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What's the problem with iPhone coming first? For a while (during a period when Android was in its infancy and barely begun shipping in anything like large numbers), Apple devices were the only ones with an iPlayer app. Develop an iDevice app but then refuse to release it until they've written an Android one? What would the point have been - other than childishness? The BBC weren't making some kind of philosophical stance against other platforms or open standards or wotnot. They were simply getting on with projects to deliver to a huge sector of the market. Other sectors of the market got their turn. The only thing BBC got wrong was being a bit tardy over the Android version. Now that the Android market has overtaken iDevices the BBC treat it much more seriously. They are beginning to treat Windows Phone devices similarly.

HTML 5 in 2007/2008? Barely out of the cradle. Even Steve Jobs didn't boast about HTML5 being the future until 2010. Meanwhile the BBC had to get a product out and chose something already in use by the towering majority of licence fee payers. It came at a price of, for a duration, users of certain platforms being disadvantaged. However it did at least mean that millions could start to benefit and the BBC could learn and improve the thing. Maybe they could have gone down a non-propretary route. But the world hardly suffered a single thing by them not doing so. People who knowingly choose exceedingly tiny niche platforms for their mainstream consumer entertainment should understand this.

Meanwhile the BBC have been presenting iPlayer to all sorts of platforms and devices - Freeview boxes, games consoles, DVD players etc etc.

The main section of the population who have suffered appear to be: People who want to download rather than stream using Linux desktops (teensy weensy tiny section of the population), and Android users until 2010 - who had to suffer using their PC instead while the BBC sorted things out.

Hardly a matter for the courts.

It would be nice if the BBC had never got into bed with Adobe. Nice if they halted everything while HTML5 was sorted out. But world of technology is a rapidly changing place and they had to start somewhere.