Re: [Fsuk-manchester] iPlayer, DRM, Free Software and the iPhone

[Andy Halsall]

On Sunday 09 March 2008 19:32:21 Mac wrote:
> And...
>
> "For devices with browsers, assuming that those browsers are able to
> access and display the BBC iPlayer website, getting BBC iPlayer working
> on those devices "merely" [see below] requires us to provide audio
> and/or video streams in a format that is supported by the media
> player(s) available on that device."
>

I didn't catch that blog entry, only the BBC news article that quotes from it, 
the intriguing thing is how that fits with the BBC's earlier statements on 
the DRM requirement.

The iPhone (presumably) is positioned in an intriguing manner simply because 
it does have support for Apples DRM schemes (I'm not sure if its true to say 
that WM based devices have similar support across the board.).  

As I hope I pointed out in my previous mail, the lack of DRM is encouraging, 
but it does raise the question as to why DRM is being used at all if it is 
not required.  

I would love to be able to use iPlayer to simply grab whatever BBC shows I 
want to watch, but I would hate to see only those on free platforms seeing 
the benefits of DRM free media by default (or via some mild hackery as at 
present) even at the expense of using it as another prong in the argument to 
get people away from proprietary software.  



-- 

Andy Halsall

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