DRM, on My BBC Broadcasts?

Written on Wednesday 16 September 2009

This is a very old post from my blog; so old that it was originally hosted on LiveJournal. The page has been preserved in case its content is of any interest, but formatting errors are likely and the page's original comments have been lost. Please go back to the homepage to see the current contents of this site.

The deadline for responding to this proposal was Wednesday 16th September 2009. Since you are reading this after UK office hours on that date, it is probably too late for you to have your say. Sorry!

DRM, on My BBC Broadcasts? It’s more likely than you think. </meme>

It’s citizen power time again folks - and you have about 8 hours! The BBC have applied to Ofcom to include DRM (Digital Rights Management) encoding in their HD broadcasts, at the behest of the content providers. Not only would this reduce licence-payers’ rights to watch what they have funded, but it could also stop open-source TV tuner apps like MythTV from accessing these signals legally.

Here’s BoingBoing’s page on the subject, and here’s the proposal itself (PDF).

If you have a view on this proposal, the e-mail address to write to is: Andrew.Dumbreck@ofcom.org.uk.

If you wish to use it for inspiration, the contents of my e-mail can be found here. Please do not copy it word-for-word, its effectiveness will be greatly reduced if everyone sends the same thing!