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BBC Threatened Over iPlayer Format
greengrass sends us to coverage in The Register of the Open Source Consortium's threatened anti-trust challenge against the BBC over its use of Windows Media format in its on-demand service, iPlayer. From the article: "The OSC will raise a formal complaint with UK broadcast and telecoms watchdog Ofcom next week, and has vowed to take its accusations to the European Competition Commission if domestic regulators do not act. The OSC compared the situation to the European Commission's prosecution of Microsoft over its bundling of Windows Media Player with Windows."
Is this really your idea of freedom?
How about just "not demanding" it? You are free to "do without" the content... but that's not a concept that today's society understands...
If no one wants it, it will go away. Otherwise, it also looks like a bunch of whinging.
step 1: in soviet russia, step 1 you step 2: over 9000 steps step 2: ??? step 3: Profit
Nope, because that would be stupid. They have some kind of responsibility to broadcast things in a reasonably mainstream method - which is why they couldn't switch entirely to digital in 2002 because it would make it more mainstream and cause more devices to support it.
How many people can read hex if only you and dead people can read hex?
So a government organization should not be allowed to do what it thinks is best without allowing some open source zealot to impose his software on them by legal harrassment? What a free world you want for the rest of us, twitter.
How about the freedom to choose the right tool for the job for yourself withough havine some whiney little peon thrusting his 'free solution' upon you?
While we are at it, what free, open source video format allows you the same DRM protection that is built in to WMP? I really hope you can answer this question, because you can bet that in the production of their content the BBC has entered in to some agreements that will require some form of DRM for redistribution online.
People who pay their taxes deserve to be able to watch the results without having to pay the M$ tax.
Guess what, at least 90% of the people who will want to use this already have Windows and to them this is by far the most convenient solution. Why? Because even when you give it away for free almost nobody feels like bothering with Linux.
Also, aren't there already Linux applications that can play WMP content?
The BBC would be better off declaring DRM a sham and nullifying all previous commitments. Governments can do that kind of thing, because they are the ultimate keepers of copyright and the public interest to begin with. When the law violates public interests, as it so obviously does here, the law is out of whack and needs to be fixed.
So the open source approach to DRM is nullifying commitments and overturning laws?
Hmm. Well, thanks anyway. You really don't have what I need so I'm going to have to get my software from a closed source company like Microsoft or Apple. The software is still in beta, but at least the BBC doesn't have to overturn laws in order to distribute content.