[Sderby] BBC iplayer pertition

[J D Freeman]

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On Tue, Jul 03, 2007 at 11:58:33AM +0100, Adam Armstrong wrote:
> You claimed that the BBC was discriminating against you because you run 
> $nonstandard_os.
> 
> The BBC is not discriminating against you, they've merely made a very 
> sensible commercial decision not to support your choice of operating 
> system. Much like they don't support the Amiga, OpenBSD, Solaris, 
> Commodore 64 or Oric Atmos.
> 
> You speak as if you deserve, nay, that it is your inate right to have 
> access to the content on any platform you so chose. The BBC have chosen 
> Windows has the logical platform to supply the content on, as it hits 
> the widest possible audience.
> 
> Just because you make non-standard choices, doesn't mean the world has 
> to bend to meet you. Such arguments are why people hate Unix/Mac users. 
> You have no rights. Once it's beneficial for people to care about you, 
> they will. Until then, you're the outsider. Live with it.

Fantastic, now to offer for you a few corrections.

Point 1: Not offering the iPlayer on anything other than windows is the
equivilant of the following announcement:

"as of next month, BBC TV programs will only be viewable on Sony televisions.
We always aim to reach as many of our potential market as possible, and
market research indicated that Sony has the highest market share on the world
wide TV market."

Point 2: There is no technical reason that the BBC should not support many
OS's.  The BBC has one of the best research labs for video compression, they
don't need to buy in MS, they have it all in house.

Point 3: The BBC has a charter from Her Majesties government to provide
information services to the the British people. As such, they are
required by law to make their programming as accessable as possible.
Which is why you will find they have programming for the deaf, etc...

As such, by ignoring a large proportion of the populance, (about 10% of
the populance use a unix based OS), they are failing their public duty.
Whats more significiant here tho, is not just that linux and Mac aren't
going to be supported, but neither is windows 98,me,2000,nt. Which
between them account for another large proportion of the user base.
Which results in the support for XP service pack 2 only, being actually
a good deal less of the populance than you might think. Note, as of the
last info I had, Vista wasn't supported properly either, yet.

Now if you want to go out and fork out alot of money to watch the BBC's
programming, spending several hundred pounds on an XP license, you are
welcome to. However personally I feel the BBC has a public duty to not
discriminate on its user base, and in releasing the iPlayer, they are
doing just that.

J
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