On 13/03/2008, Andy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On 13/03/2008, Andy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > It *appears* that it has. > > Confirmed. > http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7293988.stm > > Anyone know Nokia's head of legals phone number? > Or Google's? > Or Samsung? > Or LG? > Or Sony? > Or any other mobile phone vendor? > > Can the BBC really hope to survive the potential legal onslaught these > vendors could bring? > The trust have already ruled iPlayer must be made platform agnostic, > the BBC have not only failed to do this but they have now acted > directly against it (scanning for and blocking products not from > "approved" vendors even if they posses the technical capabilities > needed).
I don't think that kind of "onslaugh" is likely. Instead, I think the "illegal state aid" angle that the Open Source Consortium is pushing has another sharp arrow in its quiver :-) The BBC is happy to dish out illegal state aid to Microsoft with the WEAK excuse that its desktop operating system is the most popular one, and it will serve the largest market sectors first. And now the BBC is dishing out illegal state aid to Apple, which is tiny player, especially in the mobile space - despite that it has good production design and public relations departments, which makes it appear way bigger than it is. But as long as the BBC managers who decide policy - which is a few very number of individuals indeed, Ashley Highfield being the main one AFAICT - think that the issue is popularity of platform instead of software freedom, the BBC will continue to dish out state aid to all the major players (I suppose Nokia will be next) and mutilate the ability of small players and startups to compete in the market. I suppose that if those policy makers used a GNU+Linux computer with only free software, they might see the problem first hand. But I will speculate that when Jono Bacon installed Ubuntu on Ashley Highfield's laptop a couple of weeks ago, he installed the proprietary Adobe Flash player. Having the proprietary Adobe Flash player installed suggests to a user that iPlayer "works" on GNU+Linux, and there is no problem in support for users of that OS. To conclude, the BBC cannot roll out a platform agnostic solution that doesn't include giving illegal state aid, because to be platform agnostic requires free software, and when the BBC agrees to use DRM it agrees to give out illegal state aid. In my opinion. -- Regards, Dave This is personal opinion only, not the views of any employers past or present. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/
