BBC · Grey Nicholson

The BBC Loves Them Some Microsoft

2008-02-22T01:52:00+00:00

Either that or they're crap journalists. Or their technology editor's wholly unknowledgeable (which really amounts to the same).

In the offending report, one paragraph (comprising just one sentence—have you noticed how often the BBC does that?) says that:

It [Microsoft] also promised not to sue open source developers for making that software available for non-commercial use.

Now, open source developers are those who make open source software, which is any software that's released under an open source licence. Point 6 of the Open Source Definition explicitly states that commercial users cannot be excluded. So for a program to be released as open source, it must be available for commercial as well as non-commercial use.

Open source developers therefore have no interest in releasing code just for non-commercial use. Doing so is usually called shared source—“you can look, but you can't run it for commercial purposes”. Microsoft have offered code under shared source licences before—that, in itself, isn't news.

Far from helping open source developers, this may actually make it easier for Microsoft to sue them: they can more-plausibly claim that an open source developer has looked at some of Microsoft's source code, and copied it in code they've released as open source (and therefore for commercial use), which would be a violation of Microsoft's code's licence.

Certainly, with this as (at least) a possibility, any open source developer would be foolhardy to actually look at the Microsoft code if they intend to write anything comparable in the future.

The BBC Misunderstands DRM

2008-01-30T16:08:00+00:00

With the furore over the BBC's unfair use of DRM in its iPlayer, one would expect them to know what DRM was. Apparently, they don't.

(At least, their technology editor doesn't.) BBC News has an article about “a new method of DRM” being used by indigenous Australians to make it easier to respect their societal customs. The thing is, the system as the article describes it is not DRM.

DRM is where a file (a document, some software, or a piece of audio or video) is designed to be unreadable without a key (a cipher—like a password). Crucially, the key must remain unknown to (or unusable by) the file's intended audience.

The DRM acts as a gatekeeper, and only allows access to the file (lowers the drawbridge) if the audience can demonstrate that they are entitled to access the file. The audience may only access the file if the key-holder allows it.

Making a copy of a DRM-encumbered file and giving it to someone else typically results in their not being able to use it, because the DRM recognises them as someone else. (If it doesn't recognise them at all, they still won't be able to use the file.)

That's the intention, anyway. It's not actually possible to implement DRM so that it works—it can only ever make viewing the content a bit more awkward, for determined copyright-infringers and ordinary consumers alike.

The key point here is that the DRM—and thus the key-holder—controls the audience's ability to access the file.

In the situation described by the BBC article, the audience chooses to avoid certain content, based on a set of cultural rules. The “DRM” system allows the audience to filter the content, by taking cultural information about the audience and applying those rules.

There is no key (that the article mentions, anyway); no-one is prevented from accessing any content—it's just made easier to avoid content that's inappropriate for that particular person.

This system sounds rather more like a simple set of filters that work on metadata associated with each bit of content. That's a lot more like a porn-&-swearing blocker than DRM. It's very similar to Flickr's search engine.

Indeed, it's very similar to any search engine, except the criteria are “appropriate for this age, that gender and this community” instead of the more typical “must contain the words foo, bar and baz”.

So this is, as the article describes, an example of applying search logic and technology (that itself originates from European-influenced cultures) to solve a cultural problem that many from European-influenced cultures would find surprising.

It has nothing, however, to do with DRM (which is an example of unfeasibly clinging to a business model that's been made obsolete and unworkable by technological improvements), as the article erroneously suggests.

BBC msPlayer

2007-09-07T21:52:00+00:00

The BBC recently launched a video-on-demand service called “iPlayer”. To ensure that copyright violators have to invest more time in copying each video, and to make it awkward for everyone else to view content that they're allowed to view*, the BBC decided to encapsulate their content in DRM—officially “digital rights management”, equally accurately “digital restrictions management”.

They chose Microsoft to provide the DRM, ostensibly a good choice, since Microsoft have proven themselves adept at bundling obtrusive unwanted software along with software the customer actually wants—it was for this reason that they were convicted of operating a monopoly in the EU.

Unfortunately, Microsoft's DRM system only works on Microsoft's operating system, Windows; and even then, only on the five-year-old version, XP, which has since been superceded by Vista. Oddly, having better DRM capabilities is one of Vista's selling points. And it's odd that the British Broadcasting Corporation would choose to anoint Windows XP as its favourite operating system, since there isn't even a version of it that uses British English. (There is a Welsh version, because too many Welsh speakers started using Free Software.)

The BBC Trust maintains that it's a good idea to ask a convicted software monopoly to produce software whose purpose is to restrict users' capabilities, and that only runs when using the monopoly's operating system software.

A petition was sent to the UK government to protest against this decision. They've responded; an excerpt:

The BBC Trust made it a condition […] that the iPlayer is available to users of a range of operating systems, and has given a commitment that it will ensure that the BBC meets this demand as soon as possible. They will measure the BBC's progress on this every six months and publish the findings.

—iplayer - epetition response

Every six months. They're going to review their progress every six months. The government, the BBC Trust and the BBC don't seem to understand the pace at which technology, particularly internet-based technology, moves. The length of time it's taken the BBC to produce the iPlayer since announcing it is evidence of this. Hopefully such a long delay will harm Microsoft Windows Vista as much as it will harm Free Software.

The BBC shouldn't just make the iPlayer available for a range of operating systems—they should make it open source, so that anyone with the right skills (or who can persuade someone with the right skills to help them) can make an iPlayer for their operating system. Anyone would be able to improve the iPlayer, and we wouldn't be reliant on the BBC to provide fixes for errors. Open-sourcing the iPlayer would instantly satisfy the BBC's commitment.

I don't like The O.C.

2005-07-29T02:45:00+00:00

It's me again. I'm back with similar complaints to those of about this time last year, but with a slight twist.

A week ago saw the end of Channel 4's almost as-decent-as-last-year term-time morning TV schedule, thanks to those damn kids getting out of school. Instead of Third Watch at 10:00, followed by ER and preceded by Frasier and the average Will & Grace; we now get to watch The O.C., Playing It Straight USA (the moral of the story being that men who're gay deserve twice as much money for seducing a woman) and endless repeats of Friends. (Funnily enough, as a 19-year-old I'm supposed to be squarely at the centre of this schedule's “teenager/young adult” target.)

A few years ago Channel 4 had a live breakfast show, shown between 07:00 and 09:00, The Big Breakfast. It was always much more likely to wake me up than either the dreary BBC Breakfast, comprising dull, inconsequential news-items masquerading as an entertaining (yet informative and thus worthy of licence fee money) magazine, interspersed with occasional news; or the dire, even duller and more inconsequential, woman-targetted GMTV, similarly interspersed with occasional news.

Among the many presenters of The BB were Denise Van Outen, and Richard Bacon, who also presented the obscure but excellent Get Staffed for BBC Choice, the obscure but excellent The Vicious Circle for Five and the slightly less obscure but equally excellent Flipside TV.

As I found out while randomly browsing Media Guardian about an hour ago now, these two are presenting This Morning this summer. I may get up.