right, I’m going to level with you all:
I’m tired. very tired. I’m juggling a day-job building e-commerce websites with a hobby helping to build some very very cool things, and I’ve put an awful lot of time and effort into questioning, gaining understanding of and explaining this whole Freeview HD copy-protection debacle. I don’t think I’ve been especially unclear, or got caught up in rhetoric and emotion to any a great extent, and I’ve done my best to try to answer questions and concerns and everything else to the best of my knowledge. now, it’s true that my knowledge of DVB internals isn’t the best in the world: the people for whom that holds true work for the BBC and so can’t really comment too much. but, I’ve taken what I do know and tried to put it into plain English as much as I possibly can, and as far as I can see much of this whole thing is rather cut-and-dried. now, to be clear, this scheme hasn’t particularly irritated me. in all honesty, it was to be expected to an extent. there are aspects of it which *have* annoyed me, but not to the point of getting angry about it (the last time that happened, I spent all a whole day adding signatures to the bottom of an open letter…) what _has_ irritated to me, however, is the fact that nobody representing the BBC will be straight about it. everything has to be dressed up to make it look appealing (especially where it isn’t), which makes it a whole lot worse if it’s principally motivated by _other_ Freeview HD broadcasters. the whole approach to it was not one of informing the public in a fair and impartial manner, but of public relations. now, I wrote this article, originally for the BBC Internet Blog, but it was declined (as the BBC had already made their position clear and wanted nothing which might detract from it), and luckily I managed to persuade the Guardian to run it instead: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/apr/01/bbc-hd-consultation-hdmi this was an article that I wrote deliberately (given its target outlet) to avoid speculation, half-truths, paranoia, cynicism or knee-jerk, sticking as much as humanly possible to the facts. if anything, I probably gave the BBC the benefit of the doubt a little more than I should! now, I can understand that it was declined for publication. after all, at that point, a guest post from a non-staffer was pretty unprecedented. but that’s besides the point: why was it necessary for me to write that post in the first place? the method of engagement which the BBC employed — principally the BBC Internet blog (and only _after_ Cory Doctorow and Tom Watson drew attention to the proposal which had been quietly submitted to Ofcom without any form of public statement by the BBC) — glossed over the stuff that was in there, and yet those were the things people wanted to know most of all. so, all in all, I’m disappointed by the BBC. not for pushing this through per se, but for its approach to it, which has been nothing short of disgraceful. for the record, Nick, although I *disagree* with you on some things, I think you’ve done as good a job as you could have done with this whole thing — I do think it was ridiculous that you were left to field questions, though (questions which would never have arisen had the BBC been upfront and honest with everybody in the first place). I’ve made my position on the actual scheme quite clear, so I’m going to stop now. most of us on here are as far as I know (save for some quibbles over minor details and loopholes) of *broadly* the same opinion, though depending on your perspective your position might vary from “argh!” to “worthless waste of everybody’s time” (or more likely, somewhere in between). there are some who disagree, who think the short-term gain is worth the long-term loss, and I can’t do anything but agree to disagree. my colours have been nailed to the mast, and I’m not going to continue re-stating the facts in as many different ways as I can muster in order to answer the same points over and over again. as I said, I have better things to be doing with my time. I’m not going anywhere, and I’ll still be reading this thread, but I don’t honestly have the energy to keep replying to anything but purely technical stuff in relation to this. I really am very tired. 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/[email protected]/
