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?"

Comments

Freedom of information act may already cover this

[Ckwop]

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

Wrong for both technically and financial reasons

[geoff lane]

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.

Ownership of content

[Spad]

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.

What about NPR?

[freelunch]

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.

Re:Freedom of information act may already cover th

[bentcd]

What makes you thinkthe small island of Britain has a right to push cultural influence outside of its own borders? This question puzzles me. Why should they not have this right? If freedom of speech is important on a domestic level, why would it not be equally important on an international one? If the content turns out of be of no interest to the world at large, they'll just ignore it. (Although my opinion is that the BBC produces content of sufficiently high quality that it will not, in fact, be totally ignored.)

I think it would be far more valuable to Britain to venture out looking for cultural influence from outside. This seems to be a false dilemma. Surely, it is possible both to export culture and to import it at the same time.

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. It will be difficult to look beyond oneself for cultural input if everyone around you is jealously guarding all of their goods. My suggestion is basically that Britain not prevent others from looking to it should they so choose.

Is it better than mandating into your national broadcaster that they should be pushing "the British way/view" as you put it? I am not sure where, or how, I "put" that. I am suggesting that Britain should spend money to make their cultural production available to the world at large. How they go about doing this is certainly an interesting question, but I don't think that I even hinted that the solution might be "force Brazilians at gunpoint to watch Shooting Stars". If I suggested anything then it might have been, considering the context of this debate, "make BBC content available on the internet without DRM".