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BBC Episodes Legally Available Via Peer To Peer
Kript writes "According to the BBC they are going to make a number of their shows available on the Azureus network. A number of old favorites will be available such as Red Dwarf, Doctor Who and even Little Britain."
I have not RTFA. I'm wondering if Warner Home Video will lay the hammer down on me if I want to watch Red Dwarf in this manner...being in the U.S. and Warner Home Video being the U.S. distributor of many BBC programs.
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But this is not what they promised to do. As a British Licensefee payer I expect them to open up their content on UK filesharing networks, as they promised. Offering DRM'd content to overseas markets is not part of their charter. Making money should be a secondary concern to their primary purpose - delivering good tv to a British audience.
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It's also only available in the US. Those of us in the UK, who are paying £130 to the BBC each year and funded many of these programs when they were originally made would quite like to be able to download them too, especially since the BBC Charter says they must do whatever they can to make their material available to the British public...
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This is yet another attempt to curtail my rights online. Azureus has sold its soul to the content mafia and is attempting to destroy the Bittorrent community. Utorrent has also sold out to Hollywood fascists. The way I see it, corporate software is the problem here. Do you ever notice native Linux torrent clients don't have this problem? Thank the gods for *nix torrent clients, like rTorrent and Deluge. If you're still on Winblows, sorry charlie. That's what happens when you let Micro$oft and other proprietary Nazis on your box. To all the corporate whores who want a piece of my upload bandwidth to further your goals of DRM, I say "Fuck you". Fuck co-optation and selling out; your infected files will go straight to /dev/null, assholes.
It seems to me that they're already delivering good tv to a British audience via a technology known as 'broadcast'. I would gladly trade places with you. 99% of current American television is utter mindless crap. About the only TV I watch these days is the smattering of BBC programs that PBS airs, including the BBC news, which along with the Canadian CBC news (I'm close to the border) is about the only source of reality-based news on the air in the colonies these days.
Or maybe it just lowers the barrier to entry of the market.
Right now the money makers are distributors. And you get the to choose your stuff stuff mostly from distributors (you buy channel packages).
With this kind of deal, other content providers who have no deals with big distributors could enter the game, and the competition could be over content, and maybe price, and not over distribution channels. It could be a nice thing for the guy who actually buys the stuff.
the BBC Charter says they must do whatever they can to make their material available to the British public
Does it say "for free"? Not flaming you, just curious. Or at least, does it say "at no additional cost other than your license"? I'm also curious as to how this relates to BBC shows that air in the US on public TV at a later time. For example, they air tons of old British comedies (including that hilarious EastEnders show) that are several years out of date. Am I right in guessing these episodes aren't currently available in the UK? I wonder how that fits with the aforementioned duty.
The new problem is how much software can I possibly install to watch content? I happen to use iTunes so that I can watch content on my Mac and PC. I already find it inconvenient that I can not watch content in an open source operating system. Now I'm supposed to add additional bloat to my Windows install for Amazon's service, iTunes, this Azerus pay service, along with any other vendor entering the ring. I usually watch DVDs on my PC anyway so these download services are great in one sense. I no longer have to go to the store or buy and wait. (well download time) I don't have a problem with DRM that protects content in itself, but I do have a problem with the lack of versatility in devices and operating systems which can PLAY this content.
I suppose we should just accept that not everyone likes iTunes. If you don't like windows or own a Mac, it would be rather inconvenient. Its one of the many hurdles I face with MidnightBSD and I'm sure the Linux community feels the same way.
Still it is nice they are distributing content.
What we really need are some new laws that force companies to make their content available on multiple services so that there isn't a monopoly. This would also have the benefit of possibly putting it into different DRM formats which might be more acceptable to some. Imagine if only walmart sold movies. That's what we get now. Amazon sells star trek episodes, but Apple does not. Apple has some exclusive content on iTunes that amazon does not have. (unbox) More competition *could* keep content prices low.
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