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BBC's Plan To Kick Open Source Out of UK TV
bluec writes "Generally speaking, the BBC isn't allowed to encrypt or restrict its broadcasts: the license fee payer pays for these broadcasts. But the BBC has tried to get around this, asking Ofcom for permission to encrypt the 'metadata' on its broadcasts – including the assistive information used by deaf and blind people and the 'tables' used by receivers to play back the video. As Ofcom gears up to a second consultation on the issue, there's one important question that the BBC must answer if the implications of this move are to be fully explored, namely: How can free/open source software co-exist with a plan to put DRM on broadcasts?"
How can free/open source software co-exist with a plan to put DRM on broadcasts?
It's simple, really.
Someone develops an Open Source DRM software solution, and the BBC uses it.
It's no different from a closed source DRM solution, except that since it is OSS, it may have a stronger encryption system since it can't rely on security through obscurity.
"Open Source" means a lot of different things to different people, but the basic concept is that it is the software which is free. How the users use the tools isn't part of the equation. So a good OSS DRM solution is a boon for some users (and a bane for their users). But either way, FOSS is not at all at odds with DRM.
Maybe it's a nitpick, but the headline "BBC's Plan To Kick Open Source Out of UK TV" to me sounds like someone is against open-source software, and has conjured up a scheme, the primary purpose of which is to harm it.
From the article, though, it seems more likely that the BBC is worried about copyright infringement, and as with many companies, the only sort-of-half-assed solution they can think of to combat it is to introduce some DRM, and the only even-more-half-assed solution they can think of to make it hard to crack the DRM is security-through-obscurity. That's incompatible with OSS, as Cory Doctorow points out, but I think out of a misplaced attempt to use security-through-obscurity, not out of an actual antipathy to open-source vs. proprietary software as licensing models. Who knows if they even realized that: 1) lots of open-source software is used in conjunction with receiving TV broadcasts (and not just by warez groups); and 2) their scheme would therefore harm an important segment of the public.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Now, generally speaking, the BBC isn't allowed to encrypt or restrict its broadcasts
Where is it written that the BBC isn't allowed to encrypt or restrict its broadcasts? Is that a law I'm unaware of?
the licence fee payer pays for these broadcasts, and no licence fee payer woke up today wishing that the BBC had added restrictions to its programming.
I think that's a false statement. I would bet there are some of the population wagering that if the BBC could encrypt the signal in some way, then they could better control one of the few revenues they have (aside from the taxpayer). That being DVD sales and sales to a vast amount of the world--namely everyone who is not British.
This might conflict statements about wanting to encourage open source but make no mistake about it, the BBC does not have to support open source. Does it suck? Most certainly. Should you complain about it? Of course. But the logic here isn't just the desire to control the set top boxes or some ultra evil GNU/GPL destruction campaign. No%2
My work here is dung.
Where is the "-1 boring" moderation?
Yes they (the BBC) are. No they (the BBC) aren't
Yes it (the BBC) is. No it (the BBC) isn't.
English... Do you speak it?
Watch those corners
However, the BBC would like to collaborate with the Open Source community, academics and others to produce an Open Codec
DRM does not depend on a particular programming paradigm, nor does Open Source. PGP is a great example of open source security which remains secure. The challenge really lies in the implementor, who needs to enforce security while not falling back on closed-cource obfuscation to achieve the task.
All the best encryption systems publish their source code. Real cryptographers don't trust closed source.
No sig today...
Where is the "-1 boring" moderation?
I've been using Overrated for that. Some posts don't even merit the logged in 1, or anonymous 0.
Why if 3 1/2 Billion pounds of money why is the content ALL just simply available to those who should OWN it.
It does make 700 million selling the stuff, insultingly back to us either in DVD/CD or via other freeview channels.
I understand the need for tax but not for this
Where else in the world is someone required to pay a tax to a corporation? Required, as in you will go to jail if you don't give a corporation money for a service you might not need or want.
You have a lot to learn about the US tax system: http://www.cbpp.org/images/cms//WhereOurTaxDollarsGo_MostOfBudget.jpg Around 70% to 80% of my taxes go to services I don't need or want, yet I am forced to pay for them. True, we don't have to pay for a TV license, so that makes it ok.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
Although this is /. and people are more interested in technical questions, for me the really interesting question is: How can they encrypt the "metadata" on broadcasts – including the assistive information used by deaf and blind people ?
I mean, this basically means all of the broadcast can be copied and used in any way imaginable except for the part of the broadcast which is important to the handicapped ? This sounds sort of immoral to me.
I think that's a false statement. I would bet there are some of the population wagering that if the BBC could encrypt the signal in some way, then they could better control one of the few revenues they have (aside from the taxpayer). That being DVD sales and sales to a vast amount of the world--namely everyone who is not British.
This might conflict statements about wanting to encourage open source but make no mistake about it, the BBC does not have to support open source. Does it suck? Most certainly. Should you complain about it? Of course. But the logic here isn't just the desire to control the set top boxes or some ultra evil GNU/GPL destruction campaign. No%2
Sorry I want to know how selling DVD's back to me or programs I've paid for on other channels on BRITISH TV the revenue for this is 700million. They get 3 1/2 billion already. Yet your argument that they cannot give free access to everyone in Britain and not make sales elsewhere!? simply does not hold water. Does copyright not exist for the BBC. Does it make it better that this policy that is anti those that are taxed for its very existence, that as a by product it will not work on Linux Ditributions...although I am a little concerned why you chose GNU/GPL the OS is made of many licenses BSD/APACHE and a whole host of others. Also GNU is only a small part of the ecosystem, in fact your as much better talking about Red Hat/Sun/Intel although to be fair only FSF seem to protest on my behalf...thank goodness for them.
I have no issue with open source players being given a API that allows them to make use of precompiled bits that allow decryption. Hell even put some sort of identifying information into the recorded bits to keep people honest. Not everything has to be open source. If I pay for a TV broadcast then I expect to be able to play it back on the media player of my choice. However, I will not agree to anyone trying to tell me I can not play it on my blackberry, xbox, iphone, because they've not been paid to allow it.
BBC is crap, how dare they encrypt it!!
This is the same as crapping in a bank vault. The only person who wants that steaming pile of poo is either insane, or thinks its something it's not.
I am open source, and Linux baby!
will the Doctor Who christmas special (part 1) still be on tonight?
This is welcome news. The less people who are able to view the British banker propaganda the better.
Since when is FOSS mutually exclusive with DRM? You can use FOSS to sell software, make money, create DRM, and write Windows programs. These aren't activities we normally think of when it comes to FOSS, but they are generally allowed.
In American usage, companies are generally considered to be singular nouns. But the BBC is, err, I mean the bbc are British, therfore they should be considered a plural noun, as per British usage.
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"Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
"Open source is evil." - Microsoft
If the law (or the regulations applying to the BBC or whatever) prohibit encryption, said prohibition should apply to the entire signal as transmitted by the BBC over the air.
How does DRM help the BBC provide their services to the taxpayer, better ?
