BBC's iPlayer's Prospects Looking Bleak 369
An anonymous reader writes "The future of iPlayer, the BBC's new online on-demand system for delivering content, is continuing to look bleaker. With ISPs threatening to throttle the content delivered through the iPlayer, consumers petitioning the UK government and the BBC to drop the DRM and Microsoft-only technology, and threatened legal action from the OSC, the last thing the BBC wanted to see today was street protests at their office and at the BBC Media Complex accompanied by a report issued by DefectiveByDesign about their association with Microsoft."
Encryption (Score:2)
Re:Encryption (Score:2)
Re:Encryption (Score:2)
Re:Encryption (Score:2, Informative)
Run iPlayer. Watch what it talks to in Ethereal.
Download restricted media a bunch of times. Note what servers you download from.
Now on router, throttle all machines that iPlayer talks to down to 3 KB/s.
I dont care about encrypted crap and all. If you use regular IP with TCP (yah, no tunnel blocking and all), I can see your to/from information. I dont care about payload.
Filter it all and let the sysadmin sort it out.
Re:Encryption (Score:2)
Failing that, they'll just throttle everything thats encrypted (as some ISPs are starting to do to combat P2P) and hope most people
wont notice an encrypted web page being a few secs slower.
Re:Encryption (Score:2)
Re:Encryption (Score:2)
The whole blocking ports garbage just doesnt work in the real world. I'd just write a program to change local and remote ports and use standard servers to query "locked-in" hosts. Yeah, just like what Kazaa and Skype does.
Re:Encryption (Score:2)
In the case they could just throttle all traffic from the BBC, encryption or no.
Re:Encryption (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't care about them stopping it from being faster, that isn't the point. When I have a 3 meg download speed and the BBC has a three meg upload, any actions outside built in limitations(and not manipulated by the ISP) of the hardware or software being used that restricts it to a slower speed is ripping me off as well as ripping the BBC off.
Doesn't consumer protection laws already cover companies selling stuff and then not delivering on purpose?. It seems to me this should already be illegal. Maybe we need to make some accusations of the limiting and then look at what recourse the laws provide. I bet it is enough that it would be more then what each customer pays in a month. If every customer complained and file for action, It wold turn around.
Re:Encryption (Score:2)
Nice! (Score:2)
Re:Nice! (Score:2)
Re:Nice! (Score:2)
I just reloaded a viris infested laptop that had about 300 different albums on ripped to it from WMP. After everything was back up and running, I restored backups and none of the songs would play because the license files (from the WMP's protect your content tab) had been updated before the problems and the backup file was the wrong one.
Now here is a 19 year old girl going off to college with tons of music she cannot play unless she deletes and starts over. I know she isn't the first one to get bit like this and she won't be the last. MS's buggyness and ability to attract pests is a big incentive against DRM in itself. They are shooting themselves in their own foot with it. It only takes once and people are wise about it.
I wonder how many protesters that showed up were people Bitten like this too and the experience woke them up?
Re:Nice! (Score:2)
Ultimately there is a cost benefit decision to me made, and they also have to take in account all the people paying the license fee who would rather their money be spent somewhere else to begin with.
Re:Nice! (Score:2)
so don't offer it at all. (Score:2)
Re:so don't offer it at all. (Score:2)
Well... except for all the people who were hoping to have access to the content.
Re:so don't offer it at all. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:so don't offer it at all. (Score:2)
If the requirement is that they have to keep everyone happy, and it costs too much to do that, then saying "screw it" and doing nothing seems like the logical conclusion.
Re:so don't offer it at all. (Score:2)
Quarter Billion Dolar Waste. (Score:2)
why don't you just tell them all "screw it, then" .... unless the government is:
I can't even get the bloody thing to work (Score:5, Interesting)
While I recognize their desire to protect their content, I wonder what the hell made them choose this pig's dinner of a solution.
They would be better off to deliver watermarked content in an open format such as H264 that plays just about anywhere. They could require users to register their TV licence in order to get the service, after which they can use it from any OS or browser within reasonable restrictions. Basically people should be able to do what they like with the content, short of sharing it. If they share it, use the watermark to look-up their address and send the heavies round.
What Happened? (Score:4, Informative)
This is an interesting situation because of the BBC's role as a "state-owned but independent corporation" [wikipedia.org]. I skimmed the Wikipedia article and it appears that the BBC is a for-profit corporation, but the fact that it's state-owned leads me to believe that its funded by taxpayers. If that is the case, why should taxpayers have to pay for DRM-infested media that was sponsored by their tax money?
