BBC's iPlayer's Prospects Looking Bleak

An anonymous reader writes "The future of iPlayer, the BBC's new online on-demand system for delivering content, is continuing to look bleaker. With ISPs threatening to throttle the content delivered through the iPlayer, consumers petitioning the UK government and the BBC to drop the DRM and Microsoft-only technology, and threatened legal action from the OSC, the last thing the BBC wanted to see today was street protests at their office and at the BBC Media Complex accompanied by a report issued by DefectiveByDesign about their association with Microsoft."

Encryption

I'm still not totally clear on how ISP's can throttle your bandwidth if you encrypt what you're sending..

Re:

In this case, it's a simple matter of giving preferential (or anti-preferential) treatment to traffic from particular IP ranges based on what their owners are willing to pay.

Re:

Basically if consumer A is trying to access files from the BBC make the connection really slow until the BBC pays up. Its why Internet Neutrality is needed.

Re:

Then I guess you've never used tools like "Ethereal" or whatever it's called now.

Run iPlayer. Watch what it talks to in Ethereal.

Download restricted media a bunch of times. Note what servers you download from.

Now on router, throttle all machines that iPlay

Re:

They would probably throttle everything from the BBC assuming they couldn't get the IP addresses of the actual iPlayer servers.
Failing that, they'll just throttle everything thats encrypted (as some ISPs are starting to do to combat P2P) and hope most peop

Re:

I'm still not totally clear on how ISP's can throttle your bandwidth if you encrypt what you're sending..

Port-based traffic shaping will work if the target (say P2P) uses specific ports. You're right if you're talking standards based communications using

Re:

To hell with blocking/filtering ports. Just go after their class b/c block.

The whole blocking ports garbage just doesnt work in the real world. I'd just write a program to change local and remote ports and use standard servers to query "locked-in" hosts. Y

Re:

I'm not either. Both the consumer and whoever they are downloading from paid for their connection and paid for an expected speed. It would appear to me that if either of the ISPs did anything to not deliver that expected speed then the consumer if getting

Nice!

Well done everyone who participated in the fight against Digital Restrictions Management. Looks like there is really much protest and I hope the BBC will change to free formats. :)

Re:

Agreed. Over and over I've seen the argument on /. that the common consumer can't understand or doesn't care about DRM issues. But here we see an example that the message is actually getting through and the debate is becoming mainstream.

so don't offer it at all.

seriously, BBC.. unless the government is twisting your arm to offer your programs online while saying that only UKians should be able to view it for free and the populace complaining that the player won't work on their operating systems and companies tell

I can't even get the bloody thing to work

Aside from insisting you have XP and IE (Vista W2K or any other OS won't do nor any other browser), the thing doesn't even work when I install the proper software. I can see the listings but no download button. The thing is a mess with DRM wrapper files, horribly complicated, broken & proprietary HTML/JS driving it all, and a standalone downloader that automatically runs at startup with no obvious way to stop this behaviour. It really is an overly complicated and broken mess.

While I recognize their desire to protect their content, I wonder what the hell made them choose this pig's dinner of a solution.

They would be better off to deliver watermarked content in an open format such as H264 that plays just about anywhere. They could require users to register their TV licence in order to get the service, after which they can use it from any OS or browser within reasonable restrictions. Basically people should be able to do what they like with the content, short of sharing it. If they share it, use the watermark to look-up their address and send the heavies round.

What Happened?

A few years ago, the BBC seemed to be keen on the idea of releasing content in Ogg/Theora. Then they wanted to help develop and use the Dirac [slashdot.org] codec. And now they want to use a DRM-encumbered Microsoft codec.

This is an interesting situation because of the BBC's role as a "state-owned but independent corporation" [wikipedia.org]. I skimmed the Wikipedia article and it appears that the BBC is a for-profit corporation, but the fact that it's state-owned leads me to believe that its funded by taxpayers. If that is the case, why should taxpayers have to pay for DRM-infested media that was sponsored by their tax money?

Re:What Happened?

Actually, there is no reason they couldn't use Ogg/Theora/Dirac as a WMP plugin. The DRM is a wrapped around the file and independent from the codec used.