You only have to give them money if you're using the service (television broadcasts). No TV, or a TV that's only a monitor for DVD players and video game consoles, and you don't have to pay.
Benford's Corollary to Clarke's Law: "Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced."
When encrypting a connection to a remote computer, what you protect the data from are any external threat, like MITM.
When applying Digital Rights Management on a file, what you protect the data from are the people sitting at the other end of pipeline.
It's all about how to safely encrypt/decrypt files on *someone else's* computer. If the administrator had full access to their system, he can see what the user is doing on his machine, obtain what's in his "My Documents", /home/usrname/bin/, or whatever. How can a user ensure the admin can't look into his private data?
Now, "the admin" is a consumer, and "the user" is license holder. How can a license holder ensure the consumer can't attach gdb to his own computer?
i see nothing of any plan against open source, nor any reason the BBC MUST address your open source concerns. how about the open source people try working with others instead of going on the attack immediately?
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
the real question, and only question, in this issue is: does the BBC have the right at all to put DRM on broadcasts since the broadcasts are publicly owned.
The digital ones and zeros of fate are upon you! Everything is nothing without nothing to make it something! Look Northward, for the binary train of chaos doth chuggeth, and chuggeth, and chuggeth some more!
...or any device capable of viewing programming at the same time as the terrestrial broadcast. This would include computers and mobiles phones viewing streamed content. The BBC's push into web content provision is accompanied by its lobbying for the extension of the licence fee to these devices or the ISPs specifically to close the loophole that no tv = no license fee.
Hardly surprising with their censorship really.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Except that there are non-BBC channels and you have to pay the tax even if you never watch a BBC channel.
To use a car analogy, this would be like having to pay a monthly fee to Ford for "car services" regardless of what brand your car is.
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
I think it might refer to if they're talking about the BBC as a group of people, or as an entity.
Fucking Tory. Die in a fire.
Take a good look at the "Palladium" toolkit, renamed "Trusted Computing". This is precisely what it was designed for: hardware specific encryption, with cautious escalation of privileges to run secured hardware with secured software. Its proprietary design broke down under virtualization, for reasons that would have been spotted much faster with an open source approach, much as the old "Clipper Chip" and "SkipJack" tools were discovered to be "flawed" because you could use your own keys to encrypt, rather than the federally registered keys the devices came with, and the ability of "Law Enforcement" to monitor it failed because the "Law Enforcement Authentication Field" was too short of a checksum, and they violated at least 3 privately held patents.
I'd expect the BBC to fail at this as they did with Iplayer: their goals are well understood, but they can't get past the demoware shown to middle management or non-technical VP's with "big plans for the future". They don't want people to record and re-broadcast the material in any way, and only Windows closed source media players try very hard to provide that. Even if I lived in the UK and paid my telivision tax, I'd prefer to get my Doctor Who off of Pirates Bay because it's a faster download and better organized than that weird cruft in Iplayer. I went over this last year with a Windows laptop owning compatriot, who walked me through the interface. I _do not care_ when the episode of Doctor Who was last broadcast so I can download that timeslot's authorized copy and see it for up to 7 days after broadcast. I want the _episode_, and I'd prefer the last broadcast one so that I can see it as long as possible. So does everyone else.
Does the menu allow anything like this, or even index the episodes by numerical order? No. Does Pirate Bay give the episode numbers so I can get the one I want? Why, yes! Yes, they do!!! And it downloads faster. So even if I have paid for Iplayer with my television tax, why would I want to use it? And guess whom the BBC is doomed to failure against unless they fix their interface so it works better?
I understand the legality issues of Pirate Bay and the Bittorrent issues, so I avoid it for non-public images and reserve it for PGP signed Linux DVD images. But once the video stream of Iplayer and its ilk is intercepted and the program can be digitally repackaged and Bittorrented, why are they wasting their time building the Iplayer infrastructure and paying developer and manager salaries?
So which is it, Brits? "The BBC isn't" or "The BBC aren't"? You're famous for saying "Microsoft are introducing" and the like, but why use the singular in this case? Is it because BBC stands for British Broadcasting Corporation and it'd be utterly stupid to say "The corporation aren't..."? What about other corporations who have their abbreviation with the C included? For example, would you say "NBC are" or "NBC is"? After all, it's talking about the National Broadcasting Corporation and wouldn't you look like a buffoon if you shouted out to your mate: "the corporation are".
http://www.bbc.co.uk/info/purpose/what.shtml "The BBC is the largest broadcasting corporation in the world. " But you're right: this is a US-centric blog hence should not cover non-US-centric news. And you're also right to add as an AC: I'd be ashamed as well if I spouted such nonsense. I guess you're the life of the office Christmas-party.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.
But you're right: this is a US-centric blog...
guardian.co.uk is a US-centric blog?
Where is it written that the BBC isn't allowed to encrypt or restrict its broadcasts? Is that a law I'm unaware of?
Exactly. TV broadcasts are legally required to be in the clear in the US as well. Public broadcasting licenses require the broadcasts to actually be public. For example you can broadcasts personal chat on CB frequencies, but a TV station cannot use its frequencies to transmit the station owner's chat to his buddies.
That is why the TV and movie studios have been pushing in the US for a "broadcasts flag"... un-encrypted video and audio along with a bit that says "don't copy me", and they want the FCC to impose an administrative regulation mandating that all digital TV receivers must implement DRM systems to obey that "do not copy" message.
They'd much rather get some an FCC administrative regulation than try to stand up in public before congress asking for a law to do that. There's already a law giving the FCC fairly general authority to administratively regulate transmitting equipment. Unfortunately for them (snicker), a court has already ruled that regulations on receiving equipment do not fall within the existing law giving the FCC power to regulate transmissions. Awwww, that's such a shame.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
I looked at that graph. Which 70 or 80% do you not want?
Defense is kind of important (whether or not you agree on our current strategy)
Assuming that the legislature don't deliberately bankrupt it, you'll eventually benefit from Social Security (and as the past year or so has shown, people are horrible at staying out of debt, let alone saving for retirement).
You'll also eventually want Medicare (or at least need the services it provides).
Of course, if you plan to die before retirement age under foreign occupation....yeah, we can throw away the 80% of the budget that you don't think we need.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
This is pretty unfair to the BBC. It should be made clear that the BBC probably isn't the one that's pushing for this. It's more likely that the BBC is being leant on by other content providers (like US networks) that it licences shows such as Heroes from, as well as movies it screens. It offers these on it's iPlayer service, so it's hardly surprising that it's being pressured into this.
That's easy for you to say not to pay the disgusting BBC tax, but recent developments will most likely mean that all phone lines will get a new BBC tax (eventually).... because you "could" get the BBC by clicking a link.
If the government can come up with a fake reason to slap a 50pence/month (plus VAT tax on this 50p tax) on all phone lines (even VoIP lines line SkypeIn), then they could put another tax on phone lines "just in case" you want to visit the BBC / view online content.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/6770899/Pre-Budget-report-2009-50p-broadband-tax.html
BBC shows via Video on demand (different to their iPlayer service), another reason to tax phone lines, whether you use the BBC or not.