Re:What Happened? (Score:2)
Re:What Happened? (Score:2)
Re:What Happened? (Score:2)
Re:What Happened? (Score:5, Insightful)
If that is the case, why should taxpayers have to pay for DRM-infested media that was sponsored by their tax money?
The problem is why should UK taxpayers pay for people in other countries to have free media that they didn't pay for?Re:What Happened? (Score:4, Insightful)
I've always thought this to be a narrow-minded viewpoint, people from around the world watching British TV will help the export industries. Perhaps more Americans will learn about how to make a proper cup of tea (honestly, I heard you chaps don't even use boiling water!), buy-in some UK brands: I recommend Yorkshire Tea--am not affilliated with them, it's just bloomin' good tea. Next will come the Digestive biscuits, you've got to have a biscuit to dunk in your tea, the local grocery store in Canada imports these from the UK so there's obviously a market, real ales, DVDs of British shows, and a boost to the tourism industry. At the local farmers market here, across the pond, you can even buy 'Real Men Watch Coronation St.' t-shirts (no I don't own one, and yes I know C. St. is produced by ITV, that's beside the point).
So you might complain about foreigners watching shows paid for by your tax £'s, but consider the tax money the export and tourism industry will make back from a greater awareness of British culture. When put up against the cost of distribution: a slightly higher bandwidth bill for the Beeb, the benefits far outweigh the costs. The net result will be more tax collected from UK companies.
Re:What Happened? (Score:2)
Re:What Happened? (Score:3, Insightful)
At best, an argument can be made that there are additional bandwidth costs for internet distribution. In which case, the BBC should just limit downloads to people in the UK. But there is absolutely no need to restrict distribution - if someone else wants to pay for the bandwidth to share a show worldwide, then they should not be stopped from doing so.
Re:What Happened? (Score:4, Informative)
No, it doesn't, as the BBC currently makes money selling content to foreign stations, which would dry up if the BBC gave the content away for free.
Re:What Happened? (Score:2)
Re:What Happened? (Score:2)
Net neutrality no threat to the BBC (Score:4, Insightful)
The number one non-over-the-air channel, Sky One, is owned by the same people who own the satellite broadcast system. (In the UK TV service to households with reasonable disposable income is, or was, split into cable vs satellite. Over the air is probably more common but not really in the same market. Outside London there are no real alternatives yet.)
Sky have denied the Sky One (and a few other not very interesting channels) license to Virgin. This has resulted in a massive exodus from cable. As a TV watching friend of mine pointed out "it's not worth the grief from the missus - and the kids would yell at me too". My choice would have been emigration without kids or wife, but he chose to switch to Satellite/Sky instead.
What does this have to do with internet TV, which has no presence yet to be missed? Well, the BBC has a tendency to plug new services endlessly on their channels. There is no one in the UK who doesn't hear or see something from the BBC every single week. Computer penetration is also very high, it's a small island so broadband is readily available too (cable and DSL, the latter from a number of ISPs). Even the people who won't see TV adverts listen to Radio 4 (available over the internet for free - give it a go! - especially the comedy) giving them a direct and unique line to highly educated and very powerful people.
So, a large number of people who have already shown that TV is important enough to make them pick up the phone, will get bombarded with adverts for a new service that they can probably access. Until they get home and try to get to it and see:
The BBC can't give you access to the iPlayer because unlike every reputable ISP yours is trying to charge you extra and we said we wouldn't be part of it. Here is a list of ISPs, that you probably can switch to with a single phone call, that are doing the right thing.
Even if the ISP blocks the error page the cost of handling the phone calls to customer support *alone* will probably make the whole thing impossible to maintain for very long.
Now, it won't come to this. A backroom deal will be cut and the whole thing will go away - precisely because the ISPs have no possible way to win.
Parent is bang-on (Score:2)
Not only is this an interesting post, but the parent is bang-on about Radio 4, it's a fantastic station. Am particularly looking forward to: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency [bbc.co.uk], it's starring Harry Enfield [youtube.com] too.
Good thing is the DRM hasn't infected radio at all yet, so listen all you like!
pissed off (Score:3, Insightful)
DRM is a Non Issue - Just Don't use it (Score:3, Insightful)
Alternatively I can catch the programming 6 months to a year later on BBC America or the SciFi Channel with commercials and reduced resolution.
Whatever they do on their web site is a non-issue, although I'm a bit annoyed that I have to use a UK based proxy server to access some of the program guides.
