BBC Download Plans Approved

An anonymous reader writes "The BBC reports that following approval from the BBC Trust (an independent oversight body) they are now allowed to release their 'iPlayer', enabling the download and viewing of BBC owned content such as Doctor Who. Unfortunately the Trust also mandated the use of DRM to enforce a 30 day playable period, and exempted classical music performances from being made available. There will now be a 2 month consultation period. According to one of the trustees, the Trust 'could still change its mind if there was a public outcry and it was backed up by evidence.'"

Sounds like the usual B.S.

[Kadin2048]

From TFA:

The BBC Trust, an independent body that replaced the corporation's governors at the beginning of 2007, said the on-demand plans - which also cover cable TV - were "likely to deliver significant public value".

But it agreed with broadcasting watchdog Ofcom, which said earlier this month that the iPlayer could have a "negative effect" on commercial rivals.

As a result, the trust has imposed several conditions on the BBC.

It wants the corporation to scale back plans to let downloaded "catch-up" episodes remain on users' hard drives for 13 weeks, suggesting that 30 days is enough.

Chris Woolard, head of finance, economics and strategy at the Trust, defended the decision to cut the storage time.

When people record a programme at home "if they don't look at it within 48 hours, they don't look at it at all", he said.

So basically, it's the usual -- a bunch of politicians trying hard not to piss off their corporate masters, while tossing a bone to the public here and there, just enough to keep people coming out to the next election and maintaining the facade.

30-day viewing period?

[PFI_Optix]

Something tells me the majority of non-British Dr. Who fans will continue to obtain the show by less...contstraining means.

Eventually they'll figure it out: until we can download it and watch it in the viewer of our choice as often as we want when we want, we will continue to obtain copies of such content by other means than theirs.

Re:30-day viewing period?

[Turn-X Alphonse]

I'm from the UK and I still torrent episodes after watching them on TV. Making avatars requires screencaps, which my TV doesn't do as well as VLC player.

Re:bittorent

[dedazo]

Since only people in Britain pay the BBC telly tax, what is the status of these downloads as far as the rest of the world is concerned? I can't see the BBC Trust subsidizing bandwidth of content paid for by Britons so that people in the US or Chile or Katmandu can watch Dr Who or whatever. Are they going to use IP blocking or something?

Re:Sounds like the usual B.S.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not quite - its all about competition. Imagine if Microsoft bought, say, the SciFi channel and then announced it would release all programmes after they'd been shown for unlimited download... on Windows Vista only. Quite a lot of people would be reasonably annoyed and there'd be a bit of a fuss. Questions would be raised in the House (but only after a lobbyist slipped a brown envelope to some MP first, of course)

Its the same with the BBC - as its a publicly-funded body, if they released programmes the commercial channels would similarly be a little peeved.

By the way, in the UK nowadays, nobody comes out to vote because our politicians are mostly self-serving, corrupt, lying, cheating, incompetant, lazy, useless c*nts.

Re:Sounds like the usual B.S.

[itlurksbeneath]

When people record a programme at home "if they don't look at it within 48 hours, they don't look at it at all", he said.

Indeed! HE might not look at it, but I use my MythTV PVR for time shifting, and sometimes it's a long time shift. Episodes are recorded every week of the shows I DO watch (and some I might watch if they seem interesting like Modern Marvels episodes) and it's frequently more than a week before I get around to catching up on the missed episodes. But 48 hours? Where the hell did he get that number? Methinks it was produced rectally.

Re:another option

[blowdart]

Well remember we, as license payers, pay for the content to be made. Giving it away to the world for free would probably be in violation of their charter, and would certainly make me ask "Why am I paying this again"?

The classical music reasoning is worse

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

The thing I found most unfortunate about the whole affair was that the reason given by the BBC Trust for not releasing the classical music: "There is a potential negative market impact if the BBC allows listeners to build an extensive library of classical music that will serve as a close substitute for commercially available downloads or CDs." [Emphasis added]

There are a lot of misconceptions about the BBC (not least how much of its funding comes from licence fees rather than other sources), but I'm pretty sure it's still supposed to be run essentially in the public interest. I don't really understand how protecting the commercial interests of classical music distributors are the expense of the public is part of that remit.

If we're talking about music that's out of copyright itself (Beethoven was the example given), and the particular recording is already being made available for the BBC to broadcast, you'd think the Beeb could negotiate some fair additional compensation for the recording orchestras in exchange for the rights to make it downloadable as well. After all, we have the Proms every year and no doubt some people record and keep those (legally or otherwise), so it doesn't seem like orchestras mind the coverage. Why not legitimise keeping the material, throw in a bit of fair compensation for the recording artists to match, and make the world a little nicer for all concerned?

Re:Public Verus Private.

[nicklott]

The UK govt doesn't work like that. What happens is they build something with tax payer's money, attach lots of legislative strings to its output/produce then sell it off because it's "not working". Normally a government minister will then become a director of said privatised company within a couple of years.

The BBC has lots of legislative strings and the reason they can't share the content is ostensibly because it would be competitively "unfair" on the independent TV stations who don't have access to taxpayers money. Of course in the real world ITV and C4 are doing it anyway, but that sort of minor detail doesn't matter in politics.

