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Anti-DRM Activists Take On the BBC
An anonymous reader writes "Activists from Binary Freedom Boston have launched a campaign calling on the BBC to release their content online without DRM or proprietary formats. You might remember the BBC asking us about this earlier and even though the public chose not to use DRM by a landslide, they still decided to use it. EMI and Amazon have already ditched DRM. How long before the BBC does?"
DRM free content? Absolutely. I have to pay my TV license every year for the BBC. For the most part, I think it is value for money. The BBC news site is worth the license fee all by itself. For comparison, I pay about a third of the cost of a license on a Slashdot subscription each year and Slashdot is less than a third of the quality.
However, I'm of the opinion that if you're going to force people to pay for a service through a tax, then the products of that government service should be free in the BSD style sense of the word. In fact, I'd go as far as saying that this needs to be codified in to law. In fact, we may already have in the Freedom of Information Act 2000.
Having just read the first section of the act, you could make a questionable legal argument that if you make a request for the unDRMED content and they fail to give you that version they are in breach of the act. If you have to buy a Windows machine just to watch one of their publicly broadcast snippets I'd say that obstructs the request for the information sufficiently for it to become unlawful. No other department is free to restrict requests in that manner!
We've already paid for the service so give us the bloody content in a usable format!
Simon
But what about people who don't pay for a TV license? This will allow THEM access to shows YOU'VE paid for... What about if the only DRM is you entering your TV license code, with no restrictions on what you can do with it, bar removing the protection? For you, the media would be free, but for those without TV licenses (who have no right to the media), it's not free. The BBC has a mandate to protect the interests of the license fee payer, which means limiting the availability of the media to those folks alone, and charging others for it.
The problem is royalties for net based distribution, the morons at equity (the union) refuse to recognize that repeat fees are unworkable in the digital age.
It will change gradually as those who stick to the outmoded royalties model find themselves without work. If these guys really want to protest - target equity
The BBC's broadcasts are already free, via satellite, in Europe. I do not pay a UK license fee but can watch BBC, and the other UK channels, via Sky and without the use of any Sky subscription. I do not think that the content being available to anyone else in the world is such a major issue. The material has already been funded and you pay for your internet access so no-one is losing money.
Have a look at soylentnews.org for a different view
The BBC has actually done this at least once in the past. A while ago, they released recordings of the BBC Orchestra playing Beethoven Symphonies Nos. 6-9 in MP3 format, for free on their website. I jumped at the chance and downloaded them, and still listen to those recordings occasionally.
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I see no reason why the BBC should award a monopoly to any company and their media format for material owned by the BBC. It is not the job of the BBC to support Microsoft, Real or any other closed format exclusively.
I note with interest that the various free/open media formats are available on every platform and do not require license payments. The only reason not to use a free/open format is DRM and if that is the case here then the BBC is making a wrong choice for both technical and financial reasons.
Part of the problem is that a lot of the "BBC's" content isn't actually owned by the BBC because they just buy it in from 3rd parties (I'm talking original programming here, not stuff bought from the US etc).
The smart thing to do (depending on your attitude towards these things) would be to take the Apple-esque route and make all of the BBC-owned content available sans-DRM (but maintaining the existing geo-IP blocks for non UK users as is required) and then make everything else available DRM-encumbered with clear information explaining why this is the case and who to contact if you want to bitch about it.
To be honest, I do believe that if they had the choice, the BBC would open up all of their archives for DRM-free download to UK citizens, but it's not always as simple as that.
As a license fee payer myself, I do not care if third parties have access. Good for them!
Although some people will disagree they're more the old moaning grandparent types with their "because I had to pay you do to!" speeches. These old farts need to stop complaining and realize theres a lot of us Brits outside the country wanting to watch the BBC.
This is really what the BBC has needed for a long time. It never made any sense to me that I have to pay this license every year but if I want to watch something I missed I have to buy it on DVD? Whats the point of a yearly subscription if I can't access the content I paid to get produced.
I'm not a big TV watcher anyway as I spent most my time refreshing Slashdot. What I would really like to see from the BBC is high quality video via BitTorrent. Hell they wouldn't even need to use their own tracker they could practically host the stuff for the cost of a few internet connections.
This has always been the way. The BBC operates as an internal and external company, with BBC World being entirely self-funding (and must do so under the BBC charter). The other main reason for the geoblocking on online BBC media is the fact that the BBC often are not the sole copyright owner with many productions being produced by studios for the BBC who often retain some rights.
If people can watch the BBC legally without having to pay for it, or without the BBC being reimbursed in a way that doesn't break their charter, then people will stop paying their TV licenses, which means the BBC will get less funding, which means its quality will suffer.
I totally agree that the BBC's back-catalogue should be made available to license payers to watch, but without some sort of mechanism to ensure that viewers actually have a license fee, when such a measure is possible, then that breaks their charter.