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/media/article6964461.ece
Take Nobody's Word For It.
Well that's that f**ked then! OFCOM are toothless government body with no balls to face down the BBC. OFCOM will put in an objection, the gov and the BBC board will weasel out of it and the world becomes a sadder place!
Of course we need defense although the budget is hugely bloated out of proportion due to pork and other forms of corruption rather than genuine defense needs. As for what I don't need, social welfare alone is over 50% (Health, SS and other benefits). The next two largest items, debt interest and gov employee benefits are also large because of the inflated size of the government in the first place. When you add up all the other smaller stuff, you can easily get to around 70%. No, I don't need Social Security or Medicare. I can provide for my own retirement and health care and even if I couldn't I wouldn't think it morally acceptable to demand that others be forced to provide it for me.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
The iPlayer streams. It takes about 0.5 seconds for your TV programme to start playing. That's certainly a lot faster than waiting many hours for something to download over BitTorrent. The iPlayer has been enormously successful, so much so many ISPs are complaining and want the BBC to pay them for all the extra bandwidth.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
Except that there are non-BBC channels and you have to pay the tax even if you never watch a BBC channel.
To use a car analogy, this would be like having to pay a monthly fee to Ford for "car services" regardless of what brand your car is.
There are many arguments around this one, but my favourite is that because the BBC (usually!) sets such high standards it makes the other terrestrial TV companies (ITV, Chan4/5) and the UK cable companies strive to raise their game also. Hence the benefit for any UK TV watcher regardless of which channel.
It is more like the UK's road fund licence (AKA Car Tax): everyone pays if they own a car because it (is supposed to!) make ALL the roads better!
That said, IMHO I'd say the TV License has had its day and it should be scrapped and an equal amount just taken from income tax instead. This would save money 'cos there'd be no need for all the TV License infrastructure, etc.
Eclectic beats from Leeds, UK
handmadehands.co.uk
Where else in the world is someone required to pay a tax to a corporation? Required, as in you will go to jail if you don't give a corporation money for a service you might not need or want.
You're not "required" to pay a tax to the BBC. Where does it say that you are?
Um, how about most towns in the US? A "corporation" is simply a body established under a charter from the government. If the government provides services by chartering a particular body to provide them, it's perfectly sensible for tax money to go to a corporation.
The problem isn't that the BBC is planning to 'block open source', it is that the BBC is planning to block open access. It's a subtle but important difference.
The BBC is different from almost any other company, it is a bizarre mash-up of private and public sector and as such it's primary concern is not profit but value to British citizens.
The first question that should be asked (and the one I think OFCOM asked the first time around) is 'how does this benefit the British consumer?'. It is quite clear that the encryption does not bring any benefit over not encrypting it to the average British consumer. In fact the opposite is true as there are then artificial restrictions and limits on the equipment that people can buy.
_Now_ it streams. It was originally designed to do something like Bittorrent live, so that you shared bandwidth with your neighbors from a BBC provided list of seed servers, in their proprietary setup. It apparently didn't used to, before the lawsuits that led to the move away from the DRM burdened Windows Media Player technology and using more open formats, suitable to Macintosh and Linux systems.
Just because a lot of people watch Iplayer doesn't make it "successful". Does it make money for the BBC? Does it please them, or do its interface problems and frequent streaming interruptions turn away people who might otherwise use it?
It's a corporation held in the public trust, and it's not a tax in the legal sense. Other countries also operate a licence fee in order to fund an independent-yet-state-owned broadcaster (though in practice not many of them are as independent as the BBC):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_licence
Where else in the world is someone required to pay a tax to a corporation?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_licence
I think all of this is merely a smokescreen to delay the inevitable. A few days ago the deadline for the EU's "Broadcasting sans Frontiers" law to come into force passed by. The implications of this were that the technologies such as IPTV which actually allow users outside the physical borders of the country in question to receive TV broadcasts online could no longer be blocked within the EU. In simple language, the BBC iPlayer is now supposed to work anywhere in the EU and for the BBC to prevent users outside the UK from using it is now against EU Law. I wonder if this would actually legitimise getting TV programs via P2P as that is actually enabling the EU Law rather than preventing it. That said, a glance at the UK TV schedules for the coming days shows that we're not really missing anything.
At the moment in the UK, subscription to the BBC is compulsory, as a condition of being able to have a TV. And if you watch TV without subscribing, you will be hauled before a magistrate, fined, and maybe imprisoned. People are imprisoned all the time for doing this.
What we need to do is make it voluntary. Everyone should be able to subscribe to the channels of their choice, or not as the case may be. Then, when subscription to the BBC is voluntary, we can just stop arguing about it and let them do what they want. If we don't like it, we would cancel our subscriptions.
This is so simple and obvious, its very difficult to understand why everyone doesn't support it automatically. What possible case can there be for making subscription to one particular broadcaster compulsory, and enforced by criminal law sanctions? Its totally nuts. We don't make subscription to one particular newspaper a condition of being able to read the press. We don't make subscription to one particular web site a condition of being able to have Internet Access. What is the problem here?
Does anyone know where we can get hold of the text of this consultation, and where we respond to it? I'd very much like to give Ofcom my contribution on this! I've searched their website but thus far I haven't found it, and the Grauniad article doesn't give a URL. Basically my view is that if the BBC ceases to be a public broadcaster funded by the license fee, then they can do what they like. But until they do that they are owned by and answerable to their public, and they can't. And one of the things they specifically can't do is stop the owners of their content - us - from viewing it on whatever device we choose.
The whole point of the BBC is that it is not a private corporation. It is a public corporation, owned by the people. Public corporations cannot behave in self-interested ways. It's tough, but that's how it is.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
It's behind you!
Cue panto replies.
This is where you are totally wrong on two points.
1. There is not a legion of foreign people living in the UK solely to rip BBC produced shows to sell to other countries illegally. The majority of people downloading BBC shows via P2P are British people who live/travel to other countries who have no other access. The iplayer is not available outside of the UK. Restricting access like this only hurts the people who have the right to access the content, as is the case with the majority of DRM and DVD region coding systems.
2. The BBC is funded by the TV licence system not taxpayers. This raises another two issues of my own:
a. The BBC should be funded by taxpayers with a simple small addition to existing taxes. This would be far cheaper and easier to collect than the current "we hunt you down if you don't pay" system.
b. The BBC should exist to provide 1. unbiased news and educational services, 2. to the British people only. The current remit seems to be "become a world TV service" with countless digital channels, dramas and documentaries. If this were the case then the suggested tax would be far smaller than the TV licence. The top priority should be providing TV to Britain, not making DVD sales.
... fuck off BBC. Whilst we pay for that content, we want it all unencrypted, the programs, the metadata, the whole shebang.
I see what you mean. If I was poor, I'd choose to sleep under a bridge or to starve rather than take handouts. Therefore, I shouldn't have to pay taxes.
