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."
Its like 1000's of customers cried out (Score:2)
And then dropped their service. Hitting them in the pocketbook is the only hope to stop DRM. Act today!
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.
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I'm sure there are others that do this and they want to force people to pay but once I make the switch, until I'm forced to pay I won't. I just don't use their services enough to warrant and I don't like the idea of supporting East Enders.
Re:Its like 1000's of customers cried out (Score:5, Informative)
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anyone with flash and an internet connection
Good luck explaining to a "TV License Enforcement Representative" that you browse using Lynx.
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.
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Re:Its like 1000's of customers cried out (Score:5, Insightful)
Only the people who read this website actually care. DRM will never die because users are used to putting up with inconvenience and absurd costs for their media. Customers just accept anything, be it overpriced cable TV service(you pay a monthly fee, then you also have to pay per view), or an extremely disruptive level of advertising in programs.
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.)
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Unfortunately, you're dead right. One of the DRM advocates on the BBC Blogs comment thread comes over very much as being afraid that caving to the "FOSS preachers" will result in the withdrawal of content from the content providers.
Or, to put it another way, is willing to put up with a reduction in freedom as long as all his (her?) favourite programs are available for viewing.
And then in the same paragraph, will accuse FOSS advocates of being "selfish".
Re:Its like 1000's of customers cried out (Score:5, Interesting)
I stopped paying the TV license when they introduced MS DRM on iPlayer originally (I haven't had a TV for a while, but I kept paying the license fee because I thought the online news was valuable). I'm absolutely disgusted by this. The BBC streams HD H.264 unencrypted over the air. It's absolutely ludicrous that they should DRM the online streams. If you want to pirate their content, just stick a DVB-T card in your computer, grab the streams, and upload them (optionally after transcoding). This is exactly what happens - you can get anything on iPlayer from various torrent sites at a higher quality from the OTA broadcast. So why are they adding DRM? There is absolutely no legitimate justification for it.
The BBC is a large organisation. They should not bow to pressure on this issue - if content is not available DRM free then they should refuse to license it at all, even for terrestrial broadcast.
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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:Its like 1000's of customers cried out (Score:4, Insightful)
Um, yes they have. Their first priority was to apply DRM to the metadata, but they requested OFCOM to review whether encryption should be allowed. Read their original request.
While it first did indeed look as if OFCOM would stop the BBC's treacherous plans, they have since softened and it currently looks as if DRM is well on it's way.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/feb/09/ofcom [guardian.co.uk]
and they can't because it would break millions of deployed set-top boxes.
The BBC has a few sneaky tricks up their sleeve for that. They would start by applying it to all HD channels.
And then they'll do what they did to encourage people to switch to digital receivers in the first place: launch new channels and water down your previous service so much that everyone upgrades. As long as they still show the news they're still doing their job right?
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And didn't I read somewhere that you cant record/timeshift Freeview HD? As all of my TV watching is timeshifted , then that's no use to me at all. I was thinking of getting a Panasonic P42G20 with HD Freeview tuner, but it all sounds a lot less appealing than I first thought. Until you can timeshift Freeview HD I wont be buying any equipment.
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Whoosh (Score:3, Insightful)
And then dropped their service. Hitting them in the pocketbook is the only
I agree fully. But then, the government unfortunately doesn't, and they have guns.
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I agree fully. But then, the government unfortunately doesn't, and they have guns.
And they made sure the peasantry didn't.
Re:Whoosh (Score:4, Insightful)
Even if we had guns, we're not exactly going to launch an armed insurrection because the BBC has asked someone to stop running an open-source iPlayer client.
Hell, the Yanks couldn't be bothered to get another revolution together for the PATRIOT act, let alone a TV licensing spat.
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Hell, the Yanks couldn't be bothered to get another revolution together for the PATRIOT act, let alone a TV licensing spat
They are much more likely to have a revolution if someone stopped them watching TV than if Bush or Obama had declared themselves king and abolished elections.
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FTFY.
