Protests were held at BBC offices across the UK by
theFree Software
Foundationover claims that the open access of
its video iPlayer has been "corrupted byMicrosoft".
Protests were mounted at BBC television centre in London and at
BBC offices in Manchester on Tuesday 14 August.
The Free Software Foundation said that the BBC had developed its
iPlayer at a cost to TV licence fee payers of £130m, but that it
had been developed exclusively for Microsoft's operating system and
with
Microsoft Digital Rights Management.
The Free Software Foundation said this goes against the BBC
Trust's principles - open access and independence from corporate
influence.
"BBC values have been corrupted because the iPlayer uses
proprietary software and standards made under an exclusive deal
with Microsoft," said Free Software Foundation executive director
Peter Brown
on his blog. "Licence fee payers must now own a Microsoft
operating system to download BBC programming."
A spokesman for the BBC said that it was in its interests to
make its content as widely available as possible. "We are
prioritising the largest available audiences - the 22 million
people who are broadband connected in Britain first, of which PC
users using Windows XP represent more than 80% of the market.
Concurrently we are looking at Macs (about 5%) and Vista (about
5%). After that, the next biggest audience is the three million
cable homes."
The BBC said it has invested in a multi-platform approach for
the end-to-end production chain for iPlayer. But in order to make
launch plans practical and manageable, it is launching to different
platforms in phases, which will include support for the Mac in a
future release.
"Microsoft believes that Digital Rights Management gives content
owners control over how their intellectual property is used and
allows content to be available to a much wider audience," a
spokesman for the software company said.