocks some content is b/c they don't own the rights for that race for that country - which typically means that some other provider does own the rights for that race in that county. By using a VPN to spoof your location and receive the GCN 'broadcast' of an event geoblocked in your region, you are undermining the rights of that other provider who did pay for the distribution of that race in your region. I'm not saying here if your you should / should not use a VPN for this purpose, but I am pointing out that just b/c GCN can distribute (for example) the TdF in Europe, they can't do so in the US (b/c the US TdF rights are held by NBC). Thus, the argument that 'heck, I'm paying GCN so I should be able to watch all the content' fails to recognize this aspect of the event distribution rights.

Couching this in terms of theft and piracy is quite the stretch. At most it’s a violation of T&C (alas grey area as i previously mentioned), but there is no theft.

Take De Ronde van Vlaanderen for instance.

European broadcast rights holder is Eurosport /GCN. U.S. rights holder is Flo (at least most recently). The rights are for transmission of video, with each rights holder providing its respective commentary.

People living in North America and paying ES /GCN are literally paying (the European) rights holder for video content. ES / GCN does not suffer any form of theft because of the VPN viewing, because they are paid by the subscribers using ES / GCN.

People viewing the race via VPN and ES /GCN are also not accessing any of the content provided through Flo, so Flo suffers no theft of content. Where is this alleged “piracy” and “theft” coming from?

Granted, Flo may be aggrieved (b/c in its view, those viewers using VPN + ES / GCN should instead be paying Flo), but we should be very clear that nothing is stolen from Flo. Nor could ES / GCN claim theft of content, for they literally received proper compensation. There may be a contract issue between ES / GCN and their VPN users, but I doubt those content providers are all that miffed about subscribers asking to have the former take the latter’s money. Those certainly have bigger concerns (e.g. website such as Tiz, which actually engages in content theft).

Flo makes a business decision based on their expectation of viewing audience and increased subscriptions. Everyone who uses a VPN to avoid paying Flo, who themselves paid for the rights to the stream in North America, is indeed taking money from Flo: money that they had expected to receive. If *everyone* did this, then Flo loses money. The result of that is 1) Flo loses money because people lied about their location in order to avoid paying Flo, and 2) eventually neither Flo nor any other provider will pay for the NA rights, and the content creator will lose money and/or charge more for the rights in other countries and/or crack down on VPN usage.

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"Go yell at an M&M"

You’ll need to do much better than justifying your view on a legal /ethical issue on nothing more than an analysis of business decisions. And even then, your analysis of business decisions is not much more than hypotheticals taken to their absurd extreme.

As former head of compliance and ethics (now retired) for a Fortune 500 company, I can't tell you how many times I said this over the years.

IANAL, but the fact pattern you presented is no different from buying a new copy of cheaper overseas edition of a book (which used to cost 1/5 to 1/10 of what the corresponding new U.S. edition would cost), using that overseas edition in the U.S., and then reselling it in the U.S. at a price greater than what the overseas edition cost new but less than what a used copy of the U.S. edition would cost (or alternatively, straight-up importation of overseas editions). Not only is the U.S. distributor of that book cut out of the first sale, the resale of the overseas edition (new or used) also competes with the sale of the U.S. edition.

Question, a) in your opinion, should what is described above be legal; and b) is what is described above actually legal?

The issue at hand is a lot grayer than what many of you wish to acknowledge. I can at least acknowledge that it's a gray area (especially when it comes to the procurement of access of content intended for foreign consumption), but many here don't seem to appreciate the nuances.