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Really? Made up? Have you read any of the bill, paid any attention to the news? Before you start flaming me, I'm somebody who is going to benefit from this law, if all the assertions made by the Democrats are true, and from everything I see in it I am going to be hurt by it, not benefited.
Would you like to seriously discuss this, or did you just want to hurl an insult at Fox?
Re:Whoosh (Score:5, Insightful)
The old saws about this are "don't awaken the sleeping giant" and "let sleeping dogs lie", and Obama has violated both. My prediction is: He's going to have quite a rude awakening as he has vastly underestimated the power of an awakened, riled, American citizenry.
Who we gonna vote for, the Republicans? Each side pretends to love liberty when out of power, and then embraces authority once they gain power.
The only thing that will fix things is a third party, and the only thing which will make a third party viable is instant runoff voting. That won't happen until things get really, really broken.
Which may or not may be that far off once people toss in the towel on the dollar pyramid scheme.
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The French peasants had it rough long before they rebelled, it was a bunch of little things, and a few big ones, that eventually ended up with a lot of people loosing their heads.
Eventually people will say "Enough", and seek change, if they get it without the use of force great, but if not they will still get it, it will just be messier.
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And of course the only way to kill people is with a gun. You can't use a knife, a club or an improvised bomb or anything like that.
Oh but I thought was the protect you? (Score:2)
Hahaha. Second amendment for the win!
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It's a tax supported public service (which, of course, only makes their DRM even more despicable). You can only opt out by not watching any TV channels.
Stupid (Score:5, Interesting)
A stupid decision given the BBC broadcast DRM free mpeg2 over the airwaves. A £30 USB TV card will let you record broadcast quality TV, so why do they feel that lower quality net streaming is a risk?
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How much does it cost them if you download a torrent of a show that someone taped from 'the airwaves'? Nothing.
How much does it cost them if you watch the show online using their bandwidth? Not nothing.
That's a pretty big difference.
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The difference is that broadcast TV is 'broadcast' while watching something online is 'unicast'. I don't know how much it costs to run a broadcast television station, I assume it is a lot. Once you have it up and running though, one more person tuning in and watching a show isn't putting any extra strain on they system, while one more person watching something online is putting more strain on their servers.
Now, I really highly doubt they are doing this just to annoy people into watching shows over broadca
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How much does it cost them if you download a torrent of a show that someone taped from 'the airwaves'? Nothing.
Try millions and millions of pounds. Terrestrial broadcast for an entire country isn't cheap.
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If I want to watch the program a second time, then without DRM I can play the mp4 file saved to my hard drive, whereas with DRM, I must download it again.
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I believe, in addition to the usual blind-spot media execs seem to have about DRM, that there's an element of getting control over the client viewing platform. E.g. the BBC are developing a set-top-box for internet TV (Project Canvas).
Re:Stupid (Score:4, Insightful)
Uh, what? iPlayer uses GeoIP so only British citizens can download directly from them anyway (and they have peering agreements with British ISPs, so they aren't paying for bandwidth anyway). People in the UK can (and do) dump the DVB streams from the BBC and upload them to torrents. I doubt that they do the same with the iPlayer streams, because they're more traceable and lower quality.
It's worth noting that get_iplayer doesn't let you do anything that you can do with a DVR anyway. You can grab digital streams via a DVR or computer with a DVB-t card and keep them forever. There is no DRM on the OTA streams, so why does there need to be on the Internet ones?
Who wants DRM? Who wants platform neutrality? (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a long discussion on this on a BBC blog [bbc.co.uk].
Also, bear in mind that when the BBC says "Rights holders require us to implement DRM" that the BBC potentially is being obfuscatory, because the rights holders it's talking about may in fact be companies the BBC owns in part or in full. I.e. the BBC might be trying to hide "We want DRM". E.g. see this post from Anthony Rose [bbc.co.uk] giving BBC Worldwide as the prime example of the DRM-requiring rights holders.
