[Nottingham] BBC iPlayer petition

[Andy Davidson]

On 5 Jul 2007, at 16:09, Graeme Fowler wrote:

> On Thu, 2007-07-05 at 15:53 +0100, Martin Garton wrote:
>> Probably the same gang who think it's clever to run binary video card
>> drivers, I imagine.
> Whilst not wishing to get involved in a flame war, I can't help but
> point out that the "gang" who do so, do so primarily because they want
> to extract the best performance or feature set from their graphics  
> card
> - not because they think it's "clever".

I'm happy to run proprietary software, and I think I am clever.

> I'd postulate that the vast - and by that I mean far in excess of  
> 99% of
> computer users as a whole - really don't give a flying one about the
> ethics, license implications, or in many cases legality of what  
> they're
> doing as long as the system does what they want it to.
> Unfortunately "what they want it to" is quite limited, given that  
> their
> experience of computing is limited to the dominant player and the
> software that runs on it. Ho hum.

I think if Internet delivered video is going to become the norm (and  
I hope it isn't ubiquitous for my own reasons), then it shouldn't  
matter what platform you want to watch it on, really.  That is, you  
could buy a black-box from Pace or Amstrad and use a whizzy interface  
on your tv, or you bin your tv and watch it on your computer running  
Linux or - your own choice.

> If a closed source Linux version of the BBC iPlayer turned up,  
> there are
> plenty of people who would use it without considering the "ethical"
> situation

I have my views on BBC content and I notice that someone on LugRadio  
this week said they had the same opinion.  Because I pay my TV  
License, I own that content.  That content is *mine*.  I shouldn't  
need to pass through layers of Digital Restrictions Management in  
order to get to something I own.