[H]omer <spam@xxxxxxx> espoused:
> Verily I say unto thee, that Roy Schestowitz spake thusly:
>> Amazon to sell unprotected music
>
> Good.
>
>> BBC gets TV on-demand service OK [But only if you use Windows]
>
> Here's what I don't get. If you own a TV in the UK, then you are forced
> to pay the Beeb for a license to watch their content, whether you
> actually watch it or not. So here we are, all subscribing involuntarily
> to their service, and subsequently accessing content that we paid for,
> watching it live on TV, and recording it to video (or more likely these
> days, DVD).
>
> We already have access to unrestricted, non-DRMed versions of this
> content, so what is the point in the Beeb then encrypting lo-fi versions
> of that for access via the Web?
>
> It just doesn't make any sense, at all.
>
> WRT people in foreign countries subsequently having access to it via the
> Web (i.e. non-subscriber access), it's not like those people would be
> liable to pay for the broadcasts (license) in the first place anyway,
> since they are not UK citizens. IOW the Beeb is not losing revenue they
> would have had to begin with, so it can't be for *that* reason that
> content is being encrypted.
It's even more dumb than that. You can already get the BBC from some
parts of Northern France on a good day by direction transmission, and
the BBC also transmits en-clair on Astra anyway, so anyone with a
respectable antenna will have no trouble getting it, at least in the
Western side of Europe.
>
> As I said, considering the inevitable lo-fi quality of these Web
> versions of their content, and the fact that it was originally aired
> unencrypted anyway, this just seems like a monumentally stupid course of
> action, no doubt motivated by the tin-foil RI/MP quangos and their
> cronies like Microsoft.
>
Ashley Highfield is clearly not the sharpest tool in the box.
--
| Mark Kent -- mark at ellandroad dot demon dot co dot uk |
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