[mythtv-users] How the BBC's HD DRM plot was kept secret .. and why

R. G. Newbury newbury at mandamus.org
Tue Nov 15 19:39:39 UTC 2011


This should be quite worrisome for an mythtv users in England.
The BBC wants to DRM lock its broadcasts.

From:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/nov/14/bbc-hd-drm

An excerpt:
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"Back in 2009, the BBC approached Ofcom for permission to add "digital 
rights management" locks to its high-definition broadcasts. The locks 
would work by scrambling some of the information used to decode video, 
and in order to get the descrambling key, manufacturers would have to 
submit to the rules of the DTLA, an offshore consortium led by Intel.

This was a strange request for the BBC to make. There aren't any licence 
fee payers who put a cheque in the post this year and thought, "Gosh, I 
wish there was a way I could do less than the law allows with the video 
my licence fee pays for." The BBC has always eschewed DRM in its 
Freeview offerings, and other public broadcasters in Europe, the US and 
Canada eschew DRM. German law prohibits DRM on its public broadcasts, 
and American law prohibits DRM on all broadcasts, both commercial and 
non-commercial.

What's more, the DRM scheme proposed by the BBC had three major flaws: 
first, technical experts believed it would be trivial to defeat; second, 
the part of the broadcast that the BBC wanted to scramble was shared by 
closed captions and assistive audio tracks used by disabled people; and 
finally, the full rules set out by DTLA for its DRM were governed by 
confidentiality agreements, which meant that UK manufacturers would be 
ordered to comply with a set of secret rules that the public wasn't 
allowed to know.

There were other important problems, of course: the proposal violated 
the EU common market by breaking foreign TV receivers and it meant that 
popular free/open source receivers and recorders would be frozen out of 
the UK device market.

The consultation received 459 responses. Of these, 432 of those came 
from individual licence payers, and 426 opposed the BBC's proposal....."

*******************************

Surely there are SOME MP's in England have an inkling of a clue?

Or can be taught?

OK. That WAS funny..

H/T  groklaw.net  news tips November 14th

Geoff


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