Posts by Chris Williams 207 publicly visible posts • joined 12 Jul 2007
"It'd be pretty easy to stop if it were."
True, but eBay made that investment (and Gumtree in the UK) to cover its rear. Craigslist certainly made a lot of people in the US question if they need to pay eBay for what can sometimes amount to a classified ad where auctions are unnecessary - eg. gig ticket auctions with buyitnow.
Hi Steve,
My motivations against the download client are based on thinking about how people are using internet video, not interoperability itself. The licensing costs and waste are the upshot of my conclusion that the P2P app it won't be used much.
"I'm not convinced that the licensing costs would be any lower for the streaming version than for the download version." I don't know. It would be less than the sum of both though.
I reported on the open source complaints because Reg readers are interested. As far as I'm concerned, interoperabilty for the desktop application just raises the waste levels. The BBC has pledged to port it to Mac and Linux within two years, which'll cost man hours and TV licence fees.
I can't find the article you refer to about multicast and iPlayer. The only one comes up with and "iplayer" and "multicast" search is this http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/08/14/bbc_iplayer_isp_analysis/ which I didn't write. I certainly don't recall making statements on it, but I write a lot so it's possible I forgot. If you have a link please oblige.
Just as a point of interest regards: "Ironically, the way to make live streams more efficient is to use P2P". The Beeb building its own Content Delivery Network with Cache Logic. The most popular streams will be cached in local exchanges, which its hoping will relieve some pressure on ISPs. Seems like they're expecting the Flash player to continue to dominate.
And for the record, I have nothing against P2P technology itself (that would be pretty damn weird), I just think the BBC got it wrong on this one.
Anyhow, enough. For you everyone else who has an interest in the issues, I'm meeting Anthony Rose, the former Kazaa CTO who's now in charge of iPlayer development, next week. If there's any questions people would particularly like me to put to him, please click on my byline in the article and let me know. Cheers,
- Chris
"Basically in each and every article you've written about the iPlayer so far (maybe with the exception of this one) you've asked for the download version to actually be pulled. WTF would be the point in doing that?"
Not in each and evey one to be fair. It's an opinion I arrived at relatively recently, after covering the story for several months.
The point of it would be to save the fees paid to Microsoft in WMV licensing and Verisign in Kontiki licensing, and the public money that'll be wasted by maintaining and updating the client for a small portion of the people who'll use and pay for iPlayer.
iPlayer is meant to complement the TV service, not different implementations of itself, and the Flash version does that just fine - and is much more popular.
Bias is a much abused word. Having an opinion is not synonymous with bias. I believe I arrived at my opinion objectively and based on the evidence. You arrived at a different opinion, but that's fine.
Regards multicast, here it is from the horse's mouth: http://support.bbc.co.uk/multicast/
"Streaming is dominant because its instantaneous and there is no 'hassle' barrier to overcome to view the programs. Would youtube be the phenomenon it has been if people had to download the clips and then view them?
"It appears obvious to me that someone decided that people would prefer quality and longer 'keep' times over convenience so pushed on with the p2p player. What the results show now is that that judgement call was probably wrong."
Spot on.
Hi,
My job, as well as well as 'reflecting actuality' is to view the public statements of self-interested parties, such as BBC management, with skepticism and cynicism, and weigh them against evidence.
If you want to read the happy-clappy version of the iPlayer story I suggest you stick to reports in the Telegraph, which - funnily enough - is a commercial partner.
The impression I have comes from speaking to several people who have worked on iPlayer. As a mere journalist I'm afraid I lack the imagination to invent such a improbably poorly-run development.
"Various flavours of iPlayer were in discussion up until at least half way through 2007, before the form it would take for a formal launch was finalised." Erm...so we're agreed.
In fairness, I think here the point Pugh's trying to make is less that everyone *must* have access, and more that interoperability is a neccessary for the iPlayer to not give Microsoft an unfair market advantage.
@Michael - "That said, if the BBC have to act then they should just cut their loses, and scrap everything bar the iplayer's flash interface. Ergo there's one player that works on all platforms, except the Amiga or something. Those of us that want / care about higher quality downloads already have the tools to get it, on whatever operating system we choose." bravo.
@AC - "But... aren't the BBC *the* production company concerned, or don't they own the rights to their own programs?" No. Regulations require it to use independent production companies too.
