Re: legality
On 2 May 2011 21:26, Chris Davies ch...@roaima.co.uk wrote: On 30/04/2011 15:01, Jon Davies wrote: Listing a whole pile of stream sources in an unencrypted file cannot possibly be effective under the definition in the act. So reading and interpreting that file, and selecting a stream from it, cannot possibly be a violation of the Copyright act. Under that same reasoning, the reading of encrypted rtmp streams could also be acceptable under law. But I get the clear feeling that it's not just the US DMCA that treats such attempts as illegal but also the not-quite-the-same-honest-guv equivalents under European law. The US DMCA laws hinge on effectiveness of technological protection measures, which means a court decides rather than a mathematician. For example, using full encryption based on a secret key embedded inside a chip that needs someone to cap it and decode the ROM matrix with an electron microscope is effective, even though once you break out that key, the encryption is broken completely. As far as I know, the BBC's RTMP streams are not encrypted. It is possible to encrypt them, but the BBC choose not to. The BBC use SWF Verification on a minority of their streams. It works like this: You: can I have this program? BBC: You appear to be in the UK, so yes you can. BBC: Here is some of the program. BBC: By the way, are you definitely the Adobe Flash plugin, running http://www.bbc.co.uk/emp/10player.swf ? -- if you use rtmpdump -- You: Yes, I am. BBC: OK, here is the rest of the program. -- if you use flvstreamer -- You say nothing. BBC: OK, as you didn't answer, I'm going to stop sending the program. You: Can I have more of the program? BBC: Yes, you can. BBC: Here it is. BBC: Are you sure you're 10player.swf? You say nothing. BBC: OK, stopping now. You: Can I have more please? BBC: Yes. ... and so on. It is possible to be more effective than this, even with the existing software that the BBC use. They willfully choose not to use more effective measures. As I'm not a lawyer, I can't say what a court would make of it. I'm only speaking from a technical perspective. Regards Stuart ___ get_iplayer mailing list get_iplayer@lists.infradead.org http://lists.infradead.org/mailman/listinfo/get_iplayer
Re: legality
On 30/04/2011 15:01, Jon Davies wrote: Listing a whole pile of stream sources in an unencrypted file cannot possibly be effective under the definition in the act. So reading and interpreting that file, and selecting a stream from it, cannot possibly be a violation of the Copyright act. Under that same reasoning, the reading of encrypted rtmp streams could also be acceptable under law. But I get the clear feeling that it's not just the US DMCA that treats such attempts as illegal but also the not-quite-the-same-honest-guv equivalents under European law. Chris ___ get_iplayer mailing list get_iplayer@lists.infradead.org http://lists.infradead.org/mailman/listinfo/get_iplayer
Re: legality
One reason for asking was this snippet in the mediaselector file which get_iplayer uses to get the streams: e.g. for http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediaselector/4/mtis/stream/b00z54tp mediaSelection - !-- This code and data form part of the BBC iPlayer content protection system. Tampering with, removal of, misuse of, or unauthorised use of this code or data constitutes circumvention of the BBC's content protection measures and may result in legal action. BBC (C) 2010. -- : JC ___ get_iplayer mailing list get_iplayer@lists.infradead.org http://lists.infradead.org/mailman/listinfo/get_iplayer
Re: legality
On 4 April 2011 17:34, Paul ukki...@gmail.com wrote: Surely one of the biggest distinctions made by the BBC is whether material is viewed 'on air' or 'on demand', after all that is the basis of the requirement to have a TV licence. There's no point in having a discussion about what the BBC's terms should be, just about what they are. You have to remember that the legality of what we do is determined by the terms that the BBC set for access to their online services, together with English law (for users in England/Wales and those outside the UK) and Scottish/Northern Irish law for people who live there. Apart from just one condition (personal use terms, 3.2.2) which restates some of the requirements for having a TV licence, there's nothing I can see in the terms which draws a distinction between 'on air' and 'on demand' access. So, I conclude, that no, the BBC does not make any significant distinction of that sort. IANAL Jon ___ get_iplayer mailing list get_iplayer@lists.infradead.org http://lists.infradead.org/mailman/listinfo/get_iplayer
RE: legality
