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.'"

Comments

Don't worry, it will support all platforms

[Anonymous Coward]

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...

Here's a simple alternative

[afc_wimbledon]

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.

Re:What makes this really suck...

[jareth-0205]

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.

Re:DRM

[Lockejaw]

I thought leaving it out was considered the solution to DRM.

Doesn't and can't exist.

[Kadin2048]

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.

Re:They will hack it

[linuxrocks123]

> 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.

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 ... no one really cared enough to actually bother.

If WMV DRM gets used on anything people actually want to watch (like the BBC), it will be cracked.

Re:Not for Linux

[mrchaotica]

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?

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?

I'd be more outraged if we were talking OS X here, but that's not even the case.

Why? At this point, there's probably at least as many users of Linux as there are of OS X.

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.

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!)