Re:DRM is a Non Issue - Just Don't use it (Score:3, Informative)
So, feel free to open up Azureus and enjoy. You may find the websites uknova.com and thebox.bz quite educational, entertaining and informing. Which is funny, because that's exactly the motto of the BBC.
What Would Satisfy Me (Score:5, Interesting)
Its Nepotism, Stupid (Score:4, Interesting)
Having worked on some of these kinds of projects it is all nepotism. Erik gets a nice job at the BBC, someone from the BBC goes to Microsoft, an ex Labour Minister gets a job on one of Microsoft's Partner companies.
I reckon the BBC will abandon the Linux iPlayer the second it can.
The DRM stuff is a load of guff too. People as far as North Africa can pick up the BBC for free by sticking up a 130 cm satellite dish and aiming it at 28.2 degrees south as the Astra 2 satellite. Wonderful, crisp, digital downloads in realtime.
DRM is the problem (Score:4, Interesting)
The annoying thing is the DRM just enforces an expiry time, it doesn't stop people without a TV licence (mandatory in UK) from viewing such content.
Re:DRM is the problem (Score:2)
Also, according to one of the links, people are demanding no DRM be used whatsoever.
Re:DRM is the problem (Score:5, Informative)
Plus, last I checked, Realplayer was cross-platform and supported rights restrictions, along with flash. Of course they can and have all been cracked, but so has Windows' rights restriction system. And, yes, as a practical matter, people want this DRM-free; the current content on TV can be tape (Tivo, etc.) recorded and watched whenever, so having the computerized version have additional restrictions placed on it is a step backwards, removes far use rights, and is something noone but the big media is interested in.
Re:DRM is the problem (Score:3, Insightful)
The goals of the protest were about DRM and proprietary software.
Re:DRM is the problem (Score:3, Insightful)
DRM is not compatable with this purpose. Particularly when it is beyond the reach of law.
There are others who have differing opinions about what purpose the BBC should be put to, and they are driving the DRM.
This isn't a debate, it's a contest between small groups who have an opinion on the subject.
Re:DRM is the problem (Score:5, Informative)
Re:DRM is the problem (Score:2)
Re:DRM is the problem (Score:2)
Re:DRM is the problem (Score:2)
Re:DRM is the problem (Score:5, Informative)
Re:DRM is the problem (Score:3, Informative)
Re:DRM is the problem (Score:2)
The cost of distributing the content has to be a small fraction of the cost of actually creating it, and I'm nearly positive that the TV tax monies do assist with that. So arguing that "well, the internet distribution isn't funded by tax dollars" as a justification for putting DRM on the content is pretty thin.
Anyway, that's only one of the problems with iPlayer; the other, and probably more significant one, is that the iPlayer they're using (the crummy Windows-only, DRMed one) uses P2P in order to distribute the content. Consumer broadband ISPs aren't really thrilled with this, and see it as basically a way of making them bear the BBCs bandwidth costs.*
* For the record I think this is a bullshit argument, but that's what they're saying. Of course, what they hate to talk about is that they're rampantly overselling their capacity, and this is the real source of the problems.
TO ALL TO WHOM THESE PRESENTS SHALL COME, GREETING (Score:3, Informative)
One thing is clear, in the real world this ground-breaking project was never going to get off the ground without some form of DRM to stop casual copying, for two simple reasons - many of the BBC's shows are supplied by independent producers, and the BBC itself has an interest in the post-broadcast DVD market. Neither would want to allow their exploitation of the product to be killed by multiple high quality copies al over the Internet. Yes I know this happens already, but it's not on a massive scale yet, and it would be naive to think that profit-seeking companies would want to sign up to a scheme that would only increase it.
Re:DRM is the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
You could probably make a case for the BBC restricting access to their content to licence-payers only (although I wouldn't), but instead they've gone with a completely inappropriate restriction of "Microsoft-users only".
The current iPlayer implementation really stinks - it stinks of pushy salesmen and weak-minded decision takers. It flies in the face of many decades of the BBC standing on principles and doing The Right Thing(TM), resisting commercial pressure. Now they've gone to the opposite extreme and the outrage is perfectly justified.
HTH
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Interesting)
Here it is: http://defectivebydesign.org/blog/BBCcorrupted [defectivebydesign.org]
The article goes as far as to suggest the BBC has been corrupted by Microsoft. I'm not sure it goes that far, but I think the BBC had all good intentions but failed on the delivery. I hope they won't abandon the effort but simply update it to ensure it's available cross-platform, DRM free using FOSS etc...
