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

[Vladimir Zlatanov]

>
> > > Now, I'd love to see this situation change. I think the BBC is just
> > > the sort of heavyweight who could really land a blow for the consumer
> > > in freeing this material which, as someone as rightly noticed, is
> > > being guarded without consideration to the side effects.
> >
> > Yes, and that is the main reason to make noise about it.
>
> Great, but "you guys are idiots, why can't you see what you're doing
> is immoral, illegal, evil..." serves only to make us look immature and
> makes us very easy to ignore.
>
> Lets convince them that they're wrong. Lets convince them that we do
> value their material and that we are willing to pay for it - but only
> on sensible, fair terms. Lets remind them that they're unlikely to
> widen their audience by clamping down on it.


Right. Simple frenzied 'you are wrong, evil, ....' won't work. Shouldn't
work I hope.
Being constructive AND trying to help in resolving the issues by offering
support
and criticism, if required, is the way to go.

For example, the ORG, does lobby, try to discuss the various issues with the
bbc and bbc trust.
Other organisations do that as well. The BBC does have a big good will
credit simply because they
do a good job, and try to do it better.

| But lets not pretend that we have rights and protections that we do not.
As I said earlier the iPlayer issue is related to copyrights, but not a
copyright issue on its own.
I might feel it is unfair towards me, since I can't use the service. I can
probably go around this, since a
PVR will do (nearly) the same job for me. The real wrong is that in its
current state the iPlayer service
does not give a chance for independent access to the service.

Let's take the TVs as a tired and tested argument vehicle
PAL is a way to encode and transmit colour to TVs. SECAM, NTSC are others. I
can watch PAL programs
on any TV set by any manufacturer. Not only Philips, or Samsung.
As it stands with the iPlayer service I could watch it only by using the MS
based client and no other...
That is wrong, anticompetitive and leads to the other unfairness - lack of
linux, mac, ... support.
If they chose let's say Real, it would probably not change the core
unfairness too much.

It's not only about rights we have or not. It is about openness, it is about
trying to push towards a fairer
 copyright and IP law in general. That won't happen with 'You are evil'
style arguments. That won't happen with silence either.
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