SIP Support is there as of last year, won't help much as as MS have used non standard extensions for LCS....Happily there's a guy working on a gaim plugin for LCS which uses a modified version of the SIP/Simple code:
It's still in the early stages, but it's getting there and has the advantage of being cross-platform and open-source, hoping I can use it to talk to our internal IM network from my linux box.
Q: I'm a UK citizen, pay my licence fee so why can't I just access all the content I've paid for? A: You don't "own" the broadcast anymore than the BBC does necessarily....it's all down to rights, there's all kinds of fingers in all kinds of pies with respects to broadcast/distribution rights - if you've used an external production company to produce the content / used someone's music / an image / a certain actor they will all have rights with respect to how/when that content is used.
It's a legal minefield which usually comes with all kinds of restrictions about when and where you can use the content:-(
As I understand it, licence fee money entitles the beeb to pay for things to be produced (internally / externally), and to be shown somehow/somewhere at somepoint and that's about it.
Add in to this that you require different kinds of rights for different kinds of distribution - web + TV require two different lots of rights negotiations to take place - and it all gets very messy *really* quickly.
As for other countries accessing content, I'd hazard a guess that it's a case of UK folk having paid for the bandwidth and not being able to support the whole world downloading - the worldwide / commercial arm of the bbc could potentially syndicate paid episodes for download I guess.
Q: Why bung DRM on everything? A: RIGHTS again (you beginning to see the picture yet) - johnny rightsholder is very cagey about digital distribution (*GASP* - everyone will be able to COPY our content - cue mouth frothing) so in order to be able to even offer it for distribution over the internet tubes a distributor *has* to make concessions to the rightsholders, otherwise you would have no content to offer = DRM + time restricted windows for viewing things. I'd hope that this is likely to change over time as people sort out the whole rights mess and we have some legal framework which accurately reflects a fair digital distribution model.
Q: Why not platform XXX? A: I'm pretty sure this will be down to DRM requirements AND the fact that the BBC already has an infrastructure in place for transcoding / streaming WM content. Judging from the consultation results, this is likely to change if a requirement to be platform portable is enforced - maybe rolling something custom like DIRAC would be an option?
Slashdot Mirror
http://fixxxer.cc/blog-en/?cat=9
It's still in the early stages, but it's getting there and has the advantage of being cross-platform and open-source, hoping I can use it to talk to our internal IM network from my linux box.
Q: I'm a UK citizen, pay my licence fee so why can't I just access all the content I've paid for?
:-(
A: You don't "own" the broadcast anymore than the BBC does necessarily....it's all down to rights, there's all kinds of fingers in all kinds of pies with respects to broadcast/distribution rights - if you've used an external production company to produce the content / used someone's music / an image / a certain actor they will all have rights with respect to how/when that content is used.
It's a legal minefield which usually comes with all kinds of restrictions about when and where you can use the content
As I understand it, licence fee money entitles the beeb to pay for things to be produced (internally / externally), and to be shown somehow/somewhere at somepoint and that's about it.
Add in to this that you require different kinds of rights for different kinds of distribution - web + TV require two different lots of rights negotiations to take place - and it all gets very messy *really* quickly.
As for other countries accessing content, I'd hazard a guess that it's a case of UK folk having paid for the bandwidth and not being able to support the whole world downloading - the worldwide / commercial arm of the bbc could potentially syndicate paid episodes for download I guess.
Q: Why bung DRM on everything?
A: RIGHTS again (you beginning to see the picture yet) - johnny rightsholder is very cagey about digital distribution (*GASP* - everyone will be able to COPY our content - cue mouth frothing) so in order to be able to even offer it for distribution over the internet tubes a distributor *has* to make concessions to the rightsholders, otherwise you would have no content to offer = DRM + time restricted windows for viewing things. I'd hope that this is likely to change over time as people sort out the whole rights mess and we have some legal framework which accurately reflects a fair digital distribution model.
Q: Why not platform XXX?
A: I'm pretty sure this will be down to DRM requirements AND the fact that the BBC already has an infrastructure in place for transcoding / streaming WM content. Judging from the consultation results, this is likely to change if a requirement to be platform portable is enforced - maybe rolling something custom like DIRAC would be an option?