Slashdot Mirror
BBC Chooses Microsoft DRM Platform
bazorg writes "The BBC has chosen Microsoft's DRM technology to limit the viewing of content downloaded from their website. These downloads would allow viewers to catch up on shows that were broadcast on the previous 7 days; they would be compatible only with Windows Media Player and a new product called 'iPlayer'. This iPlayer is not yet available for platforms other than MS Windows, which caused the Open Source Consortium (OSC) to file a complaint to national and EU authorities. 'The BBC aims to make its content as widely available as possible and has always taken a platform agnostic approach to its internet services. It is not possible to put an exact timeframe on when BBC iPlayer will be available for Mac users. However, we are working to ensure this happens as soon as possible and the BBC Trust will be monitoring progress on a six monthly basis.'"
is I have to pay for this junk through my "BBC Tax" even though I won't be able to use it. Here in the UK a TV license is compulsory if you have a TV that can receive a signal EVEN if you pay for a subscription service through someone like Sky or Virgin Media.
Despite the several hundred requests the BBC has received for a Linux iPlayer (so said one insider), the BBC is not planning to make iPlayer available for licence-fee payers who use Linux.
The BBC was working on a new open source / royalty free video Codec Dirac. I hope they did not drop the effort (looking at the projects websites makes me think there is still live to the project).
http://dirac.sourceforge.net/
http://schrodinger.sourceforge.net/
The BBC Trust is a seperate organisation whos job it is to monitor the BBC and ensure they're obeying their charter. They report their findings publicly, and if there's a scandal, then it usually results in the boss of the BBC getting the sack. In other words, the BBC Trust will check every 6 months if the BBC has made any effort to produce a linux format player (and whether they should be doing), and if people are still kicking up a stink about it, the public will get to know about it, and it the BBC's board of directors will be "in the shit".
I wrote my first program at the age of six, and I still can't work out how this website works.
Places to register complaints: http://www.bbc.co.uk/complaints/ http://www.bbc.co.uk/consumer/tv_and_radio/points_ of_view/index.shtml
Maybe report the BBC to Watchdog for dodgy business practices ;-):
http://www.bbc.co.uk/consumer/tv_and_radio/watchdo g/index.shtml
It will eventually have DRM and If I'm not mistaken, there are projects currently working on it. But the thing is, the DRM doesn't have to work by locking everything down. All it has to do is lock the content down. So it isn't exactly that open source DRM but rather DRM that will work with open source. It was explained to me that this is possible. I cannot seem to find the links to it but I remember a project who was working on a GPLed opensource product that institute DRM. It went something like a ssha encryption of the binary content and the provider generated an encrypted key based on your key which was based on your account information(from the provider). Then whatever player you were using needed a plugin that used another program to decrypt the media and stream it into the player.
I even had a discussion on slashdot with Bruce Perens where he said it was possible to lock down hardware and all with DRM in a similar manor. Of course he was talking about then non-existant revisions of the GPLv3 draft. So this might have changed. I haven't heard anything on it though.
"They presumably don't need a DRM solution - why not adopt what youtube has done - it's pretty difficult to download youtube stuff unless you're technically savvy enough to do major circumvention."
Or, unless you are technically savvy enough to go to any one of many websites like http://vixy.net/ and paste the address of the YouTube video into the provided box and have it automatically converted and downloaded for you.
Ah, maybe that's why the BBC didn't do that...
I am Homer of Borg. Resistance is Fut.. Mmmmmmmm, Donuts!
We had this entire discussion on Sunday (http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/06/22/2 08205) but to summarise:
You do not pay you licence fee to the BBC. You pay the government for the right to be able to receive television broadcasts from any source in any format. Read your licence.
The government funds part of the BBC providing it fulfills its charter and provides public service facilities for use during times of crisis.
Web streaming is NOT covered by the charter nor, therefore, by any funding provided by the government. You licence fee is totally irrelevant to this discussion
You are correct when you say that the BBC is restricting choice to those who use Windows systems - I am as unhappy with this decision as you are. However, they are free to provide web streaming in whatever format they choose with no regard to outside influence (either government or licence payers). They have chosen to stream to the largest possible user base that supports DRM (i.e. Windows). We are stuck with their decision - but from a business point of view it make sense.
DRM, or some other form of control over who can receive the data. is necessary in this instance. If they were to stream data around the world they would be breaking the terms of their own broadcasting licence and annoying other broadcasters in other countries. For example, if they are streaming coverage of the Olympic Games in near-real-time then they would be providing unfair competition to broadcasters in other countries.
