BBC Activates DRM For Its iPlayer Content 282
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."
Re:Its like 1000's of customers cried out (Score:4, Informative)
I don't think its optional. If you have a TV, you pay for BBC etc, like in Denmark.
ooooor am I getting it wrong?
Re:Its like 1000's of customers cried out (Score:5, Informative)
They'll let you off if they visit and you don't have any receiving equipment set up, i.e. no cable or satellite box in your home, and no antenna connected. There was talk of them changing the licence fee so that anyone who could use the iPlayer (i.e. anyone with flash and an internet connection) would be billable though.
Works for me (Score:3, Informative)
I'm a bit confused by this. TFA is talking about how the author of get_iplayer is ceasing development of it in protest at the BBC's DRM actions (the clue being in the title "get_iplayer dropped in response to BBC’s lack of support for open source"). It doesn't say get_iplayer doesn't work any more, or that the BBC have prevented its use.
Indeed, I just installed it (on Ubuntu) and it appears to work just fine - I have a nicely encoded file of some quite funny children's programme that's apparently completely free of any DRM.
Re:Works for me (Score:5, Informative)
Oh, rtmpdump implements "SWF verification", a silly little Flash DRM support scheme, which is what the BBC have enabled on iPlayer recently.
Re:Yup (Score:4, Informative)
There was until recently no DRM on the flash video versions, and that's what get_iplayer and the xbmc plugin used. FairUse4WM doesn't work in versions of Windows later than XP, and in any case there are less programs available in wmv format than flv format.
Re:Its like 1000's of customers cried out (Score:3, Informative)
The BBC streams HD H.264 unencrypted over the air.
They have been trying to get permission to encrypt that too.
Re:Its like 1000's of customers cried out (Score:5, Informative)
Re:HTML5 is NOT the solution to DRM! (Score:3, Informative)
As per the other /. story on H.264 v Ogg Theora, I'm of the opinion that the codec issue should not be conflated with the delivery platform issue [slashdot.org].
Also, note "such as HTML5" does not exclude any other specifications, including any the BBC might openly specify itself.
Re:Its like 1000's of customers cried out (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Its like 1000's of customers cried out (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Oh noes (Score:5, Informative)
Re:HTML5 is NOT the solution to DRM! (Score:3, Informative)
The video tag isn't canvas. It's just a different kind of embed that directly accepts a URL for a video.
That video can be H.264, or it can be Ogg container, Theora video, Vorbis audio. Actually, it can be anything, but those are the two primary formats.
(Opera on *nix can use any video format for which there is a GStreamer codec installed.)
Re:Its like 1000's of customers cried out (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Its like 1000's of customers cried out (Score:4, Informative)
Bullshit. They will care, as soon as someone switches the DRM server off. Which already happened more than once, and created massive anger, especially among Joe Sixpack types, who sued. As soon as (tabloid) newspapers notice these events, they will warn about the DRM fraud schemes. Which the Joes will read. Resulting in mass-avoidance.
The normal guy on the street luckily still thinks that he owns what he buys. Even if it’s information (e.g. movies). So if that what he thinks he owns, goes away in any way, he will sue for fraud/theft/etc, avoid them, and tell his friends to avoid them. Simple as that.
It’s the natural rule of maximum efficiency. As soon as buying DRMed stuff becomes negative compared to the other choices, it dies. Period. (The trick is to offer better choices. But that’s already in the works, as artists leave their publishers droves, as soon as they can get out. To then do their own thing, and get a multiple of the money they got before.)
Re:Yup (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Its like 1000's of customers cried out (Score:2, Informative)
For the past few years I've just had my PC connected to my TV and watch iPlayer (seldom) or downloaded TV shows.
Never have paid a TV license, never will, because I don't watch live TV.
Once the TV licensing guy came to my front door and tried to convince me that their "detectors" had "detected" me watching live TV. I called him a liar and revoked his implied right of access to the building and escorted him off the premiss. Now if he or anyone from TV licensing come to my front door they'll be trespassing.
Learn your rights, TV licensing have no more power than if I came to your front door and said I was a vaccine cleaner inspector, let me in! The TV licensing company makes its money from scaremongering.
Van Eck (Score:3, Informative)
And just how are they going to know whether you have equipment to receive TV set up in your house? They have no right of entry to your property, unless you choose to allow it.
If you have a CRT TV they can 'tune in' to your picture from outside your house (that's how detector vans work). See this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Eck_phreaking [wikipedia.org]
I thought maybe this wouldn't work with LCD TVs but the article claims (with a referenced paper) it does in some cases - however, perhaps less reliably than with CRTs.
Re:Yup (Score:2, Informative)
So don't buy DRM content and if you're in the UK don't get a TV license until the BBC drops their DRM. Simple enough I'd say. Worked for music.
As pointed out, the BBC doesn't work like this - we don't have consumer choice like for other companies.
As a constituent in a political system, derive an argument that producer digital restrictions are harmful enough that you can campaign against your local politico and make it stick.
Um, exactly like people are doing, you mean? That's what we're talking about - you're the one saying that people shouldn't care.
Until that's the law of the land though, you have no *right* to be allowed to change presentation layers of digital media; particularly if it means circumventing encryption. I have no problems with people defying it in an act of civil disobedience, just never forget, that producers *do* and *should* have rights of distribution and presentation as the law stands now.
You're conflating what the law is, with opinions about what the law should be. Even if the law says one thing, people can still question what the law should be.
Furthermore, you don't even know what UK law is - there is no UK law, AFAIK, against circumventing encryption (at least, I don't think we've yet brought in our own DMCA equivalent, though I may be wrong). We are not governed by your Spanish law, and producers do not have some legal given right of presentation. The issue here is not one of law, but a question of the BBC using DRM, when it's funded by the licence fee.
Even where it is a question of law, are you like this on every Slashdot story? E.g., there's a story about the DMCA, and you post 50 comments telling us that that's what the law is? Yes, we know what the law is - it's the law that we're complaining about.