Posts by Angus Prune 5 publicly visible posts • joined 9 May 2007
Acctually Mar, BBC are not their own content providers. Most of their material (a certain proportion by law) is produced by external production companies who generally keep all rights to the work.
It is the production companies who are the biggest obstacle to the BBC releasing a truly open iPlayer (sans DRM). It would challenge their revenue from DVD sales and transmission in other territories.
No, they can do whatever they like, they sign, or not sign any international copyright treaties they choose.
They could completely abolish copyright, or ban open source/CC licences. There is no intrinsic right of copyright so copyright can be constructed however society sees fit.
There are already different copyright terms in different western countries and things are public domain in one country while still being copyrighted in another.
The reason they are doing this? So they are allowed the join the WTO. Its that simple. They won't be allowed to join until they align their copyright provisions closer to those of the USA.
PS.
No Russian software?
Haven't you ever heard of Tetris?
I think I may have overheard that it is the biggest selling game of all time.
People are complaining about 4oD
The BBC is paid for by us and has a constitutional duty to encourage open access for as many people as possible - the whole purpose of which is to fill in the holes left behind by commercial services - be that News, Documentaries, Arts or Users of alternative operating systems.
They are mandating DRM and 30 day destruct on material which is distributed en-mass enencypted and in a protocol that is open for anyone to implement.
This implementation means that only certain people will eb able to use the service, adn that to get the service onto 'TV screens' as they put it they will have to make a deal with Virgin Media.
If they were to implement a linux client anyone could build their own set top box (think myth-tv) and you could even have third party commercial set top boxes produced based on linux.
By using this approach they are locking people into select companies and atrificially restricting the market.
'all popular' - They can ignore Linux under that for a good while - especially since linux doesn't have 'sales figures' so will have to do even mroe work to be seen as a 'popular' OS.
THe fact that the PR mentioned only Vista and OSX is evidence that Linux is going to be left out in the cold for this one.
Unfortunately the DRM is a BBC trust mandate - if the recordings didn't self destruct after 30 days then they would pose unfair competition to commercial rivals (according to the BBC trust)
Great reporting in that Sun article:
"The cluster has an unbelievable 182 terabytes of storage, which means it can process in one SECOND what would have taken the first Amstrad computer 317 YEARS.
"It also means it has the storage capacity of FIVE MILES worth of MP3 players laid end to end."
Hmmmmmmm
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2025