The only job for government is to bomb people and throw potheads in jail for a few decades, and in that case I'm hugely in favor of big government. Maybe this includes building freeways, but I'm not sure about maintenance or inspections. Aside from that I can teach my own kids, inspect my own meat, and I can drive myself to the hospital if I fall down the stairs or have a heart attack.
Also, if my house catches fire, it's my job to extinguish it. If some poor bastard's house down the way catches fire, that's his problem.
I've had enough with these fucking commies who want to take all my guns and money away.
The domestic BBC is not paid for by taxes, it is paid for by licenses to watch TV.
Also I wonder why you think one of the best broadcasters in the world with the best factual, news, documentary and wildlife programming suck and are nothing but evil? Having watched the kind of dross you get in the US and even in a lot of Europe I know that I simply wouldn't bother having a TV if it weren't for companies like the BBC. Even if they weren't very good, at least they aren't bombarding you with adverts every 10 minutes. (Oh sure you can skip adverts but if everyone did then that TV model would soon break down).
In USA you're already required to pay a tax to a corporation (unless you are happy to die early from a treatable disease) - and guess what, we pay less in the UK for our health coverage than most people pay in the USA.
SURELY NOT!!!!!
Although popular torrents (ie recent tv shows) download much faster than anything from the beeb. A typical 350MB episode takes about 11 minutes (and not really straining my 20Mb connection). If the client prioritised the chunks according to episode then streaming would work pretty well.
Slashdot: where don knuth is an idiot because he cant grasp the awesome power of php
You have to remember that Fox, CNN and MSNBC is already three different news sites to remember.. give them some slack.
Although i dont agree with the idea, this proposal does not stop free or open source being used in the scenarios outlined in the article.
It makes it hard for GPL licensed code to be used in it, but not all free or open source code is licensed under GPL. there are alternatives (such as the BSD licence) and you could use open source code released under these licences (even a whole OS - not linux) in devices that would comply with what is suggested in the article
I may get flamed rottten for this, but...
While it is true that FOSS and DRM for things like set top boxes is quite possibly incompatible if you try to integrate the DRM into something like Linux, it is entirely possible to use Linux as the OS and have a proprietary DRM system either "on top" or if that is not secure enough as as seperate "DRM / playback on a chip system" controlled by the OS.
A method like the one used by TIVO type devices which use Linux could also be a possiblility, the OS images are signed by the company so that the hardware refuses to recognise any recompiled code, so they can release the code, and you can change it and run it should you have the correct hardware, but you can't run it on a TIVO. This method was endorsed by Linus Torvalds as being perfectly within the spirit of the Linux ecosystem.
The analogue system was stable, open, technician-friendly, and degraded gracefully. A 30-year-old analogue set still works today, except in regions where the analogue signal has now been switched off.
The digital system opens the doors for tweaks to be made with protocols to add "features" or restrictions, each of which will require buying a new STB/TV every few years. It is already the case that many Freeview systems from half a decade ago need replacing - do not even dream that the majority of manufacturers are going to provide firmware updates.
Yes, we can now admit 6 to 8 channels where previously only one could be transmitted on a particular frequency, but the large majority of the channels are dedicated to repeats and/or excreta. It is hard to find and apply good writing and production talent, and not worth the time and money when the number of viewers is spread so thinly over so many channels. And do not be fooled into thinking that the number of potential channels will increase as the art allows! Two large chunks of the broadcast TV bandwidth are to be reallocated, i.e. what the people own will be sold off.
All you have gained is the potential for HDTV, but this could already have been run as a separate service alongside analog. What is more, it distracts from the original purpose of TV in the UK as a public service broadcasting medium, not an eye candy broadcasting medium.
Not all of the licence fee goes to the BBC, the vast majority does yes but some of it also goes to the other main channels.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
I'm guessing the executives / board / owners of the BBC know people in the right places and are able to intercept initiatives to change the legislation.
I think you'll find that the current system actually has quite a lot of public support and that a lot of the BBC-bashing comes from newspapers owned by certain large media groups.
Making the BBC a subscription service is the same thing as abolishing the BBC.
But it won't last forever
That much is true - eventually, as TV merges with the Internet, the only options will be to privatise the BBC or force internet users to pay the TV license.
If you want to add to the silliness: on their website they claim that you must pay the TV licensing even if you just watch DVDs or have the receiver at home but no TV set. But there you go.
Which website? The official TV Licensing website says that you need a license if you "watch or record TV as it's being broadcast.. DVDs are mentioned because DVD recorders have TV tuers.
(Whether they've botherd to tell the TV Licensing enforcer goon squad that, I don't know).
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
Except that there are non-BBC channels and you have to pay the tax even if you never watch a BBC channel.
Then a DRM system is potentially useful. If you pay for the licence, you get the DRM key and can watch BBC. If you don't, you can watch whatever you like, except BBC. No need for this blanket "everybody who watches any form of TV needs to pay".
For example, XOR encryption is remarkably weak in most cases.
That really depends.
If you repeat a password cyclically ("hunter2hunter2hunter2...") and XOR it onto your plain text, you're doing a polyalphabetic substitution cipher. Those were broken around the first world war (IIRC); google for "Kasiski Test" and others.
If you use a random byte (independent of every other byte) at each position of the key stream ("%Nb2a#!\nF..."), XOR is the perfect cipher. By observing the cipher text, you have no better idea about what the plain text is compared to what idea you would have if all you knew was that the plain text was there*.
If you use a block cipher (DES, AES, etc.) to encrypt "n+0", "n+1", "n+2", etc., for some random initial offset n, and concatenate the byte blocks of encrypted numbers, you have in some sense a simulation of the perfect XOR encryption; if the block cipher is strong, this is strong as well (maybe if the block cipher can be broken in O(t), this can be broken in O(sqrt(t)), but if t is superpolynomial, so is sqrt(t)). [This is known as "Counter Mode", and you can use it to protect your ssh sessions. It has a bunch of nice properties compared to other Modes Of Operation, but that's beyond today's cryptography lecture.]
* Say we have a residents meeting at my dorm, and someone suggests we buy a Wii for our basement lounge. Later, I see an encrypted message between the dorm chairman and SomeWiiShop.dk. I know my dorm chairman is not a gamer, so my natural assumption is that she's acting on the request for a Wii. Since I also know about the applications of cryptography (for transactions in e-trade, but not the shopping pages), I assume she's bought a Wii (plus maybe some games and controllers). This is all without decryption. The "perfect security" of XOR is saying that I can't improve my guess by trying to decrypt---not that I can't have a good guess before trying to decrypt.
I wish I hadn't used mine up yesterday -- this is possibly the most insightful view on Slashdot for quite a while.
We've gone from 5 main channels (of which 2 aren't worth watching) to about 30 (of which 23 or 24 aren't worth the electricity spent on them).
Voluntarily buying a product to make your life better/longer from a company is not at all the same as paying an unavoidable tax to a government whether you use the services supposedly provided or not.