@AC - "Funny how Pugh at no point suggests a solution to the DRM issue that would actually work, isn't it?" The BBC obviously thinks it has one though, otherwise they'd be a bit silly to promise delivery within two years, no?
Thanks to all those who pointed out, with varying degrees of wit, that the article missed a "p" and originally said "wholesale rices". It's been fixed.
Anyone who subsequently posts anything about grains of truth, having a paddy, cereal errors, or any other Oryzan punnery will be banned from reading for a month.
- Chris
You're much closer to reality than some of the tinfoil hat brigade. At present ISPs require rights holders to get a court order to identify people they have detected sharing copyrighted works. It's quite easy to do so, although fallible because of dynamic IP pools etc.
What the government and record/film industry appear to want is to have a agreement or laws where the rights holders can approach the ISP without involving the courts. The ISPs will presumably check the allegation themselves, then warn the filesharer to stop.
If he/she persists, they'll be kicked off the network, rather than be hit with the fine they might receive in civil court. Make no mistake; whether voluntary or by legislation, this is looking a very likely scenario.
The result is a system that makes it quicker, easier and cheaper for BPI et al to pursue their fight against copyright infringers.
Arguably, for most major BitTorrenters - who likely consider net access a very important service - losing net is a bigger deterrent than potential court fines, which rights holders have not sought en masse (in the UK at least, the US is a whole other story).
It's also an easier political sell to boot people off the net than clog up the courts. I hope to tackle the habeas corpus-type questions it raises in these pages soon. I can't think of any similar system in commerce or law.
An interesting question would be what'll happen once someone is kicked off. Will they get a MAC? Will they be able to join another ISP straight away, or might they be sin-binned for a while via some list of illegal file sharers circulated among providers, or blacklisted permanently even?
Interesting times ahead.
Of course, there's ways commited geeks can anonymise their filesharing completely, but they're a small minority among an increasingly mainstream problem for record and film companies.
P.S. To all those telling me that deep packet inspection can't distinguish between copyright and non-copyright files, and that encrypting torrents is easy, thanks, but I kinda knew that (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/11/08/bittorrent_encryption_explosion/). I was just letting Stephen know that his gaming can be distinguished from P2P. Filesharing is not part of the consultation, and so the consultation is not relevant to this story.
The consultation is taking submissions on the series of new copyright exceptions, as the sentence you quote makes clear. This report is based on my own interview with Triesman and comments he made during a Q&A session at the announcement of the those new exceptions, as well as sources on either side of the debate.
On a broader point, if a simply posting a web link constitutes "real journalism" these days, we're in more trouble than I thought.
Hi,
It's an input, not an output issue.
The current boxes won't be capable of decoding HD Freeview signals, which is likely to be broadcast as a tightly compressed MP4 signal, and broadcast over DVB-T2, which together will provide the necessary extra bandwidth for HD.
MP4 requires more hardware power, not software updates. The Philips doesn't have a DVB-T2 tuner either - I believe the standard is still a draft.
If BT were to provide HD at the current mpeg-2 compression, on demand over the IPTV stream, that might be a different matter...except that it would require much faster downstream speeds than ADSL can currently offer.
- Chris
<pedant>
I didn't say the article is the opposite of bad news for Apple. I said the article did the opposite of giving the impression that we think it is bad news. The opposite of giving an impression is not giving an impression.
</pedant>
To reiterate: the tone of it makes it clear that I think it likely the suit has no merit. The point of interest stems from the fact that the dominant company in any market are often subject of similar litigation attempts in the US. This is a particularly lame attempt, and worth highlighting for Reg readers because Apple is part of the IT industry.
As for it being "OLD news" in your view, most Reg readers don't study Apple fan blogs with quite the same assiduousness as I suspect you do.
Now let us never speak of it again.
Hello JJIrons.
Please reread my report, then reread your comment. I don't think I gave the impression that we think this is "bad" news for Apple anywhere - quite the opposite in fact. If you could enlighten me further on how you think I have it would be much appreciated so I can punish myself accordingly.
- Chris Williams
Firstly, I personally haven't had any buffering problems on the streaming iPlayer via a normal ADSL.
Secondly, I wasn't indulging in mud chuck for the sake of it in that piece.
By accounts from my sources at the BBC and Bobbie Johnson at the Guardian (http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/12/12/bbc_starts_iplayer_streaming_service.html), the download iPlayer has only a few thousand regular users, despite the BBC's figures that hundreds of thousands have installed it. It's an unnecessary hassle and is going to be at best a niche product.