If that is the case, why should taxpayers have to pay for DRM-infested media that was sponsored by their tax money?

The problem is why should UK taxpayers pay for people in other countries to have free media that they didn't pay for?

Re:What Happened?

The problem is why should UK taxpayers pay for people in other countries to have free media that they didn't pay for?

I've always thought this to be a narrow-minded viewpoint, people from around the world watching British TV will help the export industries. Perhaps more Americans will learn about how to make a proper cup of tea (honestly, I heard you chaps don't even use boiling water!), buy-in some UK brands: I recommend Yorkshire Tea--am not affilliated with them, it's just bloomin' good tea. Next will come the Digestive biscuits, you've got to have a biscuit to dunk in your tea, the local grocery store in Canada imports these from the UK so there's obviously a market, real ales, DVDs of British shows, and a boost to the tourism industry. At the local farmers market here, across the pond, you can even buy 'Real Men Watch Coronation St.' t-shirts (no I don't own one, and yes I know C. St. is produced by ITV, that's beside the point).

So you might complain about foreigners watching shows paid for by your tax £'s, but consider the tax money the export and tourism industry will make back from a greater awareness of British culture. When put up against the cost of distribution: a slightly higher bandwidth bill for the Beeb, the benefits far outweigh the costs. The net result will be more tax collected from UK companies.

Re:

The problem is why should UK taxpayers pay for people in other countries to have free media that they didn't pay for?

No, the real problem is that some UK taxpayers don't understand that it costs them the same whether or not anyone else watches the shows too.

At best, an argument can be made that there are additional bandwidth costs for internet distribution. In which ca

Re:What Happened?

No, the real problem is that some UK taxpayers don't understand that it costs them the same whether or not anyone else watches the shows too.

No, it doesn't, as the BBC currently makes money selling content to foreign stations, which would dry up if the BBC gave the content away for free.

Net neutrality no threat to the BBC

If you want a current example from the _very same market_ in the UK (TV watchers) then glance your eye over Sky vs Virgin.

The number one non-over-the-air channel, Sky One, is owned by the same people who own the satellite broadcast system. (In the UK TV service to households with reasonable disposable income is, or was, split into cable vs satellite. Over the air is probably more common but not really in the same market. Outside London there are no real alternatives yet.)

Sky have denied the Sky One (and a few other not very interesting channels) license to Virgin. This has resulted in a massive exodus from cable. As a TV watching friend of mine pointed out "it's not worth the grief from the missus - and the kids would yell at me too". My choice would have been emigration without kids or wife, but he chose to switch to Satellite/Sky instead.

What does this have to do with internet TV, which has no presence yet to be missed? Well, the BBC has a tendency to plug new services endlessly on their channels. There is no one in the UK who doesn't hear or see something from the BBC every single week. Computer penetration is also very high, it's a small island so broadband is readily available too (cable and DSL, the latter from a number of ISPs). Even the people who won't see TV adverts listen to Radio 4 (available over the internet for free - give it a go! - especially the comedy) giving them a direct and unique line to highly educated and very powerful people.

So, a large number of people who have already shown that TV is important enough to make them pick up the phone, will get bombarded with adverts for a new service that they can probably access. Until they get home and try to get to it and see:

The BBC can't give you access to the iPlayer because unlike every reputable ISP yours is trying to charge you extra and we said we wouldn't be part of it. Here is a list of ISPs, that you probably can switch to with a single phone call, that are doing the right thing.

Even if the ISP blocks the error page the cost of handling the phone calls to customer support *alone* will probably make the whole thing impossible to maintain for very long.

Now, it won't come to this. A backroom deal will be cut and the whole thing will go away - precisely because the ISPs have no possible way to win.

pissed off

this is so completely wrong. The ISPs are selling people bandwidth that actually isn't there. You might have dozens of people running off a pipe a few 10s of megs wide but each person is being charged for the bandwidth of a 5-10 megs. this is referred to as the contention ratio of the channel. However, when people go to actually use the bandwidth they were sold, the ISPs recoil in horror and demand that they be paid to upgrade their networks to a capacity that they are already charging people for. Mutherfuckers

DRM is a Non Issue - Just Don't use it

I download the BBC programming that I want to watch with Azureus an hour after it airs in the UK and watch it shortly after using VLC on my PC. Sometimes I'll burn a DVD and watch it on my TV. The quality is excellent.

