By David Meyer, 17 July 2007 15:09
NEWS
The launch of the BBC's new media player will not be delayed by a new crack for the digital rights management features of Windows Media Player, the corporation said on Tuesday.
The iPlayer, which is based on Microsoft's media player and DRM technology, is due to be launched on 27 July, and has already attracted controversy and criticism over the decision to use proprietary technology for a platform supposedly catering to all licence-fee payers - at its launch it will work only on computers running Windows XP.
But the recent reappearance of FairUse4WM, a utility that can strip the copy protection from Windows Media Player content, threatened fresh problems for the scheme.
FairUse4WM first appeared last year. Microsoft hastily patched Windows Media Player against it, but 'Viodentia', the anonymous distributor of the utility, cracked Microsoft's patch. As a result, Sky had to temporarily shut down its broadband movie download service, which was based on Windows Media Player.
A revised version of FairUse4WM reappeared on forums late last week, and the utility now effectively strips the DRM from iPlayer content allowing it to be copied and played into perpetuity rather than for the limited period intended by the BBC.
On Tuesday the BBC issued a statement insisting that the crack "won't delay the launch of BBC iPlayer".
The statement continued: "We know that some people can - and do - download BBC programmes illegally. This isn't the first piece of software to be hacked or bypassed. Nor will it be the last. No system is perfect. We believe that the overwhelming majority of licence-fee payers welcome this service and will want to use it fairly."
In its statement, the BBC also maintained that the iPlayer would be "a service for every licence payer in the UK", and defended the principle of attaching copy protection to content by pointing out that DRM was desirable to the independent producers making a third of the BBC's content.
Microsoft also responded to the crack on Tuesday with confirmation that it was aware of the issue and was in the process of verifying the circumvention.
David Meyer writes for ZDNet UK
Comments
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1. anonymous
As a TV licence payer I would expect, sorry no demand that if iplayer is avalable to someone with a windows XP computer then it MUST also be avalable to anyone else with a computer even if it is running Windows 95/98 or Mac OS7(i think) era operating systems (and anything newer including Symbian (for mobile phones) and linux/unix), they are still used by people.
2. Karen Challinor
I refer readers to my earlier comments regarding the ineffectuality of DRM and associated technologies
http://networks.silicon.com/webwatch/0,39024667,39167664,00.htm
3. Richard Davies
You cannot expect the BBC to support every platform.
Its ridiculous to think that they should be expected to support anything other than mainstream at first (windows xp) and then possibly MACS and open source.
For those people still out there on windows 9x...you are a security risk anyway...stop being tight and go out and upgrade to something that is up-to-date.
I get annoyed at the fact that in life in general, people now expect support for every minority going and its just un-realistic!
4. David Fletcher
Richard, you've obviously moved into Yorkshire rather than being born there. Otherwise you'd be very badly letting down the side by suggesting that computer users should give away money for software.
I've recently upgraded my computer to Kubuntu Feisty. It works pretty well, including playing all my audio files.
What the BBC and all other tunnel visioned organisations need is a damn good kick up the backside to get them to realise that cross platform applications are perfectly possible. Check out the Audacity sound recorder/editor for Linux, OS X and Windows, and Google Earth to name just two.
This country has made great efforts to protect people from discrimination on grounds of race or religion. It's about time we were protected against discrimination based on the operating system we choose to use.
5. Joe Whitehead
Richard: What isn't mentioned before, is the possibility of someone choosing to make support for other OSes hard. Imagine you're given two choices early on: Use a library that exists for many platforms, or rewrite one from scratch just for the platform of choice. This is even though we're talking about something as common as saving a file! Later on, when people complain of a lack of choice, you can (quite legimately) claim that it would take a lot of effort to port it.
You should look into how device types that have supported being used as USB hard drives for several years, are starting to be made essentially XP-only for no real good reason. Cameras and music players for example. The most annoying part is that you can use firmware designed for that exact same hardware but sold to a different 'region', in order to restore the file system compatability. Smacks of outright lunacy.