"it's stated goals" in paragraph 2 should be "its stated goals"
"BBCs own" in paragraph 3 should be "BBC's own" and there are several more mistakes other than those already pointed out by others. Anyway... I'm not surprised that the BBC is doing this. It is just another step in its transition from public service organisation into purely commercial media company. I see it has already been lobbying WIPO for extreme IP rights and now it is working to stifle competition innovation and choice in software. As far as I'm concerned, the sooner the licence fee is abolished and the BBC is forced to play fairly with the companies it is trying to emulate, the better. The BBC already has a very bad record in this area: it is neither necessary nor desirable for the BBC to apply DRM to (or use proprietary formats for) the vast majority of its audio output and yet inexplicably it has always done so. As we all know, four years ago it even decided not to take advantage of modern free and open audio technologies, despite having successfully tested some of them and having claimed to have resolved all of the legal issues. Its continued almost exclusive use of proprietary audio formats has severely restricted listener choice and quite likely stifled innovation. Genuine public service organisations such as American NPR stations and national radio broadcasters in countries such as the Czech Republic and Norway have for a long time provided a far better public service in this respect than has the BBC. If the BBC really is still a public service organisation (and I don't think it is), it is quite clear that on economic and public service grounds that it would be desirable, if and when such measures as DRM are considered necessary, for the BBC to apply them in ways that are as open and vendor neutral as possible. Since there is no such thing as pirate-proof DRM anyway, I would think that forensic watermarking could achieve a level of protection appropriate to most if not all of the BBC's content and without all the disadvantages and difficulties of pervasive and comprehensive direct control solutions. Even if the BBC does think that some form of proprietary DRM is necessary, it is still unacceptable for it to even consider delivering its content only to those licence fee payers who are also Microsoft software licensees. If that is what the BBC really is intending to do it may have enormous negative economic and cultural consequences - the exact opposite of the effect the BBC ought to be aiming for. _______________________________________________ Fsfe-uk mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/fsfe-uk