Finally, this is from a comment I left on the linuxcentre blog:
BBC Trust is running a consultation [bbc.co.uk] on the BBC strategic review. One of the key questions is regarding platform neutrality. It is very important that people fill in that survey and let the Trust know how important open ly specified access is. In particular the following is important for platform neutrality:
* BBC Ondemand should *not* be built on proprietary, single-vendor technologies, such as Adobe Flash.
* BBC Ondemand should be built on multi-vendor, open, non-discriminatory standards, such as HTML5 video.
* The BBC should *not* be in the business of dictating which ondemand client implementations may access iPlayer and which may not.
These things are important both for free software, but also more generally for a healthy market. It is not in the public interest for the BBC to become the king-maker of client device implementations. Please take the time to let the Trust know your views on platform neutrality and how the current situation is bad for the greater public interest.
HTML5 is NOT the solution to DRM! (Score:2, Insightful)
Please, PLEASE do not suggest that HTML5 is an adequate solution to this problem. It is not. HTML5 is shaping up to be one of the biggest fuck-ups we've ever seen. The major vendors cannot and will not agree on standard codecs. It won't happen.
The only solution is for the BBC to offer their videos for download in completely-open formats. We're basically talking two options here:
1) As an Ogg container holding Theora-encoded video and Vorbis-encoded audio.
2) As a Matroska container holding Theora-encoded vide
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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.
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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.)
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BBC owns the rights to many programs that they then sell to other markets.
For example the currently very popular "Life" series is a BBC program but the Discovery channel has bought rebroadcast rights.
If you can stream the iPlayer in the US because a player includes no DRM then the Discovery channel can sue the BBC for breaching their exclusive distribution rights.
This is true of all of their programs. It's the BBC's responsibility to extract as much profit as possible from foreign markets. It's part of ho
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No one is arguing that the BBC not apply their geo-IP checks, as they were doing with XBMC and get_iplayer clients all along.
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Duh, put it in the contract. Don't sell _exclusive_ broadcasting rights of something you still broadcast yourself. Next intractable legal conundrum, please.
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Yes, BBCW exist to provide value to the public by making money from non-UK-broadcast activities. Yes, the BBCW and BBC executive are supposed to be separate and at arms length - however the BBC executive do have a direct financial interest in the BBCW, as BBCW activities generate revenue for the BBC. BBC executives have called that revenue "significant" (see blog I linked to).
Are you sure there is no difference between the BBC saying "External rights-holders require us to implement DRM" and "We're implement
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, Interesting)
Do you have rtmpdump installed by any chance?
The BBC make available low-res streams. Totem supports these. My understanding is the higher-res streams now require rtmpdump installed to access, which is a tool that's hard for distros to ship due to anti-circumvention laws. E.g. Adobe have tried to use the DMCA to take down rtmpdump.
I.e. my understanding is that the BBCs' move only frustrates those who must shy away from all legal risk. It doesn't really stop anyone - DRM never does.
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:Works for me (Score:5, Interesting)
I've not got rtmpdump installed to the best of my knowledge (at least, there's no file containing that name on my system). I've just tried this:
get_iplayer --get --modes=flashvhigh 859
Which gets a pretty large (670Mb) Flash file containing a 45-min episode of Top Gear which I assume that's hi-res (it looks it).
So again - works for me using a pretty much default install of Ubuntu 9.10.
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interesting. does "strace -e open -f get_iplayer --get 859 |& grep rtmp" say anything? has it been built with patches to enable SWF verification support in some way?
It definitely appears broken on Fedora, where get_iplayer does not support SWF verification enabled RTMP streams.
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"strace -e open -f get_iplayer --get 859 |& grep rtmp" says nothing at all. I'm using v2.41 of get_iplayer if that's any help.
I notice a comment in the source that says:
# rtmpdump/flvstreamer version detection e.g. 'RTMPDump v1.5' or 'FLVStreamer v1.7a'
I have flvstreamer installed - would that be a clue?