Re:another option

[Yaztromo]

Well remember we, as license payers, pay for the content to be made. Giving it away to the world for free would probably be in violation of their charter, and would certainly make me ask "Why am I paying this again"?

Ah, if only the truth were so simplistic.

I've seen such arguments trotted out from time to time, and believe me -- I feel for my friends out in the UK who have to pay for a television license. Here in Canada we have no such fee, which is the way things should be.

HOWEVER, don't for a minute assume that your TV license fee dollars are the only funds that go into producing quality BBC programming, and thus that said programming should never escape across boarders through the Internet.

You see, where you pay a license fee to the BBC to own a television in your part of the world, here in my part of the world the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) is funded (in part) through tax dollars -- including my tax dollars. And yet CBC Programming (especially documentaries) is shown all around the world, including portions of which are available online.

Aside from that, let's look at one of the shows the BBC is proposing to make available online: Doctor Who [imdb.com]. Click the link and scroll down to "Production Companies". Yes, that's right, the venerable BBC Sci-Fi series is produced in part by the CBC.

Thus, I at least have already paid for part of Doctor Who. How many other modern BBC shows are co-produced in conjunction with the national broadcasters in other (esp. Commonwealth) countries?

(Let's not also mention that the BBC already broadcasts world-wide via various cable outlets, like BBC Canada [bbccanada.com] and BBC America [bbcamerica.com], amongst others).

I don't argue with the complaint that the UK's TV licensing fee seems like a cash-grab to my eyes, but that's up to you and your countrymen to fix, and not something I can affect change for. However, the view that your licensing fees are the sole source of funding for popular BBC shows doesn't exactly reflect modern reality, and the desire to prevent such shows from being made available to the world for free online isn't going to put the cat back into the bag: it escaped long, long ago, and probably never should have been in there in the first place.

Yaz.

please check the accounts and verify this ...

[pbhj]

>>> "Aside from that, let's look at one of the shows the BBC is proposing to make available online: Doctor Who [imdb.com]. Click the link and scroll down to "Production Companies". Yes, that's right, the venerable BBC Sci-Fi series is produced in part by the CBC.

Thus, I at least have already paid for part of Doctor Who. How many other modern BBC shows are co-produced in conjunction with the national broadcasters in other (esp. Commonwealth) countries? "

You may be right. But I suspect that if CBC is in the credit then they are being paid a commercial rate for their services by the BBC. In which case, even if you fund other work by the CBC then your entitlement to BBC(UK) output is non-existent.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/bbcworldwide/worl dwidestories/pressreleases/2004/10_october/doctor_ who_canada.shtml [bbc.co.uk]
http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/bbcworldwide/worl dwidestories/pressreleases/2006/04_april/mip_torch wood.shtml [bbc.co.uk]
http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/news/cult/news/drwh o/2005/06/29/20283.shtml [bbc.co.uk]
http://www.cbc.ca/arts/story/2006/05/08/british-tv -awards.html [www.cbc.ca]

Reading between the lines in the above reports it seems that CBC "sponsored" the production ("produced by BBC Wales in association with the CBC") by buying it early and plugging it prime-time. For example in the news report (last link above) about Doctor Who winning an award they don't mention anything about it being produced by CBC, that seems strange to me as in Wales if a Doctor Who producer wipes his nose it's all over the news reports (! eww). BBC news here also gives the impression that the show is Welsh made (Welsh nationalism is rife).

[quote: http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/bbcworldwide/worl dwidestories/pressreleases/2006/04_april/mip_torch wood.shtml%5D [bbc.co.uk] Kirstine Layfield, Executive Director, Network Programming, CBC Television, commented: "CBC is proud to supplement our overwhelmingly Canadian schedule with the best of the rest of the world, and our British programming has struck a real chord with audiences here. We're delighted with the success of Doctor Who, and we're sure Torchwood will prove equally popular." [/quote]

[quote: http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/bbcworldwide/worl dwidestories/pressreleases/2004/10_october/doctor_ who_canada.shtml%5D [bbc.co.uk] BBC Worldwide today concluded its first major pre-sale for the new Doctor Who series with Canadian public broadcaster, CBC Television. [/quote]

Re:The iPlayer DRM is pointless..

[AntiDragon]

I really don't like DRM in any shape or form. However, I think there *is* a point to this.

The Beeb's public broadcasts are public only in the UK. Other countries around the world that show BBC shows (Monty Python repeats are a good example) have had to buy the rights to those shows, just like any commercial station.

This "on-demand" system is a free service - any licence payer can use it. The DRM and use of a proprietary player enables the BBC to ensure that by enabling free access to shows previously broadcast (thus exposing them for a longer period of time) they don't make it easier for non-licence payers.

In practice the DRM is likely to be easily bypassed/broken and it'll be a moot point anyway.

As an aside, doesn't anybody see a silver lining here? The BBC has basically been told they *can't* use Microsoft's DRM because it's platform specific. If I were in Redmond, I'd be gnashing my teeth at seeing such a large lock-in opportunity escape my grasp...

Re:The classical music reasoning is worse

[filthWisard]

Also, with many classical works, not only has the copyright expired, but some of the best performances were recorded more than 50 years ago, so are out of copyright in the UK at least. There is very little reason to pay for anything written before the late romantic period anyway, so what do the BBC trust think they are playing at?

Rights, DRM and the BBC

[Bytefreak]

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?