Now if you said that in the USA you have to pay a tax to General Motors, AIG, Citigroup, Chyrsler, JP Morgan Chase, . . .
Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
That people pay less in the UK for their health coverage than in the USA may have something to do with the wasteful disasters that are Medicaid and Medicare, and that Americans make the least healthy choices of any first-world country.
Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
Well, it was written by Cory Doctorow. And he's from Canada, one of the United States.
English... Do you speak it?
Of course not! I speak American... or, at least that's how I spell.
I'd be shouting Boycott the BBC! except then I'd have only the PBS News Hour for anything resembling news I can use..
My office has been taken over by iPod people.
I think it depends on whether you view a company as being a single entity that you can sue, or a collection of people working together.
I'm guessing the executives / board / owners of the BBC know people in the right places and are able to intercept initiatives to change the legislation.
I think you'll find that the current system actually has quite a lot of public support and that a lot of the BBC-bashing comes from newspapers owned by certain large media groups.
Surely you jest. A large media conglomerate that owns newspapers wouldn't also own commercial satellite TV stations that would be in competition with the BBC, would it? How would one get fair views? ;-)
If that is the American usage that that is what should be used in American english (not that I accept that such a language exists :P. It is nothing but local dialect as far as I'm concerned). Names stay the same regardless of language and aren't translated (like if you are called Paul and move to Portugal, you are still Paul, not Paulo), but the sentence surrounding them does not. As Anonymous Coward said it depends on the context. If you are refering to the collection of people, it is plural. If you are talking about the company itself as an entity, rather than a group of people, it is singular. The difference is that we brits tend to think of the Beeb (or any other company) as the group of employees, not as an entity in its own right.
One other thing, in Britain a corporation is an organisation set up with a royal charter to it is not the same as a US corporation, which over here would be classed as a company (ltd, plc or ultd). The BBC was originally the British broadcasting company before it got its royal charter. Also you don't go to jail for not paying your license fee, its easy to get away with not paying it as the inspectors can not enter your house without a court order.
.
The BBC is both producer and distributer. Maybe it should be split into "BBC TV" and "BBC Production"? After Dirac leading to a Windows only iPlayer I think we can dismiss their 'research' department.
The license could pay basic infrastructure costs for "BBC TV" running the distribution infrastructure (transmitters, etc). If they want to play the silly "ratings war" games they are playing, then they can buy up foreign commercial pap and be allowed to play a couple of adverts before and afterwards to pay for it. This would mean tax payers money isn't being sucked abroad for rubbish reality tv shows.
Most of the money goes into "BBC Production". This produces content as per their remit. This then goes to to "BBC TV" and is played for free, or is licensed to foreign TV stations. As soon as it is broadcast it is then put up for free on the BBC torrent site unrestricted. It is not even worth blocking foreign IPs, getting more private worldwide viewers will put pressure on other TV stations to license the content from the BBC.
Just food for thought, I am sure there may be problems with this I haven't thought of.
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
Or like the money being used to build roads and pay traffic police not solely coming form motor tax and eating into home fuel tax.
Bastards
There's a big difference between a tax, compulsory by law, and a service that almost everyone wants to buy. In the latter case, you are free to choose the manner and best price for the service you wish to have. If you wish, you can avoid buying the service altogether and save yourself the money, or choose an alternate service of any type. In the former case, you MUST buy a particular service, even if a better competing service exists, or be fined or jailed.
Where services are chosen by the individual, with no requirements on what you may purchase and no support by the government of a particular choice*, selection and quality flourish. Where there is only one choice, or trivially few choices, enforced by law or favorable policy*, stagnation of quality and price occurs.
*Bailouts obviously protect the bailed-out from competitive pressure. Excessively complex legal frameworks favor few large companies over many small ones, because for a large company the requisite massive legal team represents a smaller proportion of total revenue.
The iPlayer changed largely due to the introduction of competent coders who understood what people wanted. The BBC has a public service remit, so yes, having a lot of people watch it is the definition of success - and if it's interface problems are so bad, why have the other channel's streaming services aped it?
"The domestic BBC is not paid for by taxes, it is paid for by licenses to watch TV."
That's a fantastic idea. We should all need a "license to watch TV"! Then, when some kid tries to duplicate a stunt he saw on Jacka$$ or claims that he did something because of violent television programs, the courts can simply revoke his and his parents' license to watch TV! I can think of any number of instances where a TV license could/should be suspended or revoked! Implementation and enforcement is going to be a challenge, but I like the idea in principle.
You don't read much of English, do you? Americans actually speak an outdated English. Our English is much more like England spoke back in the days of the Puritans, than English people speak.
Whatever - does it really freaking MATTER??? If I can get a pint of ale, a meat pie, and the attention of the pretty red haired lass in the corner, I'm happy. Who cares how she sounds? I just want to play in her hair, alright with you?
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
the only even-more-half-assed solution they can think of to make it hard to crack the DRM is security-through-obscurity.
But... but...
DRM is security by obscurity.
Here's how DRM works: I encrypt the movie, such that a given key k is required to decrypt it. To play the movie, you need to decrypt it first.
Then, I give you the key. I don't want you to decrypt-and-save, or decrypt-and-share-with-your-6-billion-best-friends, but I want you to decrypt-and-play.
This "works" by putting a "Play" button in the playback software which does the decrypt-and-play, and not putting in a "Save" button which does the decrypt-and-save.
But if you run the program step-by-step in a debugger (which is boring and laborious and takes some background knowledge, but is a skill every competent programmer should have), you can see exactly how the program does the "decrypt-and-" part. Then you can write your own tool which adds "save" to the "decrypt-and-" bit.
Your only defence against someone using a debugger is hiding the key, using the key, and manipulating the decrypted data in ways that are too complex and confusing for the people using the debugger to understand. The name for doing that is `obscurity'.
Where is it written that the BBC isn't allowed to encrypt or restrict its broadcasts? Is that a law I'm unaware of?
Because the BBC's mandate is to provide their programming to everyone in the country for free, not provide TV for other markets (regardless of how much money they would probably make). The whole issue is locking the online content, which is utter pointless seeing as the same programming is transmitted digitally OTA and through cable, and will be recorded and distributed by cappers, just like now. The BBC cannot put exclusive content online and not broadcast it. This is the unique nature of the BBC, they are not like any other broadcasting company, and people keep forgetting it. The other channels are free to do as they please.
If the BBC wants to move away from that model, they need to lose the huge funds from the license fees and learn to stand on their own feet. That'll never happen.
Oh? That's odd. I'm looking at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iplayer#DRM_criticism, and the DRM and the fact that Iplayer only worked on XP at first with its Microsoft Media DRM was critical to get it switched to a basically streaming format. The amount of bandwidth they needed for the much less DRM burdensome streaming, instead of the original Bittorrent like protocol hidden inside the Iplayer app, are not an issue of "competent coders". Those are issues of managerial plans on how the system will work and what is critical.
