iPlayer In Review, Ashley Highfield Hints At Freedom Due Soon
(Personal opinion only, not the views of any employers past or present)
The Register has two article this week about BBC iPlayer, the first reporting an MP who has courageously stepped up to criticize the BBC of “illegal state aid” and the second confirming that the streaming version is EIGHT TIMES more dominant than the download version.
This was anticipated by independent traffic analysis of UK internet useage and in that article the Register echoes my belief that the BBC ought to simple withdraw the DRM download service altogether. I’m sure that everyone protesting the iPlayer last year would congratulate them for doing so :-)
Sadly, the BBC has said in response to the MP that it will be doing just the opposite - bringing a download version to Mac OS X and GNU+Linux users soon. I really hope this is not going to be proprietary software, but I assume the worst from the BBC while it continues to shove DRM on people with the existing download version. Withdrawing DRM from all its services must be a priority of the BBC if it is to have any credibility for supporting open innovation.
The BBC could be really nasty and permit redistribution of its proprietary player, and because all GNU+Linux distributors - famously Debian and Ubuntu which distribute proprietary software directly on their servers, but also OpenBSD and Fedora who provide recipes for where to get them from other archives - will package it and provide even less advantage to the free ones. And if it is proprietary software, it is likely to be just as spying and as DRM laden as the Windows versions.
Why is DRM a problem? Richard Stallman, founder of the GNU project, recently explained that DRM is typically presented only “as a system to prevent copying, but it is much more than that. DRM simply means any feature to restrict users’ use of their copies of published works, and it can restrict any kind of usage. Nor should we assume DRM means the blocking of illegal uses only. Keeping your copy of a book for years, reading it again and even copying all or part it are all lawful uses of a copyrighted work in certain situations; nonetheless, DRM could stop you from doing so.”
The DRM Download iPlayer is a clear example of this kind of restriction on use. Restrictions on use do the most harm to people who need to access media in unusual ways because of their disabilities - “accessibility issues.” For example, epileptics can enjoy IP TV safely with special software that removes the kind of flashing that can trigger a potentially fatal seizure, but with DRM restrictions on use, they cannot use their alternative software.
However, I think there are rays of hope for the BBC, having kept an eye on its new blogs.
Ashley Highfield recently blogged about Internet TV and asked, “How can the BBC help make an open market in the UK for hybrid DTT/IP boxes a reality?”
Simple, really - support the development of GNU Gnash, the most advanced free software Flash player.
Here’s why:
Adobe’s Flash seems set to become the “de facto” standard for delivering IP TV for the next few years. However, Adobe’s massive license fees are holding it back for set top box vendors.
Microsoft is offering them its “Flash killer” Silverlight software at a discount, - but only initially, as it is sure to be just as ruthless as Adobe if the strategy pays off and it became as dominant for IP TV as it is on the desktop.
Apple has focused on the patent-locked H.264 format, and although Flash can transport this format, Apple also won’t pay Adobe’e ridiculous fees either and uses their own QuickTime transport. (That’s why there is no Flash on the iPhone too.)
To support any of these proprietary software platforms would be to give illegal state aid to those companies. Now that MPs are aware of the BBC doing this already, the BBC would be foolish to carry on doing it.
But without doing that for some companies, how can hybrid DTT/IP boxes become a reality?
Free software is the answer.
“Free” doesn’t refer to price, but to freedom - freedom for all companies operating in the UK, large or small, to innovate new IP TV technology.
The BBC lobbied to make sure that Freeview and DAB were DRM-free, and this is part of the reason we license fee payers who are concerned with software freedom felt betrayed when the DRM Downloads iPlayer was announced.
Being DRM-free means that businesses that write their own software, and businesses that make software available to the public and respect the public’s freedom to share and improve it in a community
The GNU Gnash project is developing a Flash player that runs on all the different kinds of hardware that set top box makers use.
It is working to write software that supports the Adobe Flash transport at both ends, with the Gnash player and the Cygnal server. Most importantly, it also support free software formats like Theora and Vorbis in addition to patent-locked formats like H.264 and MP3.
Many set top boxes are built using GNU+Linux these days, and GNU Gnash is primarily developed for “embedded devices” like them. It doesn’t require GNU+Linux though, just a Unix-like environment, so Apple would also be free to support iPlayer steams on its AppleTV devices with GNU Gnash.
The Xbox Media Center, which you included an image of running on Ubuntu GNU+Linux in a prior blog post, will support iPlayer when Gnash can support it, as will community developed media centers for the PlayStation 3.
But Gnash is under heavily development today, and needs support.
The BBC could make a real difference to the project by contributing.
One simple way is found in the BBC’s so-called “10% time” for its engineers, similar to that of other leading software engineering firms, and it could easily put those developer resources to use. It could also publish an API and documentation about how to query the iPlayer catalog and access the RTMP streams. More elaborate contributions could be direct funds, or assigning a full time engineer.
The iPlayer In Review, Ashley Highfield Hints At Freedom Due Soon by David Crossland, except the quotations and unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
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