The BBC is legally obligated to do all it can to protect the content and ensure it's only available to those who have paid their license fees. If DRM didn't exist, there would be *no* online media from the BBC. As DRM does exist, they are capable of making sure, or at least doing the best they can, that the viewers are paying their license fees (such as restricting playback to the UK, where if you have a PC capable of watching it, you must have a license).
Hosting it on BitTorrent, while making it easy for license fee payers to watch it, also makes it easy for non-paying folks, which is a no-go. People will stop subscribing to their advertising-supported non-UK BBC network, which means loss in revenue. The BBC has to do all it can to stay the BBC. Giving its content away is not going to do that, so the BBC won't. It's not their fault, it's the charter, which is in place to ensure it's as good as it can be.
The BBC should sell their licenses abroad and make a way for those licenses to enable the buyers to download and watch BBC shows, while stopping those who haven't. This isn't the RIAA we're talking about here, they actually charge a decent rate for their products, and they're not getting rich off ages-old business models. The BBC are the good guys, remember?
Why can't we easily download NPR content in a friendly format?
It seems like their audio is WMV or RP and the download links are buried. I don't want to launch a proprietary player from my browser or otherwise, thankyourverymuch.
And they were jumped on by the regulators and the BBC Trustees. The BBC had to commit to them to not do any such thing in the future.
(It was the full set of symphonies, actually).
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You should check out Zattoo. It's an internet TV service. Right now it is only available in Switzerland, however, a couple of weeks ago I signed up to be notified when it becomes available in the UK. Yesterday I got an email asking me to become one of the first in the UK to use Zattoo.
I signed up, downloaded the Linux client (LGPL) and can now watch 7 BBC channels plus France 24, TVE Internacional and TV Polonia!
No mention from Zattoo of the need for a TV license, so not sure if this is the case.
What first had me wondering about this was when I heard (a couple of years back I think) that BBC would stop some international broadcasts it was doing, apparantly because it would save them money to do so. It just seems so very short-sighted.
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But DRM does not stop the videos from being uploaded either. It is precicely as effective; that is to say, not at all.
Giving someone the ciphertext and the key that decrypts it is exactly the same as giving them the plaintext. It has to be, otherwise how could they watch the content?
That's because they have no way of changing that without denying license payers in the UK access to the content for free.
That isn't true. Until about two years ago they encrypted their broadcast and allowed UK residents to view it for free by making available smartcards to them.
However, they did so in association with the commercial TV companies (sharing their card), and apparently that deal was so expensive to them that they decided to end it.
But that does not mean there is "no way". E.g. here in the Netherlands the same (public broadcaster encrypting, cards available without subscription fee) is still being done. We have the same problem, though: the company doing the sat encryption is increasing their service fees all the time.
I think it would be far more valuable to Britain to venture out looking for cultural influence from outside. Don't get me wrong I am not attacking Britain, but we are long past the days of the British Empire and there is too much naval gazing and self congratulation in nations throughout the world without more pushing of their own views. Countries would have more benefit if they looked beyond themselves for their own growth.
Put it this way - I'm Irish (and that is not the motivation for my post
We have benefitted from this so on that point I agree - but don't you think it is a much better position to be in to pick and choose outside influence? Is it better than mandating into your national broadcaster that they should be pushing "the British way/view" as you put it?
That sounds more like wartime propaganda to me, and not just a little arrogant. 59 million people are only a very small slice of six billion.
I never get used to these constant resurrections
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That said the TV licensing people are very very aggressive. They seem to think a residential address not having a licence is evidence of infringement in itself.
Then they suddenly became very friendly with Microsoft (not sure if it was connected with the change of management after Blair kicked the existing one out by saying bad things about Iraq or whether Bill came by with a sack of cash) - they developed iPlayer which was based on Windows Media Player, so now Linux and even Mac users were left out in the cold. In effect the BBC started discriminating against people unwilling or unable to pay the Microsoft Tax.
The BBC have lately promised to also make the content available on MacOS X eventually, but no dates have been fixed. In the end for it to work on the Mac they will have to offer their content either in an open DRM-free format or use Apples DRM. If they stick with the DRM route it will mean Linux and other OS users will be out of luck. FWIW (not a lot probably) here's a petition to make iPlayer cross platform (with a name like iSomething you'd expect it to work on a mac!).
No, I think it's more complicated than that, as I understand it the world service still recieves FCO funding, however BBC world has to be self funding.
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The problem is a simple one. In the UK, in order to have the legal right to watch any television, including non-BBC television, you are obliged to subscribe to the BBC. It is compulsory, its a criminal offense not to.