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Yeah, flvstreamer is a fork of rtmpdump with the SWF verification stuff removed. My understanding is that flvstreamer shouldn't be sufficient - unless someone patched that to add back in the DRM-support bits?
Are these get_iplayer and flvstreamer packages shipped in Canonical hosted repositories? What patches are applied in the packages?
Re:Works for me (Score:4, Interesting)
I've not got rtmpdump installed to the best of my knowledge (at least, there's no file containing that name on my system).
Do you have a file flvstreamer (which is a fork of rtmpdump used by get_iplayer)? If so it's the same thing, and if it works on the BBC's streams then it's been patched to get around Adobe's verification, so is a copyright circumvention device.
They haven't activated anything (Score:4, Insightful)
They haven't "activated" anything, there have always been restrictions on the content available via the iPlayer, both downloadable and streaming - thanks mostly to all the spanners in the "content" industry demanding time limits and (more reasonably) geographic limits.
I have to say I'm torn here; on the one hand I understand that while a lot of the content on the iPlayer is owned in whole or in part by the BBC, there's a lot that isn't and they have to play nice with the owners of that content - in this case preventing 3rd party applications from downloading or re-streaming their content outside of the above limits - but at the same time, as a licence fee payer, I want the BBC to play nice with me as well.
The BBC do a pretty good job when you compare the iPlayer to offerings from other media organisations, but I'd rather lose a few imported shows to the commercial networks if it means they can be less restrictive about what they broadcast.
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The high-level usage restrictions the BBC had as policy have not changed.
The BBC *have* changed the format of the service. It now uses SWF verification [wikipedia.org]. If you don't believe me, believe the BBC [bbc.co.uk].
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That they make no effort to separate out what's theirs and what's not indicates to me that they want the restrictions, that they are actively working against open standards, open source, and open (non-DRM) files. The BBC wants the restrictions on the content they own, and lie whe
I get the BBC the old fashioned way (Score:2)
plus NPR broadcasts the BBC every night, (not sure if NPR does that nationwide)
Is this entirely accurate? (Score:2)
I use the OS X app iPlayer Downloader occasionally, to grab programs I missed and will want to see in a few days. Some of the content refuses to download, but others download just fine still.
Class-War continues. (Score:2)
XBMC bug-fix to support SWF Verification (Score:5, Insightful)
http://trac.xbmc.org/ticket/8971 [xbmc.org] adds support to use librtmp which supports RTMPE including SWF Verification and Adobe's so-called "Secure" Token authentication.
it's worth repeating that there is absolutely zero security of any kind in Adobe Flash RTMPE. everything can be obtained publicly; or is "magic constants", or is simply a complex chain of algorithms, the result of which is merely an increase in CPU usage, heat generated and money wasted, along with the dangerous illusion of security.
I've got nothing new to add (Score:2)
I'm adding what I would have sent them to my contribution to the Pirate Party.
Yup (Score:5, Insightful)
This is why you don't touch DRM even a little bit. It doesn't matter if you only buy the open content and so the DRM sits there unused. The purpose for that DRM framework is to do stuff like this to you further down the line. DRM is a tool designed for the sole purpose to take stuff away from you, and you shouldn't tolerate its presence.
Re:Yup (Score:4, Insightful)
How is it that DRM allows one to watch content? Surely people could watch content before DRM came around?
Re:Yup (Score:4, Insightful)
I feel for the parent, as it's definitely an unpopular opinion, but in this case, it does allow streaming internet content in this instance. I don't think it was trolling, but rather just not articulated very well. Without any DRM, many vendors won't allow their streams online (at least legally). They demand these protections from the broadcasters. As much as I despise DRM, there are situations where it allow content that we normally wouldn't be allow to access. In this case, I think BBC is just in the middle and did what it had to, in order to keep it's content providers.
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Then the same answer still applies. BBC is simply protecting it's own content and profits as they see it. Whether they are in the middle, or the producer of said content is largely irrelevant as the reasons for DRM are the same. Being from the US, I don't know what most of the content it does produce. We do see a lot of series about various topics, but they are typically free to view via Browser and also typically available via Blu-Ray or DVD. They seem to feel this gives them some sense of security, howeve
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Then the same answer still applies. BBC is simply protecting it's own content and profits as they see it.