And like I wrote, if people are really after quality, they'll use BitTorrent or a PVR, and watch it on a TV. For a "catch-up" service for PCs and mobile devices, streaming makes more sense. I wasn't ignoring the quality issue, just trying to explain that for the vast majority of the people who pay for and use the BBC's online services, its not a top concern, as evidenced by the popularity of YouTube.
Finally, while the current web implementation of streaming is indeed unicast, the set-top box version is likely to involve some sort of multicast, which the BBC is working with ISPs on now. There's some more about that here: http://support.bbc.co.uk/multicast/
If the BBC is, as you seem to think, planning on putting Kontiki in set-top boxes, then they're crazier than any of us feared.
- Chris
PJ,
My conversation with "Santa" was a direct replication of what two young girls said to him, and he replied in the same way. As I wrote in this story (which I assume you read before commenting) asking the bot to "eat it" - i.e. the pizza the user offered it - prompted it to bring oral sex into the conversation.
That to me, and to the reader whose nieces brought it to light, is unnacceptable for a product aimed at children, and frankly piss poor.
Claiming it happened because users pushed it to do so is even worse.
If you want to question my integrity or credibility I suggest you present some evidence. TTFN.
Erm, it's not in the copy because it's not relevant.
I mention the Copiepresse-Google News case as one of a few examples of publishers worried about how their content is used, which is why the APAC project was started - relevant.
The same publisher sues because the dominant search engine doesn't index them in tit for tat action - interesting, but irrelevant to this story.
See you at the tinfoil hat shop, anyway.
Number of lines does't tell you very much. The reason the UK and Germany have the most lines is because we have both have a large population in European terms.
What's important if you're trying to build a "knowledge-based economy" (as opposed to an ignorance-based economy?) is penetration, i.e. how accessible broadband is to that population (lines per 100 people).
Timms said we lead the world in this. Wake up and smell the moules frites: we're nowhere near that.
No Stefan. The letters brand BPI now officially doesn't stand for anything. They've done the same as IBM, HP and BT. Ring them up if you don't believe me.
The fact that the company British Phonographic Industry still exists is not the same thing as their public brand, which is what has changed. No egg on face here I'm afraid.
I can confirm that I hate all computers equally. The piece makes the point that interoperability arguments are an (albeit entertaining) diversion when it comes to iPlayer.
Anonymous sourcing is an essential part of journalism. If you don't like it you can read the BBC's press releases.
"For a "multi-million pound failure", iPlayer signups are running well ahead of the BBC's projections".
Sign ups yes. Usage? Well, the Beeb isn't saying.
"So, the BBC "inexplicably binned" streaming in 2005 and then "cobbled together" streaming in 2007.Err… no."
Err... yes. Try this backstage podcast: http://blip.tv/file/483043
"The article doesn't mention *at all* the public value test that Ofcom did."
That's because Ofcom didn't do the public value test, the BBC Trust did. Ofcom carried out a market impact assessment. http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2006/08_august/31/test.shtml
"BT Vision is a financial catastrophe."
Says who? Do you have access to BT's internal accounts?
"If the time limited download concept is so rubbish, why have both Channel 4 and NBC copied it?"
God knows.
"And if everyone did start using a mass streaming solution like you propose in watchable quality, oversold contention ratios would mean the UK's entire online structure would slow to an unwatchable crawl anyway."
"BBC are financially disincentivised to provide high quality streaming"
So why is the Beeb doing it?
"People use YouTube a lot? Not nearly as much as they peer to peer download."
Just not true. ISP data shows YouTube accounts for about 13 per cent of web traffic now, on the basis of low bitrate Flash video. That's a lot more actual viewing than the vast music, film and software BitTorrent streams that account for about 40 per cent of total traffic.
"Saying the market even now is "immature". On that basis, why wouldn't they wait another four years?"
Because they made a bad decision, which was kind of my point.
"Sorry, poorly researched rubbish."
You said it.
"Noone stopped the BBC from selling the downloads in high-quality, non-DRMed format, thereby honouring their "unshakeable obligations".
The obligations we're talking about are legal contracts with independent producers that force it to use the most effective DRM if it wants to distribute via downloads. Like it or not, they say means Microsoft. As other commenters have noted, some production companies think even this isn't strong enough protection, and won't allow their shows on iPlayer. Competition regulations mean the BBC has to use independent producers.
