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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.'"
Windows and OS X!
What do you mean "What about all the others?" There are others? Er, when you say "Future platforms" you mean the next version of Windows, right?
We might need to go back to the drawing board on this one...
Seriously, what are they trying to "protect"
The phrase "more better" is acceptable English. suck it grammar Nazis
Don't use DRM. As a licence payer, UK tax-payer and voter I want my state broadcaster to, well, broadcast the media, not spend my money on restricting who can see it, and probably inconveniencing the people they WANT to see it in the process.
Ah, suck it up. It's a tax, always has been a tax. Finding a random situation where you personally believe you pay enough doesn't change the fact that you're paying for a public broadcaster. The BBC is a useful thing to have around, like schools and hospitals and welfare it's a good thing even if you might not use it personally.
Pay your licence and be happy that not everything in Britain is driven by commercial interests.
I thought leaving it out was considered the solution to DRM.
(IANAL)
It doesn't and never will. DRM and openness are fundamentally incompatible. You can't have an "open source DRM" system, because it would expose the fundamental flaw of DRM -- that it's trying to keep something from you that you already have. [1]
I think what's really galling people is that the BBC is using DRM at all.
[1] It might be possible to build an "open source" DRM system, if you were only talking about 'open' software, and it was just a wrapper around some sort of hardware system that actually held the keys. But that's why I said "openness" and DRM are incompatible -- in a truly open computer platform there's absolutely no way to enforce DRM against a savvy user that doesn't want it enforced on them. The only way DRM works is if you have a 'black box' somewhere, either in software or hardware.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
As opposed to the millions they'd get from people who use Windows?
I'm not sure I understand why everyone is outraged at the fact that the Beeb is not catering to an OS that has less than 2% of the desktop market? I'd be more outraged if we were talking OS X here, but that's not even the case.
I surmise that they need DRM because the BBC Trust requires that only TV tax-paying Britons can watch the taxpayer-funded content. If that's the case, then I don't see what the alternative would be for them, since there are no "free" file formats that support DRM in a stable, tested way.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
"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."
I completely agree that the BBC has a duty to make this available to anyone that wants it, thus choosing an open platform for it. However, I disagree with your sentiment on the BBC tax in general. The TV license is why the UK has a healthy non-commerical broadcaster that produces some very good quality material that maybe otherwise wouldn't be commercially viable. That you pay for a subscription service in addition is completely irrelevant. You still receive all the BBC channels and it is not the BBC's fault that you chose to give money to Sky or Virgin in addition.
Non-commercially funded TV is necessary as a counterweight to commercial TV, particularly as commercial media is consolidated onto fewer and fewer hands. While I won't claim that Non-commercially funded TV is non-biased, it certainly has a different bias.
If you suggest that it should rather be included as part of the regular income tax, then I might agree. The TV license makes no distinction as to people's ability to pay the license, and almost anyone has a TV. Yes, it would be unfair on the people who do not have a TV, but no system is fair to everyone.
> I don't believe it's yet possible, for example, to watch DRM-protected WMV files on Linux, even if you have the W32 codecs pack installed.
... no one really cared enough to actually bother.
Your phrasing means you don't know. I don't know either, and I use Linux exclusively. That shows you how important playing DRMed WMV files is.
DRM is impossible to implement correctly because it is theoretically impossible to do. The only reason any DRM system isn't cracked is because no one has cared enough yet to crack it.
The earliest versions of WMV DRM probably were just so easy to crack that someone did it without really trying, but when they fixed the most obvious holes
If WMV DRM gets used on anything people actually want to watch (like the BBC), it will be cracked.
vi ~/.emacs # I'm probably going to Hell for this.
But surely if you pay the tax you should have unlimited acess to BBC content. So why should the BBC adopt DRM to limit access, it's public.
A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.
Because they don't have a monitor.
Because they already have x86 hardware.
Because they like good packaging tools, like APT.
Because they like hacking the OS.
Because they can't afford an Apple.
Because they have everything they want working fine, and don't need any Apple applications.
Because they hate spaces in important file/directory names.
Because they use Linux servers and like doing development on the same platform.
The masses are the crack whores of religion.
This is a lot like the "They came for the jews, but I wasn't a jew..." argument. You can dodge the bullet for a while, but eventually, you have to take a stand. The sooner you start, the more time you'll have to find others who'll stand with you.
You can't expose the keys, but any DRM system that's based on a secret implementation rather than cryptography is going to be cracked.