-Original Message- From: get_iplayer-boun...@lists.infradead.org [mailto:get_iplayer-boun...@lists.infradead.org] On Behalf Of Ian Stirling Sent: 05 April 2011 11:11 To: get_iplayer@lists.infradead.org Subject: Re: legality On 04/05/2011 10:00 AM, Jon Davies wrote: Apart from just one condition (personal use terms, 3.2.2) which restates some of the requirements for having a TV licence, there's nothing I can see in the terms which draws a distinction between 'on air' and 'on demand' access. So, I conclude, that no, the BBC does not make any significant distinction of that sort. It's not in the BBCs terms, it's in the law around TV licensing. Specifically (if it's not changed in the last 4 or so years), you need a TV license _only_ to watch the broadcast output of television broadcaster licenced under the television broadcasters regulation rules. You _do_not_ need a license to watch any other content. Foreign TV you can pick up with a really big antenna, or content a licenced broadcaster provides in non-realtime ways. The Beeb and TVL (read: Capita) tend to interpret the Licensing law as requiring a person to hold a licence if they own or operate equipment capable of receiving a broadcast signal 'as it's being broadcast', this includes timeshifted as-live programmes via media such as Internet streaming, Freeview, Freesat etc (to accommodate various platforms' time lags). Therefore if TVL came round and you stupidly invited them into your home, if you had an operable TV, VHS, DVR etc with a tuner block in it, you would have to prove that it was physically incapable of receiving any BBC television channel. Otherwise, they would require you to licence for the appropriate period or face prosecution - and you would have to be VERY sharp to beat them in County court, I imagine they've honed their court patter and paperwork to a near artform these days. As the JPs will weigh up a case on balance of probabilities (instead of outright 'beyond a shadow of a doubt') your case has to be VERY convincing (and/or you require two sympathetic JPs) in order to come out victorious. Of course, you just don't let them into your house in the first place, they have no purview or legally established precedent to allow entry to premises uninvited. They can look through windows to see if a telly's showing BBC One though! Curtains are a useful investment. ___ get_iplayer mailing list get_iplayer@lists.infradead.org http://lists.infradead.org/mailman/listinfo/get_iplayer
Re: legality
On 04/05/2011 12:19 PM, Christopher Woods (CustomMade) wrote: -Original Message- From: get_iplayer-boun...@lists.infradead.org [mailto:get_iplayer-boun...@lists.infradead.org] On Behalf Of Ben Webb Sent: 05 April 2011 11:32 To: get_iplayer@lists.infradead.org Subject: Re: legality On 5 April 2011 11:11, Ian Stirling get_ipla...@mauve.plus.com wrote: You _do_not_ need a license to watch any other content. Foreign TV you can pick up with a really big antenna, or content a licenced broadcaster provides in non-realtime ways. As far as I am aware you are correct about non-realtime content (you can watch iPlayer on demand content without a tv license for example), however, I was under the impression thta watching foreign live content, whether using a big antenna/satellite or streamed over the internet required a TV license. This was initially thought to be the case but Article 49 of the Treaty of Rome (as amended) which enshrines free provision of intra-EU state services, including telly. BBCRefuseniks[1] has this to say: The previous legislation which I chased up - the wireless telegraphy act of 1949 (as amended) - specifically defines a 'television programme service', as one that is licenced under the 'television broadcasters act' (not the real title), so that makes it all crystal clear that foreign stations can never be covered. The 'recent' - 2003 - I looked this up in 2004 and it may not have been in the sources I was using - legislation does not specifically cite that act, it just defines a TV as receiving a television programme service. ___ get_iplayer mailing list get_iplayer@lists.infradead.org http://lists.infradead.org/mailman/listinfo/get_iplayer
Re: legality
On 3 April 2011 14:02, James Cook james.c...@bluewin.ch wrote: every since Phil stopped further development of get_iplayer I been wondering about the legality of developing code for get_iplayer. I wonder if by uploading patches we are exposing ourselves to possible legal action.. First of all, IANAL. Take this as personal feeling/perception. Does anyone else here wonder about this? I've pondered it for some time. First of all, get_iplayer doesn't do anything *illegal* - it may get into woolly areas in TCs but it's not a downloader and doesn't download anything other than publicly available feeds and parse publicly available web pages to create data that's more easily machine readable. You could use this data for purposes other than downloading programmes, and this is what Phil has done with iPlayer Search: http://linuxcentre.net/projects/iplayer-search (basically the Web front-end to get_iplayer separated from get_iplayer's original purpose). This data could be created using Yahoo Pipes, by someone with enough time... The downloading is generally taken care of by one of two separate programmes, one of which makes no attempt to circumvent DRM systems (flvstreamer), one of which does (rtmpdump). flvstreamer is a fork of rtmpdump for people who felt a bit twitchy about three magic strings being present in its source code, and is potentially the weak point (which is why Phil