[Nottingham] BBC iPlayer petition

[Richard Smedley]

On Thu, 2007-07-05 at 12:53 +0100, Martin Garton wrote:
> On Thu, 2007-07-05 at 12:48 +0100, Martin wrote:
> 
> > I feel this is more than just a case of Microsoft steals yet another
> > monopoly position...
> 
> The BBC are in an tricky position.  As I understand it, they can't
> remove DRM without breaking their existing contractual obligations.  At
> the same time they can't be windows only and stay in compliance with
> their charter.  In any case, open-source software based DRM is not
> practical so even if it weren't windows only, it wouldn't be available
> for Linux unless it used some horrible binary DRM blob.

Actually Free Software DRM, using unique key pairs, is just as 
practical as proprietary MS DRM. The differnce being the Free
Software solution would be cross-platform, and freely implementable
on unsupported platforms. The similarity being that both are
fig-leaves to please suits working for the soi-disant rights-holders,
and do nothing to prevent either cracking, or real commercial 
piracy which gets the programmes from other channels anyway.
<shrugs>

 - Richard

-- 
Richard Smedley,                                         rs at m6-it.org
Technical Director,                                     www.M6-IT.org
M6-IT CIC                                        +44 (0)779 456 07 14

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