Bonum Certa Men Certa

Microsoft 'Pulled a BBC' in New Zealand, 'Stole' from Taxpayers

Same fiasco, different country

It is truly amazing to find the same story unfolding in the very same way in two separate countries, even independently. Under many people's radar, New Zealand's television turns out to have been abused -- and also actively abused -- in a BBC-like fashion. The Radar (O'Reilly) scoops up bits of this story.

The New Zealand Herald has an interesting article about state-owned broadcaster Television New Zealand's on-demand streaming of media moving away from DRM (TVNZ has the same scope of programming and dominant market position as the BBC in England, though alas not the commercial-free public good mandate). TVNZ's head of emerging business, Jason Paris (who was at the recently-ended Kiwi Foo Camp) said the ad-supported streams outnumbered paid-for downloads by "many thousands to one" and so they're dropping the DRMed downloads.

[...]

TVNZ has been using Microsoft's PlaysForSure digital rights management software to try to prevent downloaded TV shows from being copied. But just days after the launch of TVNZ OnDemand last March, the protection systems had been bypassed by viewers using software freely available on the internet.


“This ought to bring back to mind Novell's help to Microsoft's Silverlight, which is intended to create another type of lock-in with DRM included.”The story is almost a perfect copy of the Microsoft-BBC fiasco, which is far from over based on what we were recently told. There are far too many unanswered questions and there is colossal waste of taxpayers' money. This ought to bring back to mind Novell's help to Microsoft's Silverlight, which is intended to create another type of lock-in with DRM included.

While the BBC has already received an "F", it seems to aspire for a "D" at best. It fails to see that its problem is the proprietary software stack that was borrowed from Microsoft. Although the BBC intends to bring iPlayer to Macs, there is not a single word about GNU/Linux. The BBC announced that there would make available a Linux version in 2008, not just a Mac version as just reported by the BBC itself. And let's not forget the obvious spit in the face:

Highlighting the marginal Linux audience is a risky move for Thomson, after his director of future media and technology, Ashley Highfield, got himself into hot water with open-source advocates last year by declaring the BBC website had only 400-600 Linux users every week.


An iPlayer equivalent could be very inexpensive to develop. The BBC would have delivered the software to all platforms simultaneously had it not relied on Microsoft's stack and DRM-laden delivery of media (which it later gave up on anyway). Here is a new article from Wired where it is shrewdly implied that DRM 'security' is a matter of financial security for distributors and also an excuse for greater control.

With enough lock-in, a company can protect its market share even as it reduces customer service, raises prices, refuses to innovate and otherwise abuses its customer base. It should be no surprise that this sounds like pretty much every experience you've had with IT companies: Once the industry discovered lock-in, everyone started figuring out how to get as much of it as they can.


Mark Thompson already does some damage control. Sadly for him, it's a blog, so he receives harsh comments such as this one:




I continue to be very disappointed in the way the BBC has handled the whole iPlayer project.

Mark, you continue to speak of "Platform Neutrality" and then go on to say how you're looking into developing cross-platform DRM solutions. How is this neutral? This is you picking platforms to support, not being neutral at all.

Being neutral would mean publishing media using open standards so that anybody on any platform would be able to access your media.

The fact that you spout a term such as "market penetration" just further proves to me how far away you are from understanding this issue. Are you really saying you are prepared to completely shut out a minority group of viewers in such a discriminatory way?

As a licence payer I'm disgusted.




