it seems that today the BBC has just made it avaliable for people to watch some BBC channels from the internet.
BBC1:
http://support.bbc.co.uk/multicast/rams/uni/bbc1.ram
BBC2:
http://support.bbc.co.uk/multicast/rams/uni/bbc2.ram
BBC4:
http://support.bbc.co.uk/multicast/rams/uni/video16.ram
BBC News 24:
http://support.bbc.co.uk/multicast/rams/uni/news24.ram
i think this is very useful and the quality is surprisingly good. needs real player though. it doesnt bring up some difficult questions about the license fee though.