On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 10:34, Glyn Wintle <glynwin...@yahoo.com> wrote: >> The streaming servers have enabled SWF Verification, which >> makes absolutely no sense > > The Register have also covered this > http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/02/24/iplayer_xbmc_adobe_swf_verification/ > > Technically easy to beat, but given that by passing "copyright protection > mechanisms" is illegal in the EU and America it means it can not be rolled > out to the general population.
To term SWF Verification a 'copyright protection mechanism' is a slightly dubious interpretation: it's just an extended handshake by which the server demands to know if the client has access to the SWF making the request. You could only really justify that being a protection mechanism by any reasonable definition if you *don't* have access to that SWF and are having to spoof the signature generation (which would indeed be tricky). Indeed, nobody's circumventing the mechanism, they're simply implementing it: because the implementation doesn't rely upon some secret licensed key (as per CSS), there's a clear distinction which can be made. Given that the actual handshake and signature generation algorithm are in the public domain, any legal action's success would likely be contingent more upon how much money you have, how good your lawyers are, than the law itself. > Bonkers idea BBC. +1 Given there's a Trust consultation running on iPlayer, including provision for neutrality, it's possibly the worst time for the BBC to decide to implement this: https://consultations.external.bbc.co.uk/departments/bbc/bbc-on-demand-offerings/consultation/consult_view M. - 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/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