Would be a great showcase for FOSS if they did.
Cheers.
Re:The BBC's Core (Score:3, Insightful)
From The Sunday Times
August 12, 2007
Re:The BBC's Core (Score:3, Insightful)
I love the Beeb, I think it's an amazing institution and I believe that Murdoch is a baby-feasting spawn of Satan and a genuine threat to Democracy, BUT part of our open society is being able to provide a counterpoint which the Times is doing - just because they are owned by the aforementioned hellspawn please don't accuse them of lying. Don't accept everything the BBC says as perfect truth either.
The BBC does do a very good job - probably the best in the World (IMHO) of balanced reporting, certainly when compared to bile like Fox news (gak, "news" is certainly a misnomer there...) but there is also an obvious liberal bias. This may reflect that Britain is a reasonably liberal society.
Remember - "Question everything including what I am telling you now."
Re:The BBC's Core (Score:4, Insightful)
As pointed out by another poster, The Sunday Times is owned by Murdoch who has no qualms at all about forcing a very strong right-wing bias on all his publications. His orifices generally delight in lampooning the BBC (and any other institution that competes with Murdoch) whenever possible and factual accuracy is deemed optional in these cases. I'd ignore any such article from his publications, especially one written from an "insider perspective" that is 40 years old!
Anyway, the whole idea of a pervasive "liberal bias" in the BBC is nonsense - even if you think such a thing exists, so what? Given how poorly the Tories do in the polls even after years of Labour disillusionment and given how left-wing the UK is in comparison to the US, perhaps such a bias would just reflect the bias of the British people?
Re:Huh? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Huh? (Score:2)
Re:Huh? (Score:2)
Re:Huh? (Score:2)
*The BBC doesn't carry adverts, it makes some money from DVD sales, and sales of rights, but even the latter is limited, as most of it's shows are shown by BBC worldwide, not other companies.
Re:Huh? (Score:2)
Re:Huh? (Score:2)
Re:Huh? (Score:2)
Re:Huh? (Score:2)
Re:Huh? (Score:2)
Re:Huh? (Score:2)
The BBC is paid for by a license fee which everyone who has a TV (or radio etc) has to pay. So, yes!
Re:Huh? (Score:2)
Re:Huh? (Score:2)
A similar licence, mandated by the 1904 Wireless Telegraphy Act, used to exist for radios, but was abolished in 1971. These licences were originally issued by the General Post Office (GPO), which was then the regulator of public communications within the UK.
Re:Huh? (Score:2)
Doesn't sound as doom and gloom as the summary makes it out to be.
Sounds like someone rallying support for their pet cause.
But hey, we might get a good illustration of net nuetrality in action. Also according to Ars: And if the BBC doesn't pay up, and the iPlayer service is abysmal, then who do you think the consumers are going to call? If there were any doubt, the BBC could insert 15 second clips into their programs telling the consumers that any poor quality was the result of an administrative decision by the ISPs to not allow their product to work as intended.
Re:Huh? (Score:2, Insightful)
The difference is that UK citizens are required to pay a licence fee to receive BBC content. It is so difficult for ordinary citizens to get out of paying the licence fee that it is in effect a universal tax. If the BBC then decides to release an MS-only product I (as a UK citizen) am in effect being taxed by the Government to support MS. Regardless of my views on MS, the BBC, etc, this is pretty unacceptable. This is like the BBC releasing content that only works on Sony (for example) televisions.
Re:Huh? (Score:2)
Simple Answer (Score:2)
If the DRM, the agreement with Microsoft, or the restriction to a Windows player, is in violation of the charter, the BBC could be hung, drawn and quartered by the courts. If all three are acceptable - or even required - by the charter, then the BBC's legally guaranteed independence and freedom mean there is nothing anybody can do. Anybody. The Prime Minister could beg on his knees or order in the tanks, and it wouldn't do any good.
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Informative)
All funding for the BBC comes from the UK tv licence [wikipedia.org] and the sales of programming and other commercial activity (e.g. selling Dr. Who and publishing magazines such as the Radio Times [radiotimes.com])
The BBC is controlled by the BBC Trust (formally the BBC governors) and according to its charter is "free from both political and commercial influence and answers only to its viewers and listeners" [bbc.co.uk]
The BBC added free to air distribution of its programming over satellite in order to provide maximum access to its services to its viewers. One of the side effects of this is that the BBC channels can be received with standard DVB-S equipment across most of western Europe.