I'm fascinated to hear that other channels have copied _the interface_. When I look at streaming services of US providers, they're vastly more sensibly arranged, by title of the show, with the episode title and number and the description of it, with no care for precisely the timeslot in which it was originally broadcast. When I saw Iplayer, it was _horrid_ for actually finding the Doctor Who my Iplayer wielding compatriot wished to see: he had to select down each episode that had been played all week to see if it was the new one.
Are you saying some other channel has copied _that_?
Not to be too much of a language nerd... but the underlying implications of this fascinate me -- it is indicative of a totally different cultural worldview.
To the haters: You can't win. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine
The BBC has been involved with opensource before and they know that as a public entity they got a responsibility to more then just windows users.
Read up on the whole iPlayer history and their codec choices.
The BBC KNOWS about this subject and yet they are aiming to make a choice that would again excluse users who do not use windows.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Exactly... There's no reason the source can't be open, but the environment demands that the compiled code be signed by a specific vendor.
Disabled vet going back to school, The government pays my for my healthcare, school, and disability. The fact that I was disabled in Iraq, while I was serving OUR country, means that I feel NO shame in the government helping to get me to where I would most likely be if I hadn't of served. So you can add healthcare, military, and gov employee benefits back on your list there, cause without people like me, you might as well be living in a third world country.
You are entitled to your own opinions, not your own facts.
I don't need SS, but I gladly pay for it. I'd prefer someone without a job and no chance to get one to have enough money to support himself rather than him seeing the only viable option to survive is clubbing me to death for the contents of my wallet.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Dude, put down the bong for a second, you are on slashdot.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
I would be surprised if in the UK all of the "TV tax" (which exists in other European countries, too) goes to the BBC instead of some sort of "regulation authority".
Also, the BBC, like most public owned European broadcasting companies, has something termed a "public mandate". Mainly, to inform and educate. Recently it's hard to see, I give you that, but if you consider the BBC crap, look across the border and see that it could be much worse. Basically, they do (or at least are supposed to) offer programming that other networks don't offer due to a lack of interest in the majority of viewers, mostly high-brow entertainment that nobody with an IQ below room temperature finds entertaining.
But to get to your car analogy, I have a better one. Imagine you're paying a monthly fee if you have a driving license that is used to improve roads and make them safer, and also entitle you to use a certain type of car that's not necessarily fast or flashy but can really get you anywhere, a true all-terrainer. You, personally, might not want to go there, but there are people who want to go up into the mountains, but not enough people want it to warrant a production of such a vehicle by a private car factory.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
For those that don't get it, look up "bailout" in the dictionary.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
At least you don't have to pay if you don't own a TV. Finland currently has the same system as the UK, but starting in 2012 every household will pay 200 euros a year whether or not they have a television (because people have been dumping televisions for teh intarwebs and the public TV company YLE is bleeding). Yay for regressive taxation.
Perhaps if cumulative taxes weren't so damned high (federal income + FICA + state income + property tax + user fees + sales tax + various other taxes( + mandated health insurance in some locales)) then people might not need credit as often.
Why does pornographic art, music, and crap like that have to be funded by taxes? If you want to be an artist, fund your own damned self.
Why should there be "free" abortions for the sake of convenience? There are plenty of infertile couples who would love to adopt those babies.
Why do we pay farmers to destroy or even not grow crops? If we must pay for those crops, why not donate them to to food pantries and homeless shelters, or even homeless people living in shipping crates and cardboard boxes?
Why should welfare be a lifelong free ride for people who won't work? Welfare was intended to be temporary assistance. Now some people look at it as a free ride, and think they are "entitled" to a free living out of your and my pockets.
the bbc are British, therfore they should be considered a plural noun, as per British usage.
Linguistically, no. If you're American you say "the BBC is". If you're British you say "the BBC are". The usage has everything to do with the local dialect and nothing at all to do with the subject matter being discussed. Americans speak American English, Brits speak British English. That's the entirety of it.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
That's right, the business with Americans' prolific use of z's seems to be a holdover from an alternative spelling convention that dates back to before English was properly standardised (Note: "standardised", not "standarized").
Californian "Valley Talk" in particular seem to have strong elements of late Seventeenth/early Eighteenth century spoken English, notably the "delayed negative" that's often used for humour or emphasis (this is well known ... not).
This anachronistic anomaly may be due to the comparatively high proportion of vampires that left Europe for the New World to avoid persecution at around the time of the Founding Fathers, and who kept migrating West until they ended up concentrated in small communities in California.
Eric Baird
I would prefer that digital was used but instead of adding so many extra channels they could add some redundancy for those of us with poor reception. We ended up getting skys freeview option because our analog and digital reception was so bad.
Hate to drag you out of 2007, but your criticisms are out of date. Who cares if it sucked then, the point is that they have changed it and it's easily the best UK TV streaming site.
You're also just outright wrong on the Doctor Who front. Go to the iPlayer, search Doctor Who, bam, list of episode titles and numbers.
You're right about the "corporation" bit. Under English law, a "corporation" is "an artificial human being" ("corp..." referring to things bodylike), so the BBC as a corporation is singular whenever we're talking about a matter of centralised policy (whenever the BBC is acting as a single entity).
However, there are many groups within the BBC in charge of different aspects of policymaking (such as the technical and standards groups), so "The BBC" can also be considered as a group, and when one of these groups does a thing, or floats an idea that can't be treated as a definitive official action by the corporation, we tend to use the plural (plurals sometimes being used to symbolise "fuzziness", to signify vagueness over who exactly it is that's being referred to).
"The BBC" can also be plural when it refers to a group of broadcast channels.
So for instance you might hear people saying:
PS: On the "corporation" bit, that's what niggled me about Asimov's "I Robot" series ... the ongoing plot element about the robot wanting to have status as a person. I don't see why they couldn't simply have had him registered as a corporation. Corporations have reponsibilities and can be deemed to have committed crimes (eg corporate manslaughter), they can own property, and they can be subjected to penalties, like people. If you want to deem a sentient robot to be an autonomous entity, then declaring them an "artificial person" seems appropriate.
Eric Baird
Isn't like like having to pay road tax if you own a car that could go on the road and you can't prove it hasn't?
No, the dialects are the same regarding this, and even if they weren't, you would use your own dialect here. However a company is a group of people (plural), a corporation is an individual legal entity (singular), the BBC is both. Now, companies and corporations are in the laws of both of these countries, but in the case where something is both a company and a corporation (which lets face it, is going to be quite often) in my experience it is usually referred to as "company" in the UK and "corporation" in the US. Which presumably is why pluralisation follows the same pattern.
However in both dialects, the singular is used to draw emphasis to the corporation whereas the plural is used to draw more emphasis to the human constituents making the decisions.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
That's about like calling french a dialect of latin...
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
I see what you mean. If I was poor, I'd choose to sleep under a bridge or to starve rather than take handouts. Therefore, I shouldn't have to pay taxes.
That's a typical liberal worldview where people are poor and sad and miserable and there is nothing they can do about it without the big mother government to help them. If you are poor you should work on raising yourself out of poverty and along the way accept help of the fellow human being who are helping you voluntarily. As somebody who is probably not poor, and since you care so much about poor people, why don't you go out and help them and I might join you too. All I am saying is that you have no right to force me to do it against my will.
