defectivebydesign.org — Today the BBC made it official -- they have been corrupted by Microsoft. With today's launch of the iPlayer, the BBC Trust has failed in its most basic of duties and handed over to Microsoft sole control of the on-line distribution of BBC programming. From today, you will need to own a Microsoft operating system to view BBC programming on the web.
Jul 27, 2007 View in Crawl 4
theldJul 28, 2007
That may be because only people in Great Britain pay TV licenses
ianlynchJul 28, 2007
One would certainly hope so.
djgentooJul 28, 2007
What about iDiocy? They have a *patent* on it already...Wait, that's their fanboys. My mistake.
simonoxJul 29, 2007
Yes, it's true. It does not make sense to pay M$ to watch something you have already paid. 135 bucks should be enough. Set your content free. You paid for it ;-)
oepapelJul 29, 2007
Sure, use a password system. And how do you prevent redistribution? I'm sure that more than one Brit would like to set up a BitTorrent to Namibia and collect the ad revenue themselves. Of course, they'll report the income and the BBC can just come in and ask for their cheque...Password systems don't work when you cannot trust the end users to not circumvent the security. Especially when that circumvention leads to financial gain.If other simpler methods really worked, then DRM would never have a shot in Hell of being used. The fact that it is being adopted by most content producers to protect distribution is proof that there is a real need that other methods can't address
oepapelJul 29, 2007
DRM is necessary before Internet distribution will be allowed by all the content providers. IP spoofing is trivial and gets around your IP region-locking.Password's don't work when the people with the passwords have a financial incentive to bypass the security.Yes, there will be those that record the live broadcast. But we already live in that world and content providers have no choice but to deal with that. What they DO have a choice in is how things are distributed on the internet. Idealism is great but a little pragmatism is what's needed here.
smacksawJul 30, 2007
f**k yourself. I do pay for the BBC. It costs me $2.50 a month for BBC America and another $2.50 for BBC Kids (so I can see Top of the f**king Pops).Considering you've already paid for it, the fact I am being charged for it means I have just as much, if not MORE say in it.No one in the rest of the world gets it free. Pull your head out of your ass. You get 10 TV channels (OTA and digital) plus 5 radio just in the UK. That is a lot of programming, not to mention the news/internet you get for your pound.
clusterduckAug 2, 2007
Notice that I said "open format". I have no idea why you seem to think I was suggesting any kind of DRM system.