Bellerophon symbol, variation 7 jonath.co.uk
Wednesday 11th Jul 2007 06:30:28
 I couldn't sleep, so decided to check my e-mail. Someone at the Lancaster Linux User Group (or thereabouts) had sent out a link to a web-page containing a petition against the BBC's ridiculous iPlayer, which can be found here. They also recommended showing your support for the Open Source Consortium by sending them a message here. To give some background, the way I understand it is that this iPlayer thing is (or will be) some kind of application that allows Windows users to watch certain BBC programmes on their PC. Trouble is, it only works on Windows machines and the programmes themselves are wrapped up with a cheeky little bit of DRM (Digital Rights Management), thereby putting restrictions on what you can do with those programmes. It all just seems a bit badly thought through to me. I mean, it's not like you need a specific television set to view analogue/digital transmissions from the BBC, so why would you need a specific operating system? Seems a bit kind of retrograde to me, but hey . . .

Comments received:

  • Name: Austria Tom
  • IP address: 62.178.247.167
  • Date/time: Monday 23rd July 2007 00:29:14
  • Comment: Regarding the Windows-only thing, well of course that's just bad planning but the DRM thing I can appreciate better, being overseas... because, the iplayer is good news for me, as it is impossible to receive BBC tv programming here, and over the internet it should work fine. But that means anyone all over the world can download BBC programmes, and that is a massive legal and copyright nightmare. Hence why they reduced the broadcasting signal so you can't receive them the normal way.
  • Name: Austria Tom
  • IP address: 62.178.247.167
  • Date/time: Monday 23rd July 2007 00:30:25
  • Comment: Hmmm I have just realised I might have the wrong end of the stick here. Nevermind. It's late. I should go to bed.
  • Name: jonath
  • IP address: 192.168.0.1
  • Date/time: Monday 23rd July 2007 22:08:42
  • Comment: Erm, yes, probably. My free composter arrived today. Can I compost bread? Potatoes? Biscuits?

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