The only job for government is to bomb people and throw potheads in jail for a few decades, and in that case I'm hugely in favor of big government.
I think what you are doing there is confusing libertarian views such as those expressed or implied in my previous posts with your perception of what somebody like the Republican party in the US stands for. Big difference.
Aside from that I can teach my own kids, inspect my own meat, and I can drive myself to the hospital if I fall down the stairs or have a heart attack...if my house catches fire, it's my job to extinguish it....etc.
Nonsense. You can pay other people to provide you with services you need. You might as well say if the government doesn't provide me with a supermarket or repair my car, I will have to learn how to become a car mechanic and grow vegetables in my yard. Why does it have to be the government that provides those specific service you list?
I've had enough with these fucking commies who want to take all my guns and money away.
Sarcasm +1, Insight -1
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
Social Security is not part of the general taxation system, but has its own tax. The need to soon pay for some of those costs out of the general revenue is because money was borrowed from it into the general fund, and now has to be paid back. Arguing that you don't need social security or medicare is simply a lie, unless you are arguing that you didn't benefit from anything the government already spent that borrowed money on instead. Arguing that it's OK for the federal government to repudiate its debts, just so they are to elderly retirees and not treasury bond investors or foreign governments, is equally vile. If you regard payback as optional, you become a parasite who doesn't want to repay what you took by force, and thinks it's morally acceptable to target old people, while claiming moral sanction under some twisted form of Libertarianism, but ignoring that the government already took money in your name, dispersed some part of that money to you, and is now trying desperately to cover up that fact. Would you really want to go there?
Just incidentally, your actual 'facts' in the form of percentages are all terribly wrong. I'm sure if I had just argued facts, you would have come back with some claim that the amounts didn't matter as the moral principle still stands, so since I've shot that down, it will be interesting to see if you concoct some desperate lie to avoid facing what this implies about your moral worth. Man up! Either pay your debts, or prove that the government didn't spend any of that borrowed money on you or with your consent (I've never met anyone over the age of 25 in the US who could honestly prove that, and I really doubt you could either, so just "Man Up!". Pay back what your representitives took for you and only then talk about what you think is morally acceptable.). I'm pretty confident that the government didn't have your informed consent, as you don't sound like that sort, but they did it in your name, and if you're old enough to have voted at least once, you technically had an opportunity to register your real opinions just as the rest of us have had one or more.
If you're genuinely surprised to find out that the only reason social security is at risk is that the government borrowed massively from it, then I appologise for the tone of this post. If you had no idea that what the right wing is calling the year Social Security goes bankrupt (2034), is really the year the system is first projected to have only 75% of pay outs coming in (due to the baby boomers moving into the system at rates that will temporarily exceed new employees), and not the year the fund would actually have no money, then you are not alone, but please read up on it. If you didn't realize that there are many items of the defense budget hidden in many other departments, but not vice versa, again please educate yourself.
(As just three examples: One, all long term care for wounded veterans is clearly a defense related cost, but it's in those 'welfare' budget areas you decry. Two, look at federal dept. of transportation budgets for roads which are four or six lanes, run through a military base, narrow to two lanes afterwards to serve a community of 500 people or less, can be closed as needed by troops on post, but are described as access roads to small impoverished opportunity zones in their funding. Three, look at aid to buy helicopters and fixed wing aircraft for Central American countries as part of the DEA's activities, and then look at how much foreign aid to the entire region south of our border is earmarked for buying military assets only, to balance those extra helicopters and planes, because many other countries are worried what happens if the big DEA recipients use those assets for something besides the war on drugs).
Who is John Cabal?
Or having the price of a Windows license bundled into your computer whether you use Windows or not ... imagine that.
Non-disabled vet - ending up a bit after the desert storm era. I only put 13 years in, so I really am not entitled to much in the way of VA care. (Because I set up in the field right next to to the Paladins a few times (that's artillary), I have a notch in my low frequency hearing on record, and technically, the VA might be legally required to follow through with regular auditory testing, but I've never bothered to push that issue.). I paid for my degree before I got commissioned, and most of it before I even enlisted, so I haven't taken government assistance for education (not even a civilian Pell grant) I do have legal entitlement to cheaper VA loan rates if I buy a house. Haven't used it, but it's in the contract. If I ever do, I won't feel guilty about taking the benefit. You've paid a lot bigger price than I have, and I'm genuinely grateful for your service.
Who is John Cabal?
You keep saying that. I don't think it means what you think it means.
The relevant definition in the context of business (in other uses it refers to a group or collaboration of some sort) is this from Merriam-webster:
"3 a : a chartered commercial organization or medieval trade guild"
Or perhaps given the nature this from investorwords.com is most relevant:
"Any entity engaging in business, such as a proprietorship, partnership, or corporation."
Or maybe Wikipedia gives the best view of popular usage which is the true definition of a word in language:
"A company is an incorporated association, which is an artificial person created by law, having a separate legal entity, with a perpetual succession & a common seal."
A corporation is one method of organizing a company. A corporation by definition is always a company. A company (in the context of business) does NOT a group and can be formed and operated by a single individual.
Whether operated by one or multiple individuals a company does work toward one overall goal and in that sense is a singularity. Much as a bee hive, an ant colony, or a nation there is a form of emergence taking place.
"Well, it was written by Cory Doctorow. And he's from Canada, one of the United States."
And it is about the BBC which is a UK entity, another of the United of the United States.
Much as I love them, Dr Who and Torchwood were/are "mostly high-brow entertainment that nobody with an IQ below room temperature finds entertaining"? Yeah, pull the other one. BBC Three, now with Weevil Fight Club, for the win. (Notice how I didn't even have to mention Graham Norton?).
Who is John Cabal?
Lets overlook the fact that you can already home-record standard-definition Freeview broadcasts and save them to recordable DVD, and the fact that that hasn't eliminated DVD sales.
How badly are these twelve products being affected by home copying?
title #1, Small Island There's currently no UK DVD or BluRay DVD of Small Island. You can't buy it in the shops, and you can't pre-order it. There's no release date, and (AFAIK) no indication from the BBC that it'll ever be available on disc, on any format. What I did find from a Google search was that there are lots of people online who like the series, plaintively asking if anybody knows when they might please be able to give someone their money and buy a copy, because the BBC can't give them any information about availability.
So as far as Small Island is concerned, yes there IS a serious problem wrecking its DVD/BluRay sales, but its not piracy, it's the distributor ... there isn't any legal product available that piracy could undercut.
Small Island was much-anticipated, and delayed. Its first episode got five million viewers, beating ITV1's premiere showing of Batman Begins. There are people desperate to buy it. Adding Freeview HD DRM here wouldn't have helped. All it would have done would be to further antagonise the viewers who the BBC were refusing to sell legit copies to. I'm sure that if they finally bring the thing out on disc, after a year they'll look at the sales and someone will ask why the DVD sales figures were so disappointing for something that was so well received, and someone from BBC Worldwide will shake their head sadly and say, well, you know, piracy ... it was on BBC HD without DRM ... we kinda expected it ...
