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...

They will hack it

[yohanes]

Don't worry, someone will be able to hack a player for Linux/Mac faster than BBC's official one.

Re:They will hack it

[ralphclark]

Maybe, maybe not.

Microsoft DRM has been around for a good few years now and whereas the earliest versions were cracked in due course, the later versions are still fairly solid. 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.

I did see one sort of hack for MS DRM but it was limited in what it could do...if you had a valid DRM "licence" for the protected file you could use the hack tool to create a non-DRM copy of the file. But it couldn't unlock a file for which you didn't have a valid key.

I suppose this type of hack could theoretically be used to unlock MS-DRM protected videos on BBC *if* they use the current form of DRM which relies on you downloading a key and *if* you use the tool to unlock it before the seven days expires.

It's hardly ideal.

OTOH, a much bigger worry is this response from the BBC that "iPlayer will be available for Mac" - it's implausible that they haven't heard of Linux, so this is tantamount to a deliberate slap in the face for Linux users. And checking on progress every SIX MONTHS!? What kind of project management it that? The "don't care" kind.

Common sense prevailed at the BBC while Greg Dyke was around. Since he was pushed out it's all turning to shit again. With people like these at the wheel, television's days are surely numbered. I don't know about you lot but the only thing I watch on TV these days is Dr Who and it wouldn't kill me to give that up. Fuck 'em.

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.

What makes this really suck...

[kazade84]

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.

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:What makes this really suck...

[GauteL]

"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.

Re:What makes this really suck...

[The Great Pretender]

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.

Re:What makes this really suck...

[FireFury03]

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.

I've got no problem with paying my licence fee so long as I am allowed to access the content. Sadly the BBC seems to be adding artifical restrictions to ensure that I can't access the content without me purchasing an expensive product from exactly one vendor with whome I have ethical problems. This is the same as saying "you can only watch TV on TVs made by Sony" - it completely removes competition from the market and this inevitably leads to an expensive poor quality product.

Also a worry is that the BBC appears to believe that being "platform agnostic" involves only supporting Windows and Mac - no mention of other platforms at all.

Not for Linux

[Toffins]

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.

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!)

Party like it's 1999

[BristolCream]

With the resources that the BBC has available, the technological opportunities now available and the mandate that they have to serve the British public, I am consistently amazed that they continue to align themselves with multinational, license charging companies.

Shame on you BBC.

What about dirac

[Anonymous Coward]

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/

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:DRM

[Lockejaw]

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

Absolutely unacceptable

[ajs318]

This is in no way acceptable.

The BBC's insistence to use DRM (Digital RESTRICTIONS Management -- it does sod-all for my rights) goes against their charter.

When the BBC first began, you had no choice but to build your own radio set. There was never any question that some essential part might be kept locked away out of the reach of the General Public for the specific purpose of preventing just any random person from constructing a receiver.

For the BBC to insist that their programmes only be received on one particular make of receiver (however it may be rebadged), and that an essential part (the Source Code for the decryption) be specifically denied to home constructors and experimenters, is nothing short of outrageous.

This country is becoming more and more like the former GDR every day.

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:Doesn't and can't exist.

[FireFury03]

I think what's really galling people is that the BBC is using DRM at all.

What's really galling me is that the BBC is adding an artificial limitation which will prevent me (a licence payer) from accessing this content at all since I don't own any Windows machines (and I'm not about to buy Windows just so I can watch this content - which I can most likley download illegally in a platform agnostic format anyway). And of course, licence fee payers can't withhold a portion of their licence in response to the BBC intentionally preventing them from accessing content they have a legal right to.

There is a distinct difference between someone not being able to access the BBC website because they don't own a computer (which is fundamentally required to access a web site) and someone not being able to access some content because the BBC has explicitly excluded them through artificial means (there is no reason to _require_ a user has Windows in order to view videos - other operating systems are equally capable of playing videos).

Re:Doesn't and can't exist.

[janrinok]

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.

Re:Doesn't and can't exist.

[cayenne8]

" I can see how portable intrinsic permissions could be a very good idea for media. Protecting internal documents. And hey, if it helps convince my gf that the sex tape won't end up on the internet, but I still get to watch it, that's one step closer. Work with me people. I have a dream!"

Can you post some footage of her, so we can see if it is going to be worth all the effort?

Re:Doesn't and can't exist.

[williamhb]

I think what's really galling people is that the BBC is using DRM at all.

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!

Complain?

[Zelos]

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

Even more fundamental than that

[Kadin2048]

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.

No surprise

[wlvdc]

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.