took out the support for it originally). My feeling is that it would be very, very hard to make a case against people using rtmpdump and a case should be made against the authors of rtmpdump first to prove that it shouldn't be available for use in the UK. Adobe tried to kill the project and SourceForge dropped it, but that was in the US. There's several problems for the BBC, the biggest of which is that they are broadcasting several unencrypted MPEG2 streams freely over the air, 24 hours a day, at 720x576 (ideal for burning to DVD). My TV has a USB port that will dump the Freeview transport stream straight to a USB drive. It's like a VCR without a layer of decoding and re-encoding. I could realistically get virtually everything on iPlayer by using four tuners dumping all the streams I'm likely to be interested in (no need for BBC News or BBC Parliament; CBBC and CBeebies share with BBC Three and BBC Four), and the EPG would take care of all the tags. A 1TB USB drive is so cheap now, and USB-toting STBs are available in Argos - you could create a rig like that for under £200, I reckon. Now, how is that in any way different to using get_iplayer? The only difference is that the streams are being made available on demand from the BBC's servers - this is a TCs issue. Looking back, I used to record whole series of programmes to VHS, and later to recordable DVD. They're for personal use - why is that morally okay, but taking the same audio/video representation from iPlayer wrong? My feeling is that the true Achilles heel of get_iplayer is that it has the word iPlayer in it. It would be so hard to make a case about anything else without descending into a quagmire of technicalities, but a straightforward trademark dispute is another matter. Also, why go for get_iplayer when there's UK Nova? DVDs getting ripped off? There's much bigger fish to fry than a small open source project. I remind you, IANAL. This isn't legal advice. This is my own personal opinion, which justifies my using get_iplayer to myself much better than well we pay for it. Should we consider some kind of anonimity? I don't think so. It's a bit late now anyway, but as an outsider looking in I'd immediately read that as shady behaviour rather than that of a group of technically minded individuals making a publicly funded service work better for them. One more time. IANAL. Steve -- Irregular Shed - http://www.twindx.co.uk ___ get_iplayer mailing list get_iplayer@lists.infradead.org http://lists.infradead.org/mailman/listinfo/get_iplayer
Re: legality
On 3 April 2011 14:02, James Cook james.c...@bluewin.ch wrote: Hallo All, every since Phil stopped further development of get_iplayer I been wondering about the legality of developing code for get_iplayer. I wonder if by uploading patches we are exposing ourselves to possible legal action.. Does anyone else here wonder about this? Does it depend on the patch? Should we consider some kind of anonimity? Yes, I do wonder about it from time to time, but last time I checked the terms and conditions for accessing both the BBC website and BBC iPlayer, I couldn't see anything that *I* was doing that broke those terms. The relevant terms, provided that nobody here is doing this for commercial purposes, are: for general terms of access to BBC content: http://www.bbc.co.uk/terms/personal.shtml for iPlayer: http://www.bbc.co.uk/terms/additional_iplayer.shtml for the RSS feeds - used for obtaining BBC schedules (and iPlayer content) http://www.bbc.co.uk/terms/additional_rss.shtml and for the podcasts: http://www.bbc.co.uk/terms/additional_podcast.shtml note that get_iplayer is *not* a BBC iPlayer Download Application, so none of those terms apply. There are a couple of areas where things *might* get a bit sticky: - use of iplayer in the name, and graphics that look like the iPlayer logo - clause 3.2.3(d) of the general terms, specifically -- reverse engineering - whether using the publicly-available interfaces on the BBC website constitutes reverse engineering or not, and if it did whether creating and using get_iplayer falls under the terms permitted under the EU directives on interoperability (in my case I argue it does since the BBC choose not to provide a download application which interoperates with my PC which runs linux and xbmc - no, the linux support doesn't work because it relies on having a beefy processor to do stuff that xbmc does in the graphics card) -- attempting to breach copyright/helping others to do so (bear in mind that the BBC has permitted UK residents to view the content they provide, so accessing and using that content is not a breach of copyright) Unfortunately you have to read the terms yourself, take your own legal advice - which you won't find here, and make your own decisions about using and/or contributing to get_iplayer. Incidentally, going for anonymity probably won't work technically, and would simply encourage others to infer that you think you're guilty. disclaimer - I am not a lawyer Jon ___ get_iplayer mailing list get_iplayer@lists.infradead.org http://lists.infradead.org/mailman/listinfo/get_iplayer
