[SWLUG] New protest and petition against BBC's Windows-only iPlayer

[Steve Hill]

On Fri, 3 Aug 2007, Jonathan Wright wrote:

[DVB]
> Unless you have a hard-drive recorder (which in many cases
> do have DRM enabled to preventing copying of some form)

In the case you have a PVR, it would be the PVR that is imposing the DRM, 
not the BBC - if you choose to buy a device that uses DRM then that's your 
look out, not the BBC's - some of us choose to use PVRs that store 
un-DRM'd files and run a completely Free software stack - the BBC does not 
restrict us from doing this (nor do they have the right to under their 
charter).

> You cannot re-broadcast it, not pass it on to anyone else other than to
> watch it within your private residence. Any attempt to do so will most
> likely end with you doing jail time.

Yes - your rights are limited through copyright laws - no other mechanism 
prevents you from infringing the copyright of something broadcast over 
FTA DVB.

> IP is totally different - it's a one-to-one and one-to-many (and with
> the case of P2P, many-to-many) format where broadcasts are contained
> within defined files which can be copied, moved and re-transmitted by
> the current holder.

No, exactly the same copyright laws prevent you from doing this.  You can 
no more redistribute a defined file containing the data than you can 
redistribute the contents of the BBC's DVB transports.

>From a technical (not legal) point of view, you _can_ redistribute both 
the content delivered over DVB and the content delivered over IP just as 
easilly.

>From a legal point of view, the same laws prevent you from doing it in 
both cases.

Thus, both technologies must be considered in the same way - if you are 
pushing for un-DRM'd DVB, relying on people to adhere to copyright laws 
then you should also be able to trust that this is sufficient for data 
delivered over IP.  Conversely, if you believe you require DRM for data 
delivered over IP then there is no reason to assume you don't need DRM for 
data delivered over DVB.  Both technologies are just as easilly 
redistibutable and the redistribution of the data is governed by the 
same laws.

> While I may disagree with the general principal of DRM, you cannot
> compare DVB broadcasting with IP networks.

I fail to see why - it is just as easy for me to redistribute DVB content 
as IP content, and just as illegal.

Even _if_ the third party content must be distributed with DRM (and I 
beleive the BBC has the muscle to remove such a clause from their 
licensing contracts), there is no excuse for the BBC requiring DRM on 
their own content.

-- 

  - Steve
    xmpp:steve at nexusuk.org   sip:steve at nexusuk.org   http://www.nexusuk.org/

      Servatis a periculum, servatis a maleficum - Whisper, Evanescence