Stay tuned. The BBC makes baby steps, but too many people remain deeply disappointed.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Michael “Monty” Widenius: It Started in 1983 With Richard Stallman (RMS)
The other co-founder of MySQL is a bit notorious for confronting RMS rather viciously
For the Second Time in a Few Weeks Microsoft Lunduke Makes False Accusations Against Senior Red Hat Staff to Incite a Despicable 'Troll Army'
Nothing that Microsoft Lunduke claims of says can be trusted
 
Links 03/10/2025: Lawyers Caught Using LLM Slop Explain Why They Did It, LibreSSL 4.1.1 and 4.0.1 Released
Links for the day
FSF Board Grew 50% Since Last Year, Has New President, Turns 40 in Two Days
It's a good move for the FSF and - by extension - for software freedom
Links 03/10/2025: Conflicts, Death of TypePad, and TikTok/CheeTok Gives a Boost to Far Right Groups in Europe
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, October 02, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, October 02, 2025
Slopwatch: Linux Journal, Google News, and LinuxSecurity
They carry on polluting the Web with fake articles
Gemini Links 02/10/2025: Kubernetes With FreeBSD and robots.txt
Links for the day
Links 02/10/2025: 'Open' 'AI' Resorting to Gimmicks and Fake Funding, Europe’s ‘Drone Wall’ Discussed
Links for the day
Links 02/10/2025: Brave Passes 100M Users Milestone, Kodak Selling Its Own Film Again
Links for the day
su lisa && rm -rf /home/ibm/power
Novell was ruined by another person from IBM, Ronald Hovsepian
A Record Demand at Microsoft: Demand to Cancel
What we're witnessing is a very ungraceful destruction of XBox
Microsoft is Losing Europe
Hence all the "support" and "discount" offers that are limited to Europe
The Free Software Foundation Starts Fund-raising for 40th Anniversary
New pop-up 2-3 days ahead of the 40th anniversary event
Systemd Breaks Networking in Debian and Microsoft Staff Rushes to Make Face-Saving Excuses in LWN
Microsoft's bluca is already there in the comments, his Microsoft money pays for LWN to let him leave comments early
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, October 01, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, October 01, 2025
What the End of XBox Will Look Like: a Fiery Crash
XBox is the next Skype. It won't last much longer. Expect many more layoffs.
Richard Stallman is Going to Finland to Give a Talk Next Thursday
A day later he speaks in Sweden
Gemini Links 02/10/2025: SMTP Pipelining and End of ROOPHLOCH 2025
Links for the day
Slopwatch: Plagiarism, Fake Articles, and FUD About Linux
not a day goes by without Google News feeding FUD from slopfarms
Gemini Links 01/10/2025: Chat Control and End of Life
Links for the day
Links 01/10/2025: Long Covid Risk Reiterated, "Bitcoin Queen" Caught
Links for the day
Links 01/10/2025: EA $55 Billion Deal is Debt and Slop "Raises Vishing Risks"
Links for the day
Bluewashing at Red Hat Means Redundancies
The man who sold Red Hat to IBM meanwhile became a Microsoft Mono booster
After Killing OpenSource.com, IBM ('Red Hat') and OSI Told Us OpenSource.net Would Replace It (But That Didn't Happen)
Now it's time to move on, perhaps tarnishing the "Open Source" label some more (for whatever sponsor wants this)
Linux is Not a Community Project, It's a Wall Street Product
The core goal should be freedom
Bad Actors Abusing the Free Software Community, Vandalising It Using Rogue Politics and Old Tactics
Oil giants have long attempted to do this; now, the digital equivalent of Big Oil does this in technology
Social Control Media Isn't the Future, The Federation or Fediverse Isn't Growing, People's Accounts Vanish for Good
users' accounts will get deleted, not just become inactive
IBM is Failing, This Helps Show Wall Street is Entirely Detached From Actual Commercial Performance
IBM is unable to grow, it's just constantly shrinking
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, September 30, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, September 30, 2025
Clerical Aspects of Publishing and Development
In Free software, the management aspects are considerably reduced
Slopwatch: Fake Articles and Google News Promoting "Linux" Spam or Bot-Generated Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt (FUD)
These slopfarms help misplace blame
Third Wave of Microsoft Layoffs in September, This Time Many in Liverpool Affected
Be ready for more waves of layoffs ahead of the so-called "results" in late October