Alternatively I can catch the programming 6 months to a year later on BBC America or the SciFi Channel with commercials and reduced resolution.

Whatever they do on their web site is a non-issue, although I'm a bit annoyed that I have to use a UK based proxy server to access some of the program guides.

Re:

The iPlayer is basically a distraction. It keeps the BBC Management from realising the rampant use of BitTorrent for BBC content. The folks at the BBC have their hands tied behind their back by legalities. That said, a huge chunk of people who work at the

What Would Satisfy Me

I don't need real-time streaming for a lot of my cable video. I'd be satisfied to initiate the download, eat dinner, then go back and enjoy the desired program without interruption, and at a higher resolution or less of a compression ratio. That option seldom seems offered, although it would be so much faster than Netflix US Mail delivery.

Its Nepotism, Stupid

The problem with the iPlayer fiasco is nepotism. Erik Huggers is Group Controller at BBC Future Media & Technology. Erik was previously Senior Director at Microsoft Corporation and before that a Director of Business Development at Microsoft Corporation. Also the UK government in the form of the Labour Party is in thick with Microsoft for all kinds of projects including the Health Service.

Having worked on some of these kinds of projects it is all nepotism. Erik gets a nice job at the BBC, someone from the BBC goes to Microsoft, an ex Labour Minister gets a job on one of Microsoft's Partner companies.

I reckon the BBC will abandon the Linux iPlayer the second it can.

The DRM stuff is a load of guff too. People as far as North Africa can pick up the BBC for free by sticking up a 130 cm satellite dish and aiming it at 28.2 degrees south as the Astra 2 satellite. Wonderful, crisp, digital downloads in realtime.

DRM is the problem

There's no DRM solution that works for Linux, Windows and Mac. Or at least no solution that has been proven?

The annoying thing is the DRM just enforces an expiry time, it doesn't stop people without a TV licence (mandatory in UK) from viewing such content.

Re:

I realize that there's no cross platform DRM, but is there some UK law stating that a company's product must work across platforms?

Also, according to one of the links, people are demanding no DRM be used whatsoever.

Re:DRM is the problem

Well, there's no law saying stuff has to be cross-platform, but (almost) all Brits pay a TV tax, and this covers the online content as well. So, people object to paying a tax and then being told "Oh, you don't use Windows, so this online content is useless to you."

          Plus, last I checked, Realplayer was cross-platform and supported rights restrictions, along with flash. Of course they can and have all been cracked, but so has Windows' rights restriction system. And, yes, as a practical matter, people want this DRM-free; the current content on TV can be tape (Tivo, etc.) recorded and watched whenever, so having the computerized version have additional restrictions placed on it is a step backwards, removes far use rights, and is something noone but the big media is interested in.

Re:

RealPlayer and Flash are both proprietary. Gnash can play Flash video, but will not support Adobe DRM.

The goals of the protest were about DRM and proprietary software.

Re:

The people protesting feel the purpose of the BBC is to spread culture and knowledge as far and wide as can be. The money and related mechanisms are meant to serve that purpose, and not the other way around. They feel that the BBC should fail and disappe

Re:DRM is the problem

The BBC receives its funding from people in the UK paying an annual license fee mandatory for anyone with a TV. It's programming is funded by the people, for the people, so I think you can see the problem people are having when access to that content through a new channel places proprietary restrictions on access to said content. So yes, the whole furor is that this is NOT just a private TV company, it's a public institution.

Re:DRM is the problem

but does that TV tax actually cover television programs distributed over the Internet?

Yes, infact, if I didn't have a TV, but was to watch a BBC programme live on the web (note the live, if it's not broadcast simultaneously, it doesn't matter), I would technically be in breech of the law if I didn't have a TV licence.

Re:

Here you go [tvlicensing.co.uk]

You need a TV Licence to use any television receiving equipment such as a TV set, set-top boxes, video or DVD recorders, computers or mobile phones to watch or record TV programmes as they are being shown on TV.

