iview-proxy

A proxy web app that serves ABC iView content outside of the iView webplayer, avoiding intrusive data harvesting.

There's also a cool Android fork located here.

Notes

Privacy Badger blocks the playback URL of ABC iView video playlists because of cross-origin playback, so whitelist that URL when it's flagged otherwise videos will refuse to play.

Purpose

This project has two main goals:

Avoid as much account authentication as possible to watch ABC iView content,
Avoid providing as much data as possible to iView to stop data harvesting.

Despite being aptly warned, the ABC has taken a forceful approach to collecting ABC iView data. This app seeks to remedy this by obtaining iView medias' m3u8 playlists, and isolating them to a locked-down media player, completely free of any analytics tracking.

How does it work?

Search

The search function on iView is riddled with analytics tracking:

{
	"requests": [
		{
			"indexName": "ABC_production_iview_web",
			"params": "highlightPreTag=%3Cais-highlight-0000000000%3E&highlightPostTag=%3C%2Fais-highlight-0000000000%3E&getRankingInfo=true&clickAnalytics=true&analytics=true&userToken=anonymous-60451354-4525-401b-9a54-3e18fa480cd5&facetFilters=playable%3A%20-false&query=s&facets=%5B%5D&tagFilters="
		},
		{
			"indexName": "ABC_production_iview_web",
			"params": "highlightPreTag=%3Cais-highlight-0000000000%3E&highlightPostTag=%3C%2Fais-highlight-0000000000%3E&getRankingInfo=true&clickAnalytics=true&analytics=true&userToken=anonymous-60451354-4525-401b-9a54-3e18fa480cd5&facetFilters=playable%3A%20-false&query=s&hitsPerPage=6&filters=docType%3A%20category%20OR%20docType%3A%20channel&ruleContexts=iview_categories&facets=%5B%5D&tagFilters="
		},
		{
			"indexName": "ABC_production_iview_web",
			"params": "highlightPreTag=%3Cais-highlight-0000000000%3E&highlightPostTag=%3C%2Fais-highlight-0000000000%3E&getRankingInfo=true&clickAnalytics=true&analytics=true&userToken=anonymous-60451354-4525-401b-9a54-3e18fa480cd5&facetFilters=playable%3A%20-false&query=s&hitsPerPage=8&filters=docType%3A%20Program&ruleContexts=iview_programs&page=0&facets=%5B%5D&tagFilters="
		},
		{
			"indexName": "ABC_production_iview_web",
			"params": "highlightPreTag=%3Cais-highlight-0000000000%3E&highlightPostTag=%3C%2Fais-highlight-0000000000%3E&getRankingInfo=true&clickAnalytics=true&analytics=true&userToken=anonymous-60451354-4525-401b-9a54-3e18fa480cd5&facetFilters=playable%3A%20-false&query=s&hitsPerPage=8&filters=docType%3A%20VideoEpisode%20AND%20NOT%20subType%3A%20feature%20AND%20NOT%20subType%3A%20livestream&ruleContexts=iview_episodes&page=0&facets=%5B%5D&tagFilters="
		}
	]
}

So iview-proxy disables it all, and locks down iView's search to the bare-minimum, keeping your data safe.

Watching

When you watch a video on the normal iView site, all sorts of data is sent back to iView and third parties, which is concerning to those who care about their privacy. See here.

iview-proxy calls only show/series metadata APIs to get the video info, and acts as if it is a web scraper of sorts. Once it has the video source for a show, it plays it in a non-custom video.js player, completely free of any analytics tracking.

Node JS

Download and install Node JS from here
Verify its installation by opening a terminal (or CMD/PowerShell for Windows users), and run this command:
```
node
```
You should enter the Node JS interpreter.

Type
```
.exit
```
to leave.

Setup

The actual app is contained in the src directory.

Install required dependencies
```
npm install
```
Start the server
```
npm start
```
or
```
node .
```
Navigate to localhost:1984 in a browser to access the app.

Docker

Build the docker image:
```
cd src
docker build -t iview-proxy .
```

Start a container with that image

docker run --rm -it -p 1984:1984 iview-proxy

Navigate to localhost:1984 in a browser to access the app.

gdunstone/iview-proxy