"Stream low quality for free, sell high quality downloads - is that so difficult to understand? After all their IQ has extended to selling programs on DVDs through HMV, why not downloads through the 'net?"
The public have already paid for these programmes to be produced and distributed and the BBC Charter would not allow them to be sold back to their owners - us. Physical sales arrangements are negotiated separately and handled by BBC Worldwide, a separate commercial company.
- Chris
Just to reiterate: I'm not saying downloading is rubbish, just that those of us that do it don't represent the vast majority of licence fee payers, and never will. The BBC already turns a blind eye to BitTorrent et al. It doesn't need it's own expensive, crappier version.
- Chris
"Anyway about 2 weeks ago Ofcom 'announced' to Industry that erm.. they've screwed up and erm actually they WON'T be banning revenue sharing on 0870 from 1st Feb. Funnily enough in this spin city that we live in it's not exactly been published on the Ofcom website nor picked up YET by news media.."
Ahem: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/11/01/ofcom_0870_snag/
- Chris Williams
Hi,
The worries are over the protocol, though the sentence should have said client, I've fixed that now. Apologies for the confusion.
There is some background at Slyck that should help clear it up for you: http://www.slyck.com/story1566_BitTorrent_Addresses_Closed_Source_Issues
Here's a relevant passage:
"With previous versions (prior to 6.0), the protocol was just as open as the old mainline client. This has changed with the release of 6.0. Developers, community members and newcomers to the BitTorrent scene have expressed concern that keeping up with the latest protocol developments may be difficult, if not impossible.
However this will not be the case, as the protocol will continue to be maintained at BitTorrent.org.
While the BitTorrent client and the latest protocol may not be published, therefore technically closed source, the protocol is still open. The details of the protocol extensions, including all the latest revisions, are still available to whoever wants them. BitTorrent's recent move isn't going to make everyone happy, but those wishing to help develop the BitTorrent community probably won't notice much of a difference."
So the concerns over the openness of the protocol are perhaps wrong-headed, but there nonetheless, which is part of why TPB are acting in this way.
Chris Williams
The statement 1&1 originally sent said "effected". The story had already been filed with the "effected [sic]" when they asked for the verb to be corrected to save their blushes.
Being a reasonable sort of fellow, I complied, but in end-of-day haste neglected to delete the "[sic]". I will do so immediately.
But now I'm the one who looks illiterate. That's what I get for being a nice guy.
Chris Williams
El Reg
Hi,
I do, and did, appreciate the distinction you and IBM sought to make. It's worthless unfortunately.
As I wrote in the story, the application is an attempt to patent the "idea of letting other people use your ideas", whether they be patents, copyrights, or trade secrets - temporarily, as a license (which _is_ covered by the application), and if they are exclusive, or otherwise.
You write: "Second, when one of the licensees needs to use the selected IP..." A licensee requires a license.
Whichever way you slice it, it's beyond satire. Cheers,
Chris Williams
El Reg
"Come on Reg, you can do better than broadcasting blatant lies, you guys are supposed to be on OUR side, not theirs!"
I preferred to let the police's and the IFPI's comments tie their own noose, and trust Reg readers to be savvy enough to see through the spin. I'm glad you do. Cheers,
Chris Williams
El Reg
Hi,
I'm touched by your comparison with Campbell, Whelan et al. Unfortunately I'm not vindictive enough to command that kind of salary. It's a genuine point that Nokia is heavily reliant on its cheapest handsets, and you can bet its execs will be discussing it. See here for some background: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/06/05/nokia_budget_growth_reliance/
It's self-evidently a strong set of results, I just thought the even stronger reliance on budget phones made an interesting aside. But anyway, go Nokia! Cheers,
Chris Williams
El Reg
Hi,
The main one in the UK is Genewatch. They're part of a global coalition which laid its cards on the table last year. There's a story I wrote at the time (it's in the Related Stories section), and Genewatch's press release is here: http://www.genewatch.org/article.shtml?als[cid]=492860&als[itemid]=537746
Cheers,
Chris Williams
El Reg
Hi,
No, Oliver, I have not missed the point. My argument was it is far worse for a company like Facebook to be assumed to be gagging dissent than it is to have a minor technical problem.
I'm sorry if you needed this spelling out more explicitly. Keep up the scrutiny.
Chris Williams
The Register 
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