Project Canvas (continuum)
BSkyB and Virgin Media have had their differences in recent years, but they are agreed on one thing: that the Project Canvas open IPTV platform should not be cleared by the BBC Trust because it won’t provide anything the commercial market can’t. Keen to keep growing their marketing share in the ruthless pay TV market against an open source IPTV standard, both companies could do without a partnership of the BBC, Five, ITV and BT marketing an affordable set-top-box against their premium options.
paidContent:UK hits the nail on the head here, dubious misuse of the term “open source” notwithstanding.
Sky and Virgin’s objections to Project Canvas are sound.
However, their motives are obviously not altruistic.
Is that a good reason to approve Canvas anyway? I strongly believe not.
In related news, Digital Spy reports that the Lords Communications Committee is leaning on Ben Bradshaw to strong-arm the Competition Commission into approving Canvas when (surely, “if”?) it lands on their desks.
The rationale with all of this is that “we can’t let foreign interests take over the emerging IPTV market in the UK”. What seems to get missed is that in doing so, it also crushes any hope of British innovation in the sector, unless it comes from the major broadcasters themselves—especially when a fair chunk of it is license-fee-payer-funded. The whole notion is one of cutting off your nose to spite your face.
The solution to the problem of proprietary platforms owned by American companies taking over the domestic market is not the creation of another (essentially) proprietary platform with domestic interests: this is wholly unnecessary and very, very costly. The solution is put together a set of open standards—really, properly open, not “requires membership of a commercial group” open—and then adopt them.
In the long term, the ends don’t justify the means, even if the opposite appears to be true in the short term. Broadcasting is, by nature, about the long haul.
