Why did Microsoft do it? They needed some high visibility wins for last years Mix06 to show of Vista and WPF, so Ashley Highfield played the demo dolly on stage in Vegas.

The BBC now is stuck with Microsoft DRM. Oh and this is not the first time the BBC has sold out its soul to Microsoft. When I was working for Netscape, we were very close to signing a deal for Netscape to provide email, collaboration and LDAP servers to work with Communitcator.

Then Microsoft whizzed in Gates, added in an army of consultants for free to the BBC and strangely won the account. How much the BBC paid for the Microsoft licenses I cannot say but I doubt any taxpayers money was used to cover the cost.

Good people in the BBC want to keep it impartial and open, its just certain people at the top have different personal and financial goals.

Of course, none of the DRM measures prevent you dealing with the incompatibilities the old skool way: a playback device, a recording device, cables, realtime. (I found a pair of identical NAD tape decks in my attic the other day)

The BBC Trust did recognise the issue of platform compatibility in it’s provisional conclusions:
“Within a reasonable timescale, [the BBC] should
aim to make the seven-day catch-up offering available on a platform-neutral basis, or at the
least to be available on all major platforms subject to value for money considerations and as
technology allows.”

Whilst a true open-source DRM player might be a problem a closed source player for open source platforms should be achievable.

Kevin Anderson and myself tried twice to maintain the Talking Shop podcast - a podcast about the online media space. However a lack of mutually free windows in our busy schedules meant we never really got this going.

I’d be delighted to be involved in something like this, and perhaps Kevin too. I may even be possible to resurrect the talking shop site for it.

Personally (now in a non-BBC position) I would also have added to the debate that DRM prevents me from exercising my full rights under UK copyright - such as being able to consume a given piece of media on any device I personally own for my own domestic use. Clearly this can’t occur if the DRM’d file is locked to a single device or won’t play on all of the devices I own (including non-Windows hardware).

A good point; but don’t confuse your “rights under UK copyright” with the fact that a VHS video tape doesn’t play in a Beta video machine, a CD doesn’t play in a cassette recorder, an SD card won’t fit into my xD camera, or a Windows Media file won’t play on an iPod. If technologies are different, such as iPod’s M4P files and DRM’d Windows files, then the real world means they’ll never be compatible. (However, I agree, you should be able to transfer and transcode media between devices).

So yes, I didn’t say much because I knew we only had 1hour and I wanted others to talk. I actually shared a mic because I knew from the start I wasn’t going to say much.

Open.bbc.co.uk points are very well examined and obviously I can’t say much about it right now.

I would also point out that the podcast was never going to be a weekly thing. Its a lot of effort and would detract from the main backstage work. Monthly or adhoc based on the news and landscape is a good call. For example when iPlayer launches, it would be a great idea to have one just before and just after.

The first ever BBC Backstage podcast kicked off in fine style on Wednesday 7th February.

We invited some of the most vocal backstagers in the long running debate over DRM, to come and join us at the BBC to discuss face to face what they felt about …