This is the reason that people are angry with the iplayer situation. It artificially restricts the service to Windows users and prevents full access by all of the licence paying population of the UK. This is completely the opposite of the satellite case where reception is open to others extremely outside the borders of the UK to ensure that UK licence payers have access to the service (note it is possible to receive this as far away as Bulgaria and beyond, so we are not talking about a small over-spread here!
Re:Huh? (Score:2)
1. The BBC is funded by a licenses fee. I know it sounds weird but you have to pay every year just to have a TV that can pick up broadcasts! They have vans that drive around that can detect TVs and such. I saw it many many years ago on an episode of the Young Ones. The concept is totally alien to people in the US but that is how BBC is funded.
2. The BBC is sort of like PBS in the US but much better funded. It is an independent government agency. I am guessing that it is run by the government for the benefit of the people of the UK however it's content is not under government control. The government doesn't decide what news stories are covered or what shows are allowed. This allows the BBC to report things that would embarrass the government without fear of reprisal. This allows the BBC to have it's well deserved reputation for integrity.
3. This new system will not work on the Apple Mac or Linux. So to view this content online you must have a PC running Windows and IE. This probably rubs a lot of people in the UK the wrong way. I can understand why. Let's imagine that somebody want to make a "slingbox" type device in the UK for viewing BBC content. A company in the UK would have to pay an US company to make a device to sell in the UK to watch BBC content.
4. DRM. Just annoying because it prevents people in the UK from downloading a show and putting in on their iPod, notebook, and or Zune.
And the big one.
I don't have to understand. I am not a citizen of the UK so I have no say in this matter. I hope that they choose well and get a system that they like. If it is FOSS and DRM free then I will be pleased because I feel that technically it is a better way to go but in the end it isn't any of my business.
Re:Huh? (Score:2)
Re:Huh? (Score:2)
Sadly, in reality, you can't eat the telly, either.
Re:Huh? (Score:2)
Re:Huh? (Score:2)
Re:Huh? (Score:2)
I am no friend of Microsoft, I've been Linux/BSD only for 10 years and dual booted before that, but that said I do wish the FSF would STFU on this one.
The software is in beta. BETA!
The beeb have said that they will support other platforms, and I'm sure they will, but let them finish their testing before beating up on them for christ's sake.
They have got all sorts of pressures from content owners and probably Equity for repeat fees so they can't just make the thing "open" because you could just bypass the controls.
The thing only allows you to catch up on the last 7 days anyway - if you are geeky enough to run Linux you can get a DVB-T tuner for under 20 quid and run MythTV and get better quality than iPlayer will probably give you.
A Microsoft solution lets them get to 90 of the audience - they can *really* test the networking side of stuff with a known configuration and not have to worry about a handful of crazy Linux users running disparate distros.
Who's to say they are not talking to Microsoft to get the WMV DLLs shipped with a Linux version and link into them? Mplayer seems to do it happily. The BBC are probably one of the few organisations who could get Microsoft to go along with this kind of thing.
For fucks sake I wish people would just shut up and let them get on with their testing. When the full service is running and a few months have gone by and there's still nothing else supported then, fair enough, complain then. But let them finish the beta program at least you petulant bastards.
Re:Huh? (Score:2)
The facts are:- It's in beta, and it's proprietary. Will the beta fix either of these?
Re:Huh? (Score:2)
The company you refer to and all of its assets are owned by the British taxpayer. Also, everyone in the UK who owns a television apparently pays a license fee specifically to support the BBC. If you are a British citizen, the "product" already belongs to you. So you shouldn't have to pay any additional costs (ie a Windows license) to access your property.
It's pretty much the same scenario as the push for governments to use open formats. The documents belong to the citizenry, and should be stored in a format that is accessible to all.
Re:Huh? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Huh? (Score:2)
I certainly do.
Bit of a rock & a hard place thing here... (Score:5, Insightful)
gesture towards restricting the redistribution of material which doesn't totally belong to it.
To also respond to the grandparent: the big thing here is that the BBC is not a company in the same sense that (say)
US cable networks are. As Douglas Adams used to observe "The BBC's not in the same business as the other TV stations" (or words to that effect): their customers are not corporate advertisers. The BBC is funded by the UK TV licencing fee, & has therefore already been paid for by every Windows, Mac, Linux, *BSD, Solaris, etc. user in the UK with a TV licence, so it clearly is unfair for the Beeb to release iPlayer access to their programmes only to Windows users. (In the interests of full disclosure, btw, I'm a British ex-pat who only uses OS X & (GNU/)Linux).
