The Elephant In The Room
No one seems to have realised why the BBC is so desperately refusing to adopt the blindingly obvious solution of putting the iPlayer behind a paywall. It would end all the nonsense about making their output available to all and sundry and then dragging penniless single mums through the courts (even sending some to jail), so what's not to like?
Of course, the elephant in the room is that the BBC's fat cats and luvvies are terrified of losing their ability to force people to buy all their dross when they don't want it. It makes complete sense to put the iPlayer behind a paywall (that's just what the legislators were naïvely expecting) but the logic would then be unstoppable - do the same for the licence fee !
So the BBC's always strangled at birth anything that looks like subscription. Originally their satellite transmissions covered much of continental Europe, but they were encrypted and were only viewable with a Sky subscription. Then the licence payers who couldn't receive terrestrial signals complained that they didn't want to pay Murdoch a surcharge just to be able to watch BBC programmes, so the BBC sold them a Solus decrypting card for a nominal fee. However, alarm bells then rang because this was setting a precedent for general subscription. This was far too dangerous for the fat cats: the BBC switched to a satellite with only a UK footprint so that they could end encryption and keep the compulsory licence fee going.
It's high time that the BBC was told to switch to subscription. It wouldn't end Public Service Broadcasting: on the contrary, a properly thought through system would ring fence a generous amount for high quality PSB (and BBC Radio) and allow BBC to flourish by setting it free from government interference.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
