Unfortunately not. We can’t always acquire Â鶹Éç iPlayer rights for every programme we broadcast. This is sometimes due to the cost involved in acquiring licences from third parties or maybe for other legal or contractual reasons. Sometimes we're only able to acquire the rights to stream a programme, but not to download it.
Here are some of the types of programmes that can be subject to rights restrictions:
- Film, sport and music – Sometimes rights agreements mean sporting events, live music events and films are only available for streaming on Â鶹Éç iPlayer (not for downloading). We may have to remove films, sporting footage or live music coverage from some programmes for which we haven’t been able to acquire the rights.
- Imported programmes – Programmes from overseas may not be available because our agreement with the rights holder doesn’t extend to putting them on Â鶹Éç iPlayer.
- Specific episodes in a series – Very occasionally, certain episodes from a series may not be available while others are. This is because we haven’t been able to acquire the rights for those individual episodes.
- News magazine programmes – Some news magazine programmes are unavailable on Â鶹Éç iPlayer for rights reasons. Many news bulletins and programmes are available for 24 hours, but may also be unavailable due to rights or technical problems.
On rare occasions, we may not be able to make programmes available due to technical faults or problems, for editorial or legal reasons or if there was an issue with the original recording.