... But the truth is their sales will be lower than they should have been because during the entire period when the series was getting great reviews and being heavily promoted, they had no product to sell, nothing to take advance orders for, and no information for retailers or customers for when (or if) any such product might be available.
If you don't win the lottery, and you didn't buy a ticket, it's not the fault of pirates.
Title #2, Sharpe's Peril (2008) This is now available in the UK, but the UK release is region-flagged "region 2", so it's not supposed to be sold in the US except as a special import. If you're in the US, you're not really supposed to buy the UK discs, you're supposed to only buy the "proper", legit, region 1 disks (grey importing being regarded by the industry as only slightly less bad then piracy). Trouble is, they've apparently not yet gotten around to actually making any of those region 1 disks of Sharpe's Peril yet, even though the thing was broadcast over a year ago, back in 2008. The good news is, you can now order a "region 1" copy of Sharpe's Peril online. The bad news is, you'll still have to wait until the second quarter of 2010 for delivery.
Gee, I wonder why their worldwide disc sales aren't as good as they might have been? Could the fact that they've not yet been able to deliver a single legal region 1 disk to any customer perhaps be contributing to the lack of a "buzz" amongst US customers?
Title #3, Day of the Triffids Your third example, "Day of the Triffids" (2009) also isn't available on disc. In this case it's understandable, because the thing doesn't start being broadcast until Monday December 28th, but even after it starts being broadcast, you won't be able to buy it on disc straight away. If you're worried about missing an episode, you'll h
Eric Baird
Another worry is that any time the BBC appears to be stepping away from its public service remit, there are people who will try to leverage that and use it against them.
See, if I was Rupert Murdoch, I'd want Ofcom to agree to the BBC's request. I'd want the Beeb to standardise a DRM copy-protect system and insist that it appeared on all next-generation Freeview boxes. It'd help make Sky's DRM seem less obtrusive. Me-Murdoch would then want the triumphant BBC-HD people to run with their new DRM system to the Hollywood studios, and buy first-broadcast rights to a few really big high-profile movies, to launch the channel (which is probably the real reason why the BBC-HD guys wanted the feature, to make those sorts of negotiations easier).
And then, me-Murdoch would strike. I'd announce that the BBC was an out of control monster, that it was Sky who was the real innovator that had invested heavily in bringing HD to the public, I'd point out that since the Beeb had implemented DRM, there wasn't much to differentiate between what they were doing and what Sky were doing, except that the BBC channel had the unfair advantage of being funded by licence-fee payers who didn't have a choice. I'd argue that with BBC-HD, the management had finally shown their true colours and abandoned their public-service principles, that their request to Ofcom meant that they accepted that they were working outside their remit, and that their HD channel was therefore a sign of the megalomania of the BBC board to have a successful movie channel showing blockbuster Hollywood imports, rather than being a legitimate use of the licence fee. They were going after Sky's market, and wasting licence fee money, partly paid by Sky subscribers (who didn't have a choice) to fund it. If the BBC was going to operate within the restrictions of its charter then that was one thing, but if it was going to divert money from homegrown talent to Hollywood megamovies, go after Sky's market, and ignore any charter obligations that might hold it back, then BBC-HD was operating unfairly against competition law, and against it own charter, and spending money in ways that to had no right to, in an attempt to disrupt a "proper" commercial channel. The evidence would be difficult to argue with.
Me-Murdoch would demand that BBC HD to be shut down or sold off as a commercial venture to sink or swim in the commercial market without help, and would then lobby MP's and make sure that all my newspapers carried editorials and stories campaigning against the high licence fee and BBC waste, and agreeing with my argument. The BBC had abandoned its principles! The board should be sacked! I'd also make it be known that if this wasn't going to happen, then at the very least I'd want some sort of equitable compensation, perhaps a chunk of the licence fee money could go to Sky to pay for the Sky news channel (which is available on Freeview), or some sort of rebate on the licence fee could be organised for Sky subscribers (or given direct to Sky on their behalf), and/or some new budgetary or legal restrictions set up limiting what the BBC could and couldn't do.
And if all this was scheduled to happen after the election, then if the Conservatives won, there might be a decent chance of Murdoch getting it to work.
If Murdoch then wanted to buy a DRM-enabled terrestrial HD broadcast system dirt cheap, and use it as a feeder system to channel users towards Sky HD, he'd have the opportunity. If he didn't want it, he could stand back and watch it be shut down for lack of buyers, and simply enjoy the fact that he'd destroyed a potential competing channel anf damaged the BBc into the bargain. Win-win!
So if Ofcom had allowed the BBC request, Murdoch would have been given a really strong financial incentive to have his media network throw its weight strongly behind the Conservative party winning the next election.
I guess the BBC technical guys probably don't realise that what they just did by asking Ofcom for that special permission nearly set up a disastrous chain of events that could not only have destroyed the BBC-HD channel and crippled the BBC, it might also have been instrumental in swinging the next UK general election.
But luckily for them, they failed. :)
Eric Baird
Paying For National Health Insurance--And Not Getting It
Where else in the world is someone required to pay a tax to a corporation? Required, as in you will go to jail if you don't give a corporation money for a service you might not need or want.
Hmmm ... That was obviously written by someone who believes that there's a real difference between "corporations" and "governments". That's the only way to explain why someone would ask such a question.
The city I live in is incorporated. That is, it's a corporation. All of them around here, down to the smallest town, are corporations. And if you live in the jurisdiction of such an incorporated town/city/state/whatever, you do have to pay taxes to that corporation or go to jail. The only way out of it is to find some remote island not (yet) controlled by any incorporated government body, and move there. There aren't many such places left on this planet these days.
The US government is right now in the process of passing "health" laws that require citizens to pay money to private, non-governmental corporations, the health-insurance corporations. It's not the first government to do this. Thus, it's easy to find cases where one might have to pay "taxes" to private corporations that aren't legally governments. Your friendly local government (at some level) has colluded with those corporations, and given them the power to collect taxes. It's a reasonable thing to do if much of the population is voting against (governmental) taxes. It just amounts to delegating the tax collection to the private corporation, rather than the government collecting the taxes and handing part of them over to the corporation.
Years ago, I lived in a small neighborhood that was accessible only by two roads, both of them toll roads run by "independent" transport agencies. So to get out and go to work, I had to pay what was obviously a sort of tax to that corporation. This is a bit of an unusual situation, since there are usually local streets that can avoid the toll roads, which are usually just main highways. But there are a few places in the US where this situation exists, and I'd guess it happens in some other countries, too. A likely place to look is islands accessible only by ferry. Usually, the ferry system is run by a private corporation, and the government strictly controls who can run ferries. So the ferry fee would qualify as a government-enforced "tax" paid directly to the private corporation.
(The real world is more complex than most political theories. ;-)
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.