It is as if, for you guys in the US, in order for you to be allowed to read any newspaper, you were legally obliged to buy a subscription to the NY Times, whether you wanted to read it or did read it or not. It is as if you are legally obliged to buy a copy of Windows in order to own a computer and run Linux or MacOS, whether you install and use it or not. Whether you even can install and use it or not. You buy computer, Mac or barebones. Fine, pay fee to MS.
Now, the BBC has no corresponding obligations back to you. And there is no way you can say, no I would like to choose an alternative supplier of TV. You cannot, for instance, say that, since the BBC does not support your chosen OS, but Sky does, you are going to subscribe to Sky instead. No, you subscribe to Sky AS WELL.
Whether the BBC does DRM is neither here nor there - its no more objectionable, nor less so, than any other company doing DRM.
What is appalling, and a total denial of human rights, is that it forces people to subscribe, whether they want or can access its content or not, so they can get to different content they do want and can access.
Now, in reply to this point, we ordinarily get people saying that the BBC is excellent. Ie they like it. They can receive its content. They want to subscribe. Its just irrelevant to the human rights issue. I should have the right to watch TV without paying for the BBC if I do not want to watch it.
Tell me again why everyone else has to be compelled to subscribe?
I'd consider the BBC to be a subscription service.
There's a big difference between "pay for an item and want the ability to play it without restriction" DRM and "pay for an item and the ability to play it while you pay your subscription".
DRM works - at least it has a purpose - for the subscription model. Just like I (in the UK) can't even view the Showtime website to check on some of the shows I've seen from the Showtime network, and HBO crack down on non-subscribers accessing their shows (although I get to see them on UK TV about a year behind), and I can't view the Battlestar Galactica extra scenes from the US Sci-Fi website (it tells me I am not in the USA therefore have no access to it - and no anonymous proxying works for some reason), I don't see why a bunch of Americans, French, Japanese should be able to get hold of unrestricted content that I as a UK citizen and a dutiful payer of the TV license in the UK have technically paid for.
After all, someone has to pay for the content at some point. It stands to reason if the content is subscription-based, some kind of rights management needs to be in place.
DRM may well be in place for BBC because they are protecting British citizens and license-fee payers' rights to the media. If you did not have to pay the license fee to download the content for free, the BBC would not get any money every year; that's what the license fee is piled into. So it has to be protected somehow.
The BBC's main product is the BBC terrestrial broadcast. DRM measures are possible on this, such as the encryption and decoder mechanisms used by the cable companies. The BBC does not use them. Anybody can buy (or build, it's not that hard!) their own TV receiver and watch TV broadcasts in their own home. There is no authentication that the person watching TV has paid a license fee. The BBC's charter does not require DRM and DRM is not currently used.
License fees are enforced through legal means, as a deterrent - most people have TV licenses, and they know which houses don't have licenses, so they just check up on those houses from time to time to make sure that they don't have a TV, and take them to court if necessary.
There is no reason why exactly the same lightweight method would not work for the downloaded content - access could easily be limited to the UK only, and the rest can be handled by catching the handful of violators (there are not many undersea cables coming into the country, and arranging IP-address-based filters on all of them would be quite simple for an organisation with the BBC's connections).
No offence, but I'm glad you're not in charge of the media in this country. I've noticed time and time again that BBC and Channel 4 content (i.e. the public-service channels) are of a consistently higher standard than the programming on ITV (which has gone downhill very much in the last few years) and Channel 5 (which was never good to begin with). I also think it's telling that even if you include all of the satellite channels available in the UK, the ones which consistently deliver the highest-quality programming are BBC 3 and BBC 4.
... it being fairly bad. It has improved in some ways, but has degraded elsewhere to match it. This is more to do with poor management in the changeover than anything else - the track operators in particular have been set up so that they still are monopolies in their area. Compare this to the SNCF in France where the trains are nationalised but run competently.
State monopolies are not invariably inferior to programming from media companies. Assuming you're from the UK (which I presume you are, because you know that the BBC isn't part of the state, which, tbh, most non-UK people assume it is) you surely remember the directory enquiries scandal? We had cheap reliable directory enquiries with an easy to remember number - now we have a thousand and one directory enquiries lines and all of the well known lines are much more expensive than what they replaced.
Another example, the train system, granted, it was fairly bad before it was denationalised but now ten years later on, the forward march of progress under the private companies has lead to
Basically, what I'm saying is, denationalising utilities and breaking up state protected monopolies are not always a good thing - there are plenty of cases where they have been - but if there's nothing wrong with the service to begin with, don't even think about it. Television and beer are about the only two areas where Britain can be said to have something close to the best in the world - let's not degrade the quality of one of them! Let's put results over rhetoric here. Also, wouldn't your view point imply that the NHS should be dismantled, seeing as if you call the BBC a monopoly (which it isn't, now that I think about it) the NHS would definitely fall under that banner?