Its content and profits? The BBC is already paid for by the British public (well, anyone who watches TV - whether or not they want to watch the BBC).
As a licence payer, I don't want them using DRM.
Re:Yup (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes. They profit from the sale of DVD's and Blu-ray. You may not like it, but they do
Two straw men in one. Thank you for point out the obvious - yes, I know they sell DVDs. And no, it's not true that I don't like it. I've never complained about them selling DVDs etc, since that doesn't affect those of us who pay for it. The issue is when they introduce DRM as an argument for making even more money, since that does affect us.
If they did not have this option, I would probably not be able to freely view this content via browser as is.
Why not? And if you're not paying for the BBC, yet you can watch it, then how is that helping the BBC's profits?
Is BBC entirely funded by the tax-payer? Do you agree that any taxes eliminated by profits that they may make are a good thing?
What taxes eliminated by profits?
It is reasonable to call the BBC fee a tax, however this doesn't mean it's funded out of general taxation. There is a specific TV licence fee.
Not to mention that no one is arguing against profits. You still have to show that DRM increases their profits.
I can only assume that the BBC is much like PBS in the US (public funded). PBS is a wasteland of uninteresting content here and doesn't have near the recognition of BBC. If they have a successful model that doesn't cost your tax payers too much, I personally wouldn't be so quick to criticize this move.
You are seriously suggesting that the BBC is better than PBS, because of DRM? How does that account for all the decades when they didn't have DRM? How can you possibly argue that we can't criticise this move now, based on the quality of the BBC so far?
It costs us £145.50 a year (from April). Even if DRM does help them lower the fee, it's hardly helping if licence payers are simply instead having to pay more by buying DVDs - they're still paying one way or the other! And the biggest point you are missing is that, since the BBC is funded by the public, its quality is not going to go down just because they don't have DRM. That's the poorest argument for DRM I've ever heard. Speaking as someone who pays for the BBC - unlike you - I don't want DRM.
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No, it is about taking rights away from the consumer, in an attempt to enforce and manage the rights of the producer.
Unfortunately, it is often not really enforceable making people that attempts to use their fair-use rights into criminals, but still not providing the sought after control of the producers.
So, it is a loose-loose situation.
A great deal of re-thinking of the situation ought to be done.
Re:Yup (Score:5, Funny)
it is a loose-loose situation.
You mean it's extremely baggy?
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DRM is anything but loose. I'm assuming you mean lose.
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Sorry I'm not normally so anal - I won't do it again I promise :-)
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And did I write that I wanted the rights of the producer erased and leave the content provider in the cold? Please show me how you read that into it? (atarashii meagane katta ho ga ii kamoshirenai?).
It is a digital world, and the producer side, or what seems to be the defenders of the content producers have amalgamated too much political backing, actually leaving the consumers out in the cold, and I would like to move the balance the other way, even just a little.
And I am not trying to convince anyone to pa
Re:Yup (Score:4, Insightful)
Because you say that DRM removes rights of the consumer, which rights? Redistribution and authorized playback are the rights of the producer, not the consumer. Which is important when you're trying to convince someone to pay for a TV license on materials they can easily download online.
Consumers aren't left out in the cold! They fire up iPlayer and they get the fucking video.
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The right to play the content on any device I see fit? At any time?
When I have bought a tune or a video the producer shouldn't care where I play it as along as it is for myself or my household. Your rights stops at my front door.
And I am still not trying to convince anyone to pay a TV license for materials and I don't "fire up iPlayer and get the fucking video". So now you want to combine the consumers usage with a specific device?
I just want to be able to purchase a CD or DVD with music or video content on
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But you don't have that right. You may be given explicit permission to do so, but format shifting has by no means ever been defined as a "right."