Bold is mine

TO ALL TO WHOM THESE PRESENTS SHALL COME, GREETING

does that TV tax actually cover television programs distributed over the Internet?

The simple answer is to read the BBC's Royal Charter [bbc.co.uk] - scroll to point 5, "How the BBC promotes its Public Purposes: the BBC's mission to inform, educate and entertain", a

Re:DRM is the problem

is there some UK law stating that a company's product must work across platforms?

The point is that the BBC is not just "a company". It's a public-service broadcaster, funded by a compulsory licence fee. It has a charter and obligations to fulfil.

You could probably make a case for the BBC restricting access to their content to licence-payers only (although I wouldn't), but instead they've gone with a completely inappropriate restriction of "Microsoft-users only".

The current iPlayer implementation really stinks - it stinks of pushy salesmen and weak-minded decision takers. It flies in the face of many decades of the BBC standing on principles and doing The Right Thing(TM), resisting commercial pressure. Now they've gone to the opposite extreme and the outrage is perfectly justified.

HTH

Re:Huh?

The uproar from the public is that this new offering goes against what the BBC stands for at it's very core. By choosing a closed, proprietary format they've narrowed the scope of who can take advantage of this offering. The linked article goes into some nice detail

Here it is: http://defectivebydesign.org/blog/BBCcorrupted [defectivebydesign.org]

The article goes as far as to suggest the BBC has been corrupted by Microsoft. I'm not sure it goes that far, but I think the BBC had all good intentions but failed on the delivery. I hope they won't abandon the effort but simply update it to ensure it's available cross-platform, DRM free using FOSS etc...

Would be a great showcase for FOSS if they did.

Cheers.

Re:

from: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article2 2 40427.ece [timesonline.co.uk]

From The Sunday Times
August 12, 2007

Yes, this is obviously all true because newspapers never lie and the Rupert Murdoch owned Times, couldn't possibly be bias against the BBC; a competitor to the Rupert Murdoch owned Sky TV.

Re:

However the tone of your post seems to indicate that what the Beeb says is gospel truth as opposed to the Times?
I love the Beeb, I think it's an amazing institution and I believe that Murdoch is a baby-feasting spawn of Satan and a genuine threat to Demo

Re:The BBC's Core

As pointed out by another poster, The Sunday Times is owned by Murdoch who has no qualms at all about forcing a very strong right-wing bias on all his publications. His orifices generally delight in lampooning the BBC (and any other institution that competes with Murdoch) whenever possible and factual accuracy is deemed optional in these cases. I'd ignore any such article from his publications, especially one written from an "insider perspective" that is 40 years old!

Anyway, the whole idea of a pervasive "liberal bias" in the BBC is nonsense - even if you think such a thing exists, so what? Given how poorly the Tories do in the polls even after years of Labour disillusionment and given how left-wing the UK is in comparison to the US, perhaps such a bias would just reflect the bias of the British people?

Re:

If you live in the UK and own a television you have to pay a special tax, some part of which goes to the BBC. So most people DO pay for BBC programs and have the right to actually watch them on a non-windows computer.

Re:

The content is subsidized tax dollars, so is only free for some people - the tax payers don't seem to have a problem with this. However the BBC, is attempting to take this content which is supposed to be broadcast freely and lick it into some MS format.

Re:

Or is this something that everyone is paying for, or is the content somehow regulated by the UK government?

The BBC is paid for by a license fee which everyone who has a TV (or radio etc) has to pay. So, yes!

Re:

Right, except for the bit about radio. There is no license requirement in the UK for owning and operating a normal receiving radio.

Re:

I'm confused, because according to the Ars article:

because the BBC's offering is expected to be so popular, ISPs are now concerned that iPlayer traffic will degrade the experience for all users of their networks.

Doesn't sound as doom and gloom as the summa

Re:

It just sounds like a company wants to release a product that only works on Windows, and I'm pretty sure that's been done before.

The difference is that UK citizens are required to pay a licence fee to receive BBC content. It is so difficult for ordinary

Re:Huh?

