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BBC Activates DRM For Its iPlayer Content
oik writes "The BBC has quietly added DRM to its iPlayer content. This breaks support for things like the XBMC plugin as well as other non-approved third-party players. The get-iplayer download page has a good summary of what happened, including links to The Reg articles and the BBC's response to users' complaints."
This is why you don't touch DRM even a little bit. It doesn't matter if you only buy the open content and so the DRM sits there unused. The purpose for that DRM framework is to do stuff like this to you further down the line. DRM is a tool designed for the sole purpose to take stuff away from you, and you shouldn't tolerate its presence.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Only the people who read this website actually care. DRM will never die because users are used to putting up with inconvenience and absurd costs for their media. Customers just accept anything, be it overpriced cable TV service(you pay a monthly fee, then you also have to pay per view), or an extremely disruptive level of advertising in programs.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
All of the broadcast rights contracts are based on market exclusivity. The Beeb is obligated to make an effort not to step on the toes of broadcasters in other markets.
Still, disappointing.
There's a long discussion on this on a BBC blog.
Also, bear in mind that when the BBC says "Rights holders require us to implement DRM" that the BBC potentially is being obfuscatory, because the rights holders it's talking about may in fact be companies the BBC owns in part or in full. I.e. the BBC might be trying to hide "We want DRM". E.g. see this post from Anthony Rose giving BBC Worldwide as the prime example of the DRM-requiring rights holders.
Finally, this is from a comment I left on the linuxcentre blog:
BBC Trust is running a consultation on the BBC strategic review. One of the key questions is regarding platform neutrality. It is very important that people fill in that survey and let the Trust know how important open ly specified access is. In particular the following is important for platform neutrality:
* BBC Ondemand should *not* be built on proprietary, single-vendor technologies, such as Adobe Flash.
* BBC Ondemand should be built on multi-vendor, open, non-discriminatory standards, such as HTML5 video.
* The BBC should *not* be in the business of dictating which ondemand client implementations may access iPlayer and which may not.
These things are important both for free software, but also more generally for a healthy market. It is not in the public interest for the BBC to become the king-maker of client device implementations. Please take the time to let the Trust know your views on platform neutrality and how the current situation is bad for the greater public interest.
I use Friend/Foe + mod-point modifiers as a karma/reputation system.
And then dropped their service. Hitting them in the pocketbook is the only
I agree fully. But then, the government unfortunately doesn't, and they have guns.
Deleted
They haven't "activated" anything, there have always been restrictions on the content available via the iPlayer, both downloadable and streaming - thanks mostly to all the spanners in the "content" industry demanding time limits and (more reasonably) geographic limits.
I have to say I'm torn here; on the one hand I understand that while a lot of the content on the iPlayer is owned in whole or in part by the BBC, there's a lot that isn't and they have to play nice with the owners of that content - in this case preventing 3rd party applications from downloading or re-streaming their content outside of the above limits - but at the same time, as a licence fee payer, I want the BBC to play nice with me as well.
The BBC do a pretty good job when you compare the iPlayer to offerings from other media organisations, but I'd rather lose a few imported shows to the commercial networks if it means they can be less restrictive about what they broadcast.
Nonsense. It costs them exactly the same amount when you watch a show online whether it is DRM'd or not. In fact, the lack of DRM reduces their bandwidth usage - you can download the file and watch it more than once, just as you can record shows from TV.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Uh, what? iPlayer uses GeoIP so only British citizens can download directly from them anyway (and they have peering agreements with British ISPs, so they aren't paying for bandwidth anyway). People in the UK can (and do) dump the DVB streams from the BBC and upload them to torrents. I doubt that they do the same with the iPlayer streams, because they're more traceable and lower quality.
It's worth noting that get_iplayer doesn't let you do anything that you can do with a DVR anyway. You can grab digital streams via a DVR or computer with a DVB-t card and keep them forever. There is no DRM on the OTA streams, so why does there need to be on the Internet ones?
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Please, PLEASE do not suggest that HTML5 is an adequate solution to this problem. It is not. HTML5 is shaping up to be one of the biggest fuck-ups we've ever seen. The major vendors cannot and will not agree on standard codecs. It won't happen.
The only solution is for the BBC to offer their videos for download in completely-open formats. We're basically talking two options here:
1) As an Ogg container holding Theora-encoded video and Vorbis-encoded audio.
2) As a Matroska container holding Theora-encoded video and Vorbis-encoded audio.
That's the only sure-fire way to succeed. Anything solely browser-based is an automatic failure. We don't want to be restricted to watching videos in some goddamn awful HTML5 canvas-based video player. That will be worse than the Flash experience we're currently stuck with for many video sites.
If I want to watch the program a second time, then without DRM I can play the mp4 file saved to my hard drive, whereas with DRM, I must download it again.
Since you likely do not contribute to the funding of BBC what exactly is your complaint? That you do not get to free-ride?
Rudolf Hess edited Mein Kampf. He was the very first grammar nazi.
http://trac.xbmc.org/ticket/8971 adds support to use librtmp which supports RTMPE including SWF Verification and Adobe's so-called "Secure" Token authentication.
it's worth repeating that there is absolutely zero security of any kind in Adobe Flash RTMPE. everything can be obtained publicly; or is "magic constants", or is simply a complex chain of algorithms, the result of which is merely an increase in CPU usage, heat generated and money wasted, along with the dangerous illusion of security.
Um, yes they have. Their first priority was to apply DRM to the metadata, but they requested OFCOM to review whether encryption should be allowed. Read their original request.
While it first did indeed look as if OFCOM would stop the BBC's treacherous plans, they have since softened and it currently looks as if DRM is well on it's way.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/feb/09/ofcom
and they can't because it would break millions of deployed set-top boxes.
The BBC has a few sneaky tricks up their sleeve for that. They would start by applying it to all HD channels.
And then they'll do what they did to encourage people to switch to digital receivers in the first place: launch new channels and water down your previous service so much that everyone upgrades. As long as they still show the news they're still doing their job right?
Hula etc don't work for my country...
The Grey Goo disaster happened 3 billion years ago. This rock is covered in self replicating machines!
"You can have iPlayer when The Daily Show and Colbert Report webfeeds are available again in the UK."
Wait - are you in a position to make this deal? I'm willing to take it!
"The geo-locking of web streams is very annoying."
My point exactly. In fact, it's more than annoying. The douchebags who "own" all that "IP" have gained to much power, and it's far past time they were slapped down. Instead of being slapped down, they've been pretty well promised ACTA as a reward.
"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
That's the same whether you use an internet connected PC or a regular TV set.
Unfortunately, you're dead right. One of the DRM advocates on the BBC Blogs comment thread comes over very much as being afraid that caving to the "FOSS preachers" will result in the withdrawal of content from the content providers.
Or, to put it another way, is willing to put up with a reduction in freedom as long as all his (her?) favourite programs are available for viewing.
And then in the same paragraph, will accuse FOSS advocates of being "selfish".
Tiggs
"120 chars should be enough for everyone..."