On 22-Jan-2010, at 18:55, Steffan Davies wrote: > Oh, definitely. I wasn't saying that would be a good implementation, > just that it might permit appliance makers to comply without having to > reinvent the wheel entirely (which typically leads to square or > triangular wheels).
To a point, yes, I agree. But, it fundamentally alters the relationship between (content producers, distributors, broadcasters), standards bodies and manufacturers. Rather than standards bodies being in control (though responding to the needs of the industry) and the rest following, the former group are in control making use of holes deliberately left by the standards bodies (thanks to pressure from broadcasters) and the manufacturers are not only dictated to about how to receive broadcasts, but what a consumer can do with them subsequently. It’s one thing doing this with Sky or Virgin, but where we’re talking about licence-funded terrestrial TV, it's a different proposition altogether (I’m still rather unhappy that Freesat somehow didn’t require regulatory approval before implementing this same scheme, but then its marketshare is particularly minority-levels). There is a workaround, of sorts: perhaps it should be proposed that a TV Licence grants immunity from any legal action (or future “notification system”) relating to downloading illicitly-shared copyright material which has been broadcast free-to-air in this country within the last seven days (similar to the timeshifting exemption written into law at the moment). I can’t see it happening somehow, and it wouldn’t achieve total parity, but it’s an interesting idea: if the scheme were to achieve anything like the results the distributors (publicly) believe it will, then there’d be nothing for consumers to download and the exemption would have zero net effect. 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/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
