Petition to demand that BBC support Mac and Linux
A petition has been placed on the Prime Minister’s website regarding the BBC’s nascent iPlayer service. iPlayer will let users watch shows online or download them to a computer for later viewing. The petition objects to the BBC’s intention to deliver this service exclusively in Windows Media (to provide a DRM framework). It requires that they deliver a platform agnostic solution.
The BBC plans to launch an on-demand TV service which uses software that will only be available to Windows users. The BBC should not be allowed to show commercial bias in this way, or to exclude certain groups of the population from using its services. The BBC say that they provide “services for everyone, free of commercial interests and political bias”. Locking the new service’s users into Microsoft Windows whilst ignoring those members of society who use other operating systems does not fit in with the BBC’s ethos and should not be allowed.
I’ve signed this petition, and whatever your platform of choice I urge you to do the same.
Recent Posts RSS
February 23rd, 2007 at 5:12 pm
I’ve signed it, silly narrowminded BBC they even use macs themselves for much of their editing. Maybe Mac and Linux users should get a discount on their tv license?
February 24th, 2007 at 3:13 pm
I’d guess it’s because they insist on DRM, and Microsoft have the most appropriate (read: easy to implement) solution.
If it were Sky doing it I’d be disappointed, but the BBC is a public service that we all pay for. It’s totally unacceptable for them to exclude people in this way.
February 24th, 2007 at 3:34 pm
Fair enough, but one wonders where to draw the line…
‘The BBC doesn’t support my portable device conneting to their site and watching content’.
The BBC have already stopped Expats like myself from accessing their video content, filtering out non-uk IPs. An utter shame as I would regularly watch the 6pm news online.
The BBC can’t cater for everyone who holds a UK licence, making web content available to them, this is perhaps a method for them to reduce costs (I remember a while back complaints about the amount of budget being spent on the online content versus new programming).
And although the BBC is a public corporation providing a public service, so are many of the utility companies… and they are allowed to do whatever the hell they please, so why not the BBC?
February 24th, 2007 at 4:06 pm
I see your point about having to draw a line somewhere with so many device types, but since there are basically only three major desktop operating systems I don’t think it’s too much to ask that they attempt to support them. Besides, if they are going to restrict access to UK IPs, then why do they need DRM at all?
I agree that it sucks that ex-pats aren’t able to access BBC content abroad. However, you are no longer paying the license fee. Speaking as someone who is, I want my due.
Either that or they should just call it like it is, some sort of compulsory tax that happens to pay for the Beeb. We expect to get screwed over by tax.
…they are allowed to do whatever the hell they please, so why not the BBC?
One might argue that public services shouldn’t be allowed to do whatever the hell they please. There’s enough disregard for the public interest in the private sector without the likes of the BBC following suit.
March 13th, 2007 at 2:30 pm
[…] make the content on the BBC news site viewable in Safari I stumbled across this web petition from Alex Hardy’s Blog Prevent the BBC from making its iPlayer on-demand television service available to Windows users […]