Even ones based on cryptography are going to be cracked, since there's no way to make a cryptographically secure DRM system. The end user has to have both the ciphertext and the key, in order to use the content at all -- therefore they can get the plaintext. It's often not exactly trivial, because the keys can be obscured, but there's no mathematical security there. It's always just a "secret implementation." Remove the secrecy and you break the system, period.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
It's the government. That means it has a responsibility to all citizens, not just the ones who use commercial OSs! Ignoring Linux (and other) users by refusing to use open standards is like ignoring disabled people by refusing to provide wheelchair access to government buildings*. Would you be equally okay with that?
Why? At this point, there's probably at least as many users of Linux as there are of OS X.
Don't use DRM, and accept that non-Britons might have access to it. It should be obvious that it's better to give it to extra people for free than to restrict it from people who already have a claim to it! After all (and here my American bias shows through), the whole point of creating a work is to show it to people, not to hide it from them; copyright and licensing is only a necessary(?) evil to begin with!
(* aside from the unfortunate implication that Linux users are "disabled," which they're not -- DRM users are the disabled ones!)
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
This country is becoming more and more like the former GDR every day.
Most of the countries in the western world are. As long as the GDR and USSR existed, the western world had to distinguish itself, in terms of "freedom" and similar. All that isn't necessary anymore, and governments can now fuck up their countries just as they like. As a bonus, we are invited to realize that politicians of any color are still all the same.
DRM is theoretically impossible. That's true. Unfortunately, DRM that can only be inexpensively hacked with an allowed player and recapture equipment is probably entirely possible. What that means is this: It's possible to create a DRM system that will prevent people from playing videos on Linux. It'll still be possible to crack the DRM and extract the video, but you'll have to use an approved player in the process.
I don't know enough about the TPM design and Vista to know if they have implemented that sort of DRM. Any video format that can run on Windows XP is probably susceptible to a key interception attack. But don't underestimate the potential for DRM in the future - it's an excellent technology to create platform lock-in, which is why Microsoft and Apple think it's so great.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
As long as content providers continue to dance around DRM distribution bittorrent sites will thrive.
nuff said
This just makes me sad. This is video that is paid for by British citizens. Publicly funded content. And still, the PHBs feel the need to lock it to specific devices, limit the number of views, and keep track of who watched what when.
As a Linux user, I just lost a lot of respect for the BBC.
[alk]
Or they could make the media available in an openly documented format, that's already supported by multiple platforms.
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This is more like the "listen again" feature they've been offering to radio listeners for some time: an extra, not a replacement.
An extra which I am paying for, yet have been explicitly locked out from. I should also point out that I can listen to the "listen again" stuff on Linux (ok, it's not using a Free codec, but it's actually possible to use the service) - why should TV be different?
So they should say Windows, Mac and Linux? Or should that be Windows, Mac, Linux and FreeBSD? Or Windows, Mac, Linux, FreeBSD and my toy OS that I wrote in CS class?
Or how about just releasing it in an open format so that everyone can access it...
You have to draw the line somewhere, and whether some people here like it or not, Linux users represent a vanishingly small part of the potential audience. I am happy for the BBC to spend a reasonable amount of money adding useful new features that are available to almost everyone.
I don't particularly want the BBC to spend huge amounts of money developing custom software - they can just use Free file formats and let people use the software that already exists. Also, Windows only has a near monopoly in the desktop segment - other devices, such as PDAs, phones, etc run any number of other operating systems.
highly vocal minority who deliberately chose to go down a different route to most people knowing that this sort of issue was likely and then complain afterwards.
Do you honestly believe that promoting a monopoly desktop is in the public interest? We've seen what that leads to - shoddy expensive products. Doesn't the BBC have a duty to look at the long term rammifications of only supporting a convicted monopolist and locking everyone else out instead of purely focussing on their commercial interests?
http://blog.nexusuk.org
Jeez - I've been reading your thread, and I'm blown away by how many people just don't get it.
I _HAVE_ to pay my TV license because there is a TV sitting in my house. But for the next 6 months, I will not be on the same continent as my house. Or my TV.
The BBC are making the content available on-line, but they ARE locking me out, even though I'm paying and can't watch the initial screening. Their reason for doing so is not technical. There are no technical obstacles to making the content available to me. Their reasons are business based.
What's more, is that they are choosing to support and enrich a convicted monopolist who is STILL arguing with the EU over remedies. Should a government funded outfit really be allowed to encourage this behaviour?
This being
The BBC has very strict limits on endorsing or even mentioning the work of any private businesses, their products or political groups. For instance, DJs on BBC radio cannot refer to "iPods" they must say "mp3 player", this prevents the beeb taking a side (with Apple) in the mp3 player market and yet they are taking a side by using a product that cannot be used with Apple computers (they may be intending to support Apple but that is *at least* 2 years from now, if ever.
If this were really happening, what would you think?