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BBC Trust Will Hear iPlayer Openness Complaints
AnotherDaveB writes with a Register story reporting that the BBC Trust has asked to meet with open source advocates to discuss their complaints over the corporation's Windows-only on-demand broadband TV service, iPlayer. The development came less than 48 hours after a meeting between the Open Source Consortium and regulators at Ofcom on Tuesday. Officials agreed to press the Trust, the BBC's governing body, to meet the OSC. The consortium received an invitation on Wednesday afternoon.
As long as they want to use DRM, what options do they have? Should they just not make thier material available until there is a player for everyone? It seems like that is kind of screwing everybody who uses IE and wants to see the material now.
This has less to do with shafting Mac and Linux users and more to do with DRM. BBC is extremely paranoid about its content falling into the hands of consumers outside their control. Look at the website for Torchwood, you can't even view it if your outside the UK. It's not right but it fits with their approach on access to their content. Never mind that people can capture video on their PC's with a 30 dollar tuner card or record shows on dvr's. I wouldnt be surprised if more time and money went into the drm than the actually streaming process itself. Sure they loose a small but decent percentage of their viewers, but at least David wont be able to view Dr Who from the US and Billy wont be able to keep a copy.
A forced meeting is going to produce no results. All it shows is the BBC unwillingness to solve the issues.
The only reason they're meeting is so that if this does go to the court they can claim they "tried to resolve the issues".
What ever happened to BBC research and development division? It seems the BBC do not innovate/invent in any way these days. BBC should come up with some sort of system that is open to all, and has some sort of DRM, not use a Microsoft product that is close to everyone apart from Windows XP users who use Internet Explorer.
It's not just he ~10% of none Windows users they are leaving out, but the other 20-25% that use alternative web browsers.
It's not paranoia, it's commercial sensitivity.
The BBC does not work in isolation. It works in partnership with other broadcasters around the world. And in making its content freely available to licence payers in the UK it has to make sure that it doesn't abuse the rights of its partners by giving away content to those outside the UK, where the rights may be shared with or even wholely owned by those partners.
Take two productions as examples.
The newest Doctor Who stories are co-developments with CBC, a Canadian broadcaster. I imagine that the BBC owns the broadcast rights in the UK, the CBC owns the broadcast rights in Canada and the broadcast rights elsewhere have been split or sold under an agreed formula.
To make Doctor Who freely available to everybody everywhere would be to the detriment of not only the CBC but to those third parties who buy the broadcast rights everywhere else.
Similarly, with Band of Brothers, which was a co-production with HBO, the BBC probably owns the UK rights, HBO the US ones and the rights elsewhere split, etc.
To expect the BBC to release all its content to everyone would be unrealistic, not least of all because securing the worldwide internet rights for all of the productions concerned would be impossible, strategically as well as commercially.
Faced with that reality, what choice does the BBC have if its going to make this content avaiable online in Britain and Britain only other than some from of rights management?
I'm all for the BBC coming up with a cross-platform solution but I don't think it's fair to hit it with the unfair charge of using DRM for DRM's sake when it's bending over backwards to make more content available to their customers (licence payers), on it's own initiative, without stepping on anybody else's toes in the process.
They're trying to be good guys here. Why blast them with both barrels over pipe dreams?
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
someone will crack the DRM and the content will be put up on torrents etc...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
The logical consequence would be to require a license fee for every computer, then that way they could afford to support all the users...
Downloading programs in a way is a value added service that works beyond the TV. People complain already that they don't watch the BBC but they still have to pay the fee. Now, the fee is going to pay for even more stuff they don't use.
I think it is reasonable to go with the most cost effective solution that works for the vast majority of people to begin with. They can worry about expanding it later on when they see what the demand really is and get all the kinks worked out.
For those not aware of how British politics works: Blair (and now Brown's) government both follow what is known as the 'tabloid agenda', the most read tabloid in the world is 'The Sun' this is owned by Rupert Murdoch. Heads of the Labour government regularly meet with Rupert Murdoch, in fact Murdoch was known as the hidden member of Tony Blair's government. Don't think Brown is any better though: an interview (sadly I think that's been taken off-air so you'll have to trust me) with the editor of The Sun revealed that Rupert Murdoch often used to joke about having to visit both Number 10 and Number 11 whenever he was in the UK.
As the BBC is competition to Murdoch he would like to see it shutdown. This is natural. Unfortunately for him the BBC is not controlled by the government, but the BBC Trust is. So when the government comes out with weird statements like:
It's pretty obvious to me who's behind the complaints. The people--whom the government are supposed to serve--just want the BBC to be the best it can be, and if private media can't keep up? Then it shouldn't be in business! Particularly when considering how these words are touting 'public interest' then enforcing the use of DRM? Public interest my arse. In the words of Hugo Swire (shadow culture secetary):
So as usual, it's all big company interests. I somehow doubt that the BBC Trust will listen to the Open Source Consortium. Not that I think they shouldn't try, however it's unlikely they'll be able to remove their heads from Rupert Murdoch's arsehole long enough to listen. :)
I'm going to transform myself into a mighty hawk. Either that or I'll just go and work at Dixons, haven't decided yet.
The solution is this: don't use DRM!
Seriously, it's as simple as that. In fact, it's mathematically proven to be the only solution.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz