[Wylug-discuss] BBC via bittorrent? (was:advice on ebook reader or similar...)

[John Hodrien]

On Fri, 23 Sep 2011, Christopher McLean wrote:

> I'm going to take this off topic(ish), and open an interesting discussion we
> just had in the office. Based on the premise (which does link it to a Linux
> discussion, promise!) that downloading BBC shows officially might end for
> Linux users somewhere in the future.
>
> I'm wondering about the legality of downloading a BBC show from a 3rd party
> bittorrent site that you would be able to watch legally via the iPlayer.....
> Surely it'd have to be in breach of some license somewhere (not that I've
> the time ATM to read through the iplayer license)? But, if support for
> downloading via the official channel is stopped for a chunk of the public
> who are normally allowed to do so, would this be a legal/ethical route to
> take?

I think it'd be ethical but not legal, but unless it was made legal the very
fact it's illegal could make in unethical depending on your ethics.  It's like
if I miss Match of the Day, and forget to record it.  I can wait until they
eventually put it up on iPlayer quite a while later, or download it from China
within about 30 minutes of the program finishing.  I'm quite clear that it'd
be illegal to do the latter.

The person distributing the content clearly doesn't have a license to do so,
which puts you in the position of downloading unlicensed content.  You can't
take the license from iPlayer and try to apply it to this new content IMO.
Essentially I'd argue that the existence of iPlayer is irrelevent to the
legality of the download.

jh