[Nottingham] BBC iPlayer petition

[JJSH]

Martin Garton wrote:
> On Thu, 2007-07-05 at 13:34 +0100, Richard Smedley wrote:
>
>   
>> 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>
>>     
>
> How, in an open source implementation that can easily be changed, are
> you going to prevent the attacker simply changing the software to save
> the decrypted content rather than displaying it?
>   
That's a good point Martin, but if the BBC are in violation of their 
charter by being MS only, then they are acting outside of the law, 
aren't they ( i.e. they are broadcasting outside of the parameters 
dictated to them by the charter that allows them to broadcast, if you 
see what I mean)? Without wishing to sound pedantic, it's never 
acceptable to act illegally just because you have got yourself in a 
tricky commercial situation.

Just IMHO, of course.