Have a look at soylentnews.org for a different view
The BBC has been offering video downloads on their website for quite a while now and it is still not available for other platforms. Trying to communicate with the BBC about ETA etc. is virtually impossible. I live in the UK, where open source is not very popular, and often considered not to be reliable enough for business or education environments. Here, ICT education in secondary schools means learning MS Office applications. Many city councils and universities have partnership agreements with MS. Even learning how to make web pages seems not possible with MS Word if you follow the governement agencies' guidelines. So the BBC's decision use with MS' DRM is very much in-line with everything else in this country.
-- Neminem laede, immo omnes, quantum potes, iuva.
Unfortunately, as I understand it, the BBC has been pushed into using DRM not because providing free unrestricted content might harm the BBC's own commercial interests, but because it might harm their rivals' (eg ITV, Sky). The BBC's most recent charter review, where the government decides whether the BBC can continue to collect TV licence fee revenue, carefully scrutinised whether the BBC's free content offerings would "distort the market" (ie make it too hard for commercial rivals to compete). DRM is the price the BBC is having to pay to release its content over the internet without harming its rivals too much.
Personally, I think it's daft of the government: effectively they are telling the BBC it mustn't offer too good value for licence fee payers' money. As a licence fee payer, I'd like the best value for money possible, thankyou very much, and I don't care two hoots about ITV's or Sky's commercial interests!
I'm wondering if there's mileage in an anti-trust suit against the Beeb for this...
Smegma.
I recall the discussions about a GPLed DRM system also, and my recollection was that it was widely criticized for being impossible to achieve without a hardware module, or binary blob. At some point, you need the black box that does the magic and hides the keys from the user. Even if you pile on layers and layers of encryption onto the key (which is basically what AACS does), somewhere you have to decrypt the content in order to let the user view it. If you have a system that's open, where the code that's being executed at any given moment can be analyzed, then you're never going to be able to avoid letting the user get their hands on the key. (Or even more easily, just letting them get their hands on the decrypted content.)
Just to follow on your example, in such a system, the plugin would probably have to be a closed-source binary blob, or else you could just modify it to intercept and spit out the decryption key as it was being received from the provider. (I'm not trying to personally attack you -- what you created there was as good a DRM system as most of the real ones on the market, but it's running into the fundamental limitation of DRM.) It's all smoke and mirrors.
Anyway, after doing a little Googling, I think the "open source DRM" thing a while back was related to someone on the Gstreamer project discussing adding support for DRMed formats -- but it's still not clear how they'd accomplish that. Some people have pointed towards Sun's drm-opera project as one possible avenue, but AFAIK that's nothing but vaporware, and it too was widely criticized as being impossible when Jonathan Schwartz announced it. According to this article there have been two past attempts to create "open source DRM": one was OpenIPMP in 2002, another was Media-S, more recently.
OpenIPMP has a SourceForge project page, although the latest update was a year ago. Apparently there's some code that can be downloaded, but aside from that they are cagey on how it works, and heavy on buzzwords. Nothing about it makes me suspect that they have really discovered anything huge (and a DRM system that didn't rely on obscurity would be pretty huge). If anyone is familiar with the project and wants to comment, I'm genuinely curious.
Media-S apparently evolved out of an effort to make a "Secure OGG" format. They at least have an FAQ. Basically, they're going for the straightforward 'binary blob' route:
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Yes, you are. The DRM'd content is for licensed TV shows from studios. It will be available only for a week after the original episode has aired, so people can catch up in case they missed it on TV. This way people can continue to watch the rest of the season if they missed an episode, and the content producers can still sell it on DVDs to make more money off their content.
I think you're missing the point of my question. The BBC does online streaming right now. Are you saying they fund this via BBC Worldwide, not via the license fee? Because I was under the impression that they specifically asked for the license fee to be increased so that they could do more online, and are planning on spending far more on digital than BBC Worldwide takes in.
Specifically, the BBC made a grand total of £6.9 million in profits from BBC Worldwide last year according to their official figures linked to above, and the planned spending on iPlayer and related digital offerings as per the Guardian page is £1.2 billion. Explain to me again how BBC Worldwide is funding iPlayer?
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
The BBC has asked for the licence fee to be increased because of digital TV broadcasting, not only online streaming, although they do intend to expand the latter as well. Digital TV broadcasting accounts for the lion's share of the £1.2 billion as it requires a huge investment in new (at least for the BBC) technology. If you read my link to BBC Worldwide it clearly states "During 2005/06 BBC Worldwide achieved sales of £784 million. It increased its profit before interest and tax to £89 million." which is somewhat more that the £6.9 million that you are quoting. How much do you think that they are paying for iPlayer?
Have a look at soylentnews.org for a different view