October 2009
29 posts
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Yarr
Tom Watson questions the Culture Secretary, Ben Bradshaw, on illicit filesharing:
Mr Bradshaw: …the cost of doing nothing to the music industry alone in this country is estimated at about £200 million.
Q26 Mr Watson: Whose estimate is that?
Mr Bradshaw: That is the industry’s estimate. It is an estimate that I have not seen challenged by anyone in any serious way.
I’m far from...
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Substance Abuse
To: Alan Johnson
CC: Douglas Alexander
Subject: Professor David Nutt
Dear Mr Johnson,
Yesterday I learned that, in your capacity as Secretary of State for the Home Department, you had written to Professor David Nutt, formerly chair of the Advisory Council for the Misuse of Drugs, in light of comments he made at a lecture at King’s College, London. In this letter, you wrote:
It is...
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These are my policies
I am not a politician.
If I were, this is what my leaflet would mention:—
Gay marriage
Legalisation of recreational drugs, produced under license
Legally-binding separation of religion and state, particularly where children are concerned
Abandonment of PFI schemes which are crippling the economy and leaving local authorities and NHS trusts hamstrung
Reduce reoffending rates by shifting...
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Freeview HD SI Scrambling Proposal: The Responses
Ofcom has published the responses to the proposal from BBC Free To View Limited to permit it to compress the Event Information Table (which contains EPG data) in a way which can only legally be decompressed by obtaining a license from them, which would come with certain restrictive conditions, including non-disclosure.
You can find the responses here.
There are zero in favour.
Not one.
...
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How the EU works: A guide for British readers
The UK Government lobbies, via its representatives on the mainland, for European legislation to take a particular course. Just like in national parliaments, deals are done and suchlike. Unlike, national parliaments, it can undertake these actions safe in the knowledge that practically nobody in the UK will notice.
(Optional) It issues a consultation on the implementation of such legislation,...
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#cabinetforum
Lord Mandelson confirmed today his plans to implement a “three strikes” policy for “persistent illicit downloaders” (let’s not use the word “pirate”, shall we).
Pardon me if I feel this is a touch… foolish, but I think I’m justified in this position.
In the name of curbing the perceived death of the creative industries (which are thriving, incidentally, economic downturn notwithstanding),...
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It’s all about the content, stupid
Okay, here’s the deal:
You supply the content.
You describe it, noting whether it’s a film, a series, a one-off, or something in-between, include details of who’s featured, and so on. Details may be edited for clarity, suitability, and so on. You must complete a (short) checklist of rating criteria to protect the innocent.
You get the choose whether ad breaks will be inserted and how many...
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Back-of-envelope analysis: BBC Trust blocks...
The BBC Trust has aborted Project Marquee’s current proposals, on the grounds that they were too complex to assess properly.
This, I suspect, is code for “there are too many strings attached to the useful parts, and those strings would never pass muster with upstream regulators”.
Principally, Marquee was two things: licensing the iPlayer technology (which presumably includes the Platform Which...
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All Party Parliamentary Communications Group
We conclude that much of the problem with illegal sharing of copyrighted material has been caused by the rightsholders, and the music industry in particular, being far too slow in getting their act together and making popular legal alternatives available.
We do not believe that disconnecting end users is in the slightest bit consistent with policies that attempt to promote eGovernment, and we...
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Also from Hansard:
Mr Jamie Reed (Copeland): To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what statutory obligations apply to Freeview to ensure that all national free-to-air broadcasts from free-to-air broadcasters are equally available to all licence fee payers.
Good man.
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The Guardian has been gagged from reporting the...
With thanks Richard Wilson:
Paul Farrelly (Newcastle-under-Lyme): To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment he has made of the effectiveness of legislation to protect (a) whistleblowers and (b) press freedom following the injunctions obtained in the High Court by (i) Barclays and Freshfields solicitors on 19 March 2009 on the publication of internal Barclays reports...
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Libya #293953943
David Milliband, via Hansard:
Although the Megrahi appeal was dropped, the appeal by the sentencing authority—by the Crown—was not.
Oh.
Really?
Interesting.
{Somebody please remind me to update the Hansard link above to something permanent when it’s published}
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The BBC and open technology
I stumbled across this on the Dirac implementations page:
THE BBC AND OPEN TECHNOLOGY
The BBC has a long-standing commitment to open standards. The BBC has a legal obligation to “pay particular attention to the desirability of supporting actively in national and international forums the development of open standards.” Participating in and instigating Open Source projects is a...
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Two common misconceptions in mainstream tech...
Responding in part to http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/oct/11/sky-guns-for-itunes-market
“Unlike iTunes, which is only compatible with Apple’s iPod music players…”
This hasn’t been true since FairPlay was dropped an aeon ago.
“…facing competition from streaming websites such as Spotify…”
Major gripe, this one, because I see it all the time in MSM:
Spotify isn’t a streaming...
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In which I explain the Freeview HD debate which...
Over the past week or so, there’s been some rather intense debate regarding a proposal from the BBC to add a form of copy-protection to HD broadcasts carried by the imminent Freeview HD service.
“But”, they said, “the actual video and audio streams will be unencrypted, satisfying our free-to-air mandate!”
Well, not those exact words, but pretty close.
The opposition to the idea ran along...
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BBC Internet Blog: BBCHD and DRM: A Response to... →
headlessness:
It worries me that, if there’s a lack of in-house boffins to answer the technical questions, there’s a lack of in-house boffins to make, or advise on the technical decisions that have landed the BBC in this pickle in the first place. Let’s see them outsource their way out of this one.
Here lies the problem. The BBC isn’t used to engaging directly with people who, while not...
“[Cameron] is going to scrap all the political impartiality rules covering...”
– Johann Hari: If we care about the BBC, we must fight to defend it (via Dan W) (via blech)
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Project Canvas discussed last month at the DTG
From informativ, via @ProjectCanvasUK:
While the BBC Trust has effectively mandated its managers to work with all stakeholders to develop suitable specifications, there was palpable irritation from industry experts at the naive presentation and the lack of information shared by the representatives of the Canvas project.
Certainly off to a flying start. As the informativ article points out,...
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Some love for the BBC
If you skimmed my posts about the BBC in my blog, you might get the impression that I’m some sort of Murdoch-worshiping type who hates the BBC and everything it stands for.
You would, for the record, be wrong. Almost all of the TV that I watch that isn’t surreptitiously imported from the US is broadcast by the BBC. All of the radio is. I have friends and acquaintances who work at and with the...
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The complexity of DRM
As I said in my previous post, some aspects of DRM are tricky: notably, if you’re a conduit between a rights-holder who demands DRM and the public.
I lied a little. It’s only complicated if you’ve decided you do actually need to implement DRM. If you decide that you don’t, things are simple: the rights-holder either accepts this, or goes elsewhere.
Right now, there’s a debate raging with the...
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The simplicity of DRM
There’s a conception that DRM—Digital Rights Management—is a complex issue, and it’s certainly the case that there’s a lot of misunderstanding abound. It’s also true that, at a technical level, it can be quite complicated. It’s also true that the negotiations as to whether DRM should be deployed or not can themselves be complex.
But DRM itself—what it means and what the pros and cons can only...
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What Spotify did right
Music subscription services are nothing new, but Spotify’s at least gained mindshare where others have failed, even if it’s yet to turn a profit.
As a service, Spotify is still evolving: over the past few weeks we’ve seen the launch of the Android and iPhone versions of the application, support for PayPal as a payment method, and the ability to have “offline” playlists—where the songs are...
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