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.

Comments

Re:What can they really do?

[Anonymous Coward]

what options do they have?

They don't know, because it appears they didn't even bother to try and find out before rushing into a deal with Microsoft that ties them into Windows Media.

Re:What can they really do?

[toleraen]

Isn't RealPlayer on almost all major OSes? Or don't they have a version of DRM that works on across platforms?

Pointless meeting given the go-ahead

[LingNoi]

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".

Re:What can they really do?

[BlueParrot]

As long as they want to use DRM

Well gee, seeing that the material is publicly available, and already paid for ( by a compulsory TV license ) and also already available in digital form without DRM ( through the terrestrial digital broadcast ) why exactly do they have to use DRM to begin with? I only see a few reasons:

a)"Content providers" refuse to license their shows if they don't
b)They have partnered with MS and MS refuse to develop a system that doesn't.
c)Some muppet up in management still believes it can work.
d)All of the above

None of those are valid reasons why a publicly funded company should help strengthen a monopoly that has repeatedly been convicted under anti-trust legislation. Basically what it boils down to is drop the DRM or drop the public funding. As long as the material is paid for by the public it should be available to the public.

It's not paranoia...

[WIAKywbfatw]

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?

Re:It's not paranoia...

[Cheesey]

It's not paranoia, it's commercial sensitivity.

Fine, but they could achieve the same results by (1) refusing to serve the content to people outside the UK, (2) requiring a "licence-fee payer" login to download anything, and (3) limiting the range of programmes available online in order to satisfy the requirements of commercial co-producers. There's no need for DRM, especially as the BBC is already using a system to restrict some content to UK users only.

Now, there is an obvious objection to (1) and (2). Someone could download a programme in the UK, then put it on Bittorrent. But that's a silly objection, firstly because that same person could capture the programme from a TV broadcast, and secondly because that person could crack the DRM. Microsoft DRM is as vulnerable to attack as any other sort of DRM.

The use of DRM in this case is basically equivalent to saying "You can't watch BBC programmes without a Sky subscription". Sure, the delivery medium is the Internet not digital satellite, and the "Sky subscription" is a "Windows XP licence", but the effect is the same - you have to pay a third party in order to watch licence-fee funded programmes. We need an equivalent of "Freeview" that will work for anyone at no cost, but because Microsoft DRM is being used, the BBC has excluded that possibility.

Thanks a bunch Rupert

[jeevesbond]

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:

there is evidence that certain aspects of the proposals may have a negative effect on investment in similar commercial services which would not be in the long-term public interest.

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):

We're going to have to see if this trust has teeth and the iPlayer is the test... There are companies who feel threatened by the BBC.

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. :)