I do feel some measure of sympathy for the BBC about this, though. As has been noted elsewhere, it should be considered admirable that the BBC are trying to make as much of their programming available online as is feasible without charging. Unfortunately, the only way they can think of at the moment to reconcile that ideal with the legal realities of their programme-producing partnerships & so on is to present them with some sort of anti-duplication measure, hence the DRM. However, my sympathy for the BBC on this issue is tempered by the information that one of the senior execs in charge of making the decisions is an ex-Microsoft Windows Media Player guy, which does tend to suggest scope for conflict of interest on his part.
On balance, I think that the pressure the BBC is feeling reflects the fact that it's pushing the boundaries on making their content freely available online, which is a forward-thinking policy in general, & should be applauded. The woes listed in the summary are largely due to some short-term lack of wisdom in the means currently being used to attain those goals.
Re:Bit of a rock & a hard place thing here... (Score:5, Interesting)
My sympathy for them is tempered by that, and by a couple of other things...
- for a while they used to provide replays of radio programmes etc. in Ogg, but they stopped that and went to Windows or Real only a long time ago. Obviously somebody there had a clue, but was (eventually) shut down. This is more of a bad sign than if they had never done it at all.
- while claiming they were 'intending to provide a non-Windows solution', this was only expected to happen in 'about 24 months' and they were only going to review progress on that project 'every 6 months or so'. That sounds to me very much like 'yeah, yeah, we'll get to it one day. Maybe.'
Re:A bit OTT (Score:2)
If they don't do that, Ill just bittorrent them anyways. I'm not going to buy crippled software/media when the thieves can provide better for free.
To me, freedom matters more than cost. Capitalism at its finest.
Re:To all the protestors: (Score:2)
No, but they are forcing me to pay for it. And I damned well want to use it if so.
Cheers,
Ian
Re:There is no uproar (Score:2)
Re:There is no uproar (Score:2)
Re:There is no uproar (Score:3, Interesting)
This is PUBLIC television we're talking about here.
Re:There is no uproar (Score:2)
Re:There is no uproar (Score:2)
Re:There is no uproar (Score:2)
Re:There is no uproar (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:There is no uproar (Score:2)
Re:The real issue is.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This isn't a Net Neutrality Issue (Score:2)
They get you to buy into a larger broadband service (3M, 5M, 10M heck even 50M) by saying it will go x-times faster and look, it's only $20 while their competition offers a similar product for $30 or more. Then they deliver and lo-and-behold I actually like to USE my 10M of bandwidth (uncompressed HD easily consumes 20Mbps). Well, apparently they didn't think of that and if my neighbor likes to do the same thing, we're SoL.
This wasn't an issue until recently because I was probably the only BitTorrenting (downloading Linux ISO's) geek on the block. The issue is that they now sold 50M to Joe Sixpack that bought into the sales drone scripted explanation why he should get it (hey, you will have enough bandwidth for HD content) instead of remaining with 1M. Since BBC (or other channels like Google, YouTube or soon even Joost) brings that type of content to Joe Sixpack the broadband providers will all of a sudden have to provide that promised bandwidth for more than just the geek on the block, and guess what, most of that is not even HD, it's a plan to get 320x200 compressed streaming and they're already complaining.
To put your broadband connection in perspective (yes I worked at some large ISP's). If you have DSL in a rural environment, your DSLAM's (the concentrator for your neighbourhood) most likely only has 2-8Mbit/s over copper to the ISP per 100-200 customers, in a more dense environment it might go up to 20Mbit/s over copper or fiber for the same amount of people and some even have a failover that is actively used.
If you're on cable or in cities you might or might not have more luck with the concentrator's connection, I know in some areas there are full gigabit fiber connections to the 'box-on-the-street'.
If you're in a colo's datacenter it's even worse since there you do have a contract for a minimum expected service. Until 3 years ago a colo I worked for had a single 50Mbit/s up/down to their provider while offering 100Mbit/s to approx. 1000 servers. Currently (with the surges in bandwidth use) they have 2x 2Gbps from different ISP's with BGP but their servers also tripled in that time.
Re:This is absurd. The world needs perspective. (Score:2, Insightful)
If I lived in the UK and was forced to pay for a TV license (instated by the BBC), I would expect to have equal access to the programming for which I payed, regardless of my operating system and browser of choice. I choose freedom by using free software, so I would be ineligible to make use of a service for which I've already paid.
Government agencies forcing people to do business with monopolistic corporations? Yeah, that's definitely protest-worthy.