The BBC [wikipedia.org] is relatively unique as broadcasters go. Unlike most broadcasters its market is not selling air time to advertisers but as a public service broadcaster. There are no outside adverts on the BBC network (though they do advertise their own programmes, similar to other broadcasters).

All funding for the BBC comes from the UK tv licence [wikipedia.org] and the sales of programming and other commercial activity (e.g. selling Dr. Who and publishing magazines such as the Radio Times [radiotimes.com])

The BBC is controlled by the BBC Trust (formally the BBC governors) and according to its charter is "free from both political and commercial influence and answers only to its viewers and listeners" [bbc.co.uk]

The BBC added free to air distribution of its programming over satellite in order to provide maximum access to its services to its viewers. One of the side effects of this is that the BBC channels can be received with standard DVB-S equipment across most of western Europe.

This is the reason that people are angry with the iplayer situation. It artificially restricts the service to Windows users and prevents full access by all of the licence paying population of the UK. This is completely the opposite of the satellite case where reception is open to others extremely outside the borders of the UK to ensure that UK licence payers have access to the service (note it is possible to receive this as far away as Bulgaria and beyond, so we are not talking about a small over-spread here!

Re:Huh?

But it is not free as in beer. You pay the TV license fee to watch BBC programing in the UK. Its already been paid for by the users that are being denied access to the programming.

Bit of a rock & a hard place thing here...

Parent post is generally true: as I understand it, the BBC is required by their partners to make at least some token
gesture towards restricting the redistribution of material which doesn't totally belong to it.

To also respond to the grandparent: the big thing here is that the BBC is not a company in the same sense that (say)
US cable networks are. As Douglas Adams used to observe "The BBC's not in the same business as the other TV stations" (or words to that effect): their customers are not corporate advertisers. The BBC is funded by the UK TV licencing fee, & has therefore already been paid for by every Windows, Mac, Linux, *BSD, Solaris, etc. user in the UK with a TV licence, so it clearly is unfair for the Beeb to release iPlayer access to their programmes only to Windows users. (In the interests of full disclosure, btw, I'm a British ex-pat who only uses OS X & (GNU/)Linux).

I do feel some measure of sympathy for the BBC about this, though. As has been noted elsewhere, it should be considered admirable that the BBC are trying to make as much of their programming available online as is feasible without charging. Unfortunately, the only way they can think of at the moment to reconcile that ideal with the legal realities of their programme-producing partnerships & so on is to present them with some sort of anti-duplication measure, hence the DRM. However, my sympathy for the BBC on this issue is tempered by the information that one of the senior execs in charge of making the decisions is an ex-Microsoft Windows Media Player guy, which does tend to suggest scope for conflict of interest on his part.

On balance, I think that the pressure the BBC is feeling reflects the fact that it's pushing the boundaries on making their content freely available online, which is a forward-thinking policy in general, & should be applauded. The woes listed in the summary are largely due to some short-term lack of wisdom in the means currently being used to attain those goals.

Re:Bit of a rock & a hard place thing here...

"However, my sympathy for the BBC on this issue is tempered by the information that one of the senior execs in charge of making the decisions is an ex-Microsoft Windows Media Player guy, which does tend to suggest scope for conflict of interest on his part."

My sympathy for them is tempered by that, and by a couple of other things...

- for a while they used to provide replays of radio programmes etc. in Ogg, but they stopped that and went to Windows or Real only a long time ago. Obviously somebody there had a clue, but was (eventually) shut down. This is more of a bad sign than if they had never done it at all.

- while claiming they were 'intending to provide a non-Windows solution', this was only expected to happen in 'about 24 months' and they were only going to review progress on that project 'every 6 months or so'. That sounds to me very much like 'yeah, yeah, we'll get to it one day. Maybe.'

Re:

Many, eh? I bet you wouldn't be able to find a handful? Why would the average Brit care whether or not the BBC can make a little bit more money when they've already got their hands in everyone's pockets.

This is PUBLIC television we're talking about here.

Re:

If there's a survey on this, I'd just like to say that I'm in the UK and I DO NOT want DRM

Re:The real issue is..

In case it wasn't covered on the news channels you watch, roughly one million people (around 2% of the UK population) took to the streets of London to protest against the invasion of Iraq before it happened.