The RIAA v. Rio case of 1999 specified that files that were already on your hard drive were free to be copied to other devices, not reconverted elsewhere for free use. DRM free media has no controls keeping you from doing whatever you want with it; from one device to another has been set into legal precedence, but one format to another has not.
I'm all for consume
Re:Yup (Score:5, Insightful)
Why shouldn't you be able to do whatever you want with your bought full version copy besides distribute it?
I can see limiting upgrades to upgrading previous versions that you own.
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It removes the right to play back at any time and the right to transfer among different media. This has long been established as a right of the consumer. By doing this, they are removing such rights and can leverage this to get people to buy the same thing over and over and over again.
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In this case, this is the BBC, so viewers are already paying for the content in their TV fees, and the BBC isn't even allowed to show ads in the UK.
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What if the content producers that really demanding DRM are pretty much all subsidiaries of the BBC? E.g. BBC Worldwide? BBC executives have pretty much said that BBCW is a major motivator for DRM (see my other post below).
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When you want to debate whether or not it is right or not; it doesn't stop people from file sharing their content. You can record it from the TV and then share it.
What it does do is take away rights people had from the TV where you could record content and watch it when you felt like it. I know iPlayer does keep things for awhile and you don't have to watch things at the precise moment it is on but
Re:Yup (Score:4, Funny)
Oh, it allows me to watch the movies I own? I never looked at it that way. DRM in the games I bought is really there to let me play them. How nice of corporations to be so kind to me! If there was no DRM in our content we'd never be able to use it!
Now that you've removed the scales from my eyes, I will only be grateful for DRM. I'm going to compose thank you letters to the RIAA, the MPAA and the GNAA right now.
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.
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Aside from the fact that this isn't news, it hasn't been a problem either. The patch to add the so-called "DRM" support to XBMC was made available within a few hours of the BBC change.
http://trac.xbmc.org/ticket/8971 [xbmc.org]
Re:Oh noes (Score:5, Funny)
iPlayer has been broken since day one, as far as I'm concerned. "You're in America, and we refuse to play anything for you, you colonial barbarian. All content on this site is reserved for refined, sophisticated subjects of Her Majesty, the Queen, properly located within Her Majesty's Realm."
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Perhaps I do contribute to the BBC. What makes you think otherwise? Have I ever posted anything to indicate that I do or do not contribute anything to the BBC?
Free ride? What about citizens of the UK who can't watch their favorite whatever, because the are in France, or Belgium, or wherever, on business for a day or a week?
DRM is broken, and any attempt to control content is broken. Simple as that.
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That's the same whether you use an internet connected PC or a regular TV set.
Re:Oh noes (Score:5, Informative)
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You can have iPlayer when The Daily Show and Colbert Report webfeeds are available again in the UK. The geo-locking of web streams is very annoying.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
"You can have iPlayer when The Daily Show and Colbert Report webfeeds are available again in the UK."
Wait - are you in a position to make this deal? I'm willing to take it!
"The geo-locking of web streams is very annoying."
My point exactly. In fact, it's more than annoying. The douchebags who "own" all that "IP" have gained to much power, and it's far past time they were slapped down. Instead of being slapped down, they've been pretty well promised ACTA as a reward.
Re:Oh noes (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Oh noes (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
only in that it made a real mess of the harbour - what we should have don is wrapped the tea in some red wool teabags before we dropped it in to steep.
Re: (Score:2)
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This "news" is 18 days old.
So? It needs discussing. Does the fact that it didn't happen yesterday change its significance?
Upstairs, Downstairs (Score:2)
The BBC has co-production and distribution agreements with companies all over the world. That translates directly into bigger budgets, production on locations abroad, recruitment of A-list talents, and so on.
Brighton, England--February 22, 2010-- MASTERPIECE on PBS and BBC Worldwide Sales and Distribution, Americas have announc
Re: (Score:2)
How does applying DRM to UK residents help? The bulk of non-residents can't access iPlayer anyway (geo-IP) and so if they're watching BBC material online they're not using the DRMed BBC stuff anyway.