Petitions have long been sent to the Prime Minister by post or delivered to the Number 10 door in person. You can now both create and sign petitions on this website too, giving you the opportunity to reach a potentially wider audience and to deliver your petition directly to Downing Street. The e-petitions system launched in November 2006. A new petition is now online:
We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to prevent the BBC from making its iPlayer on-demand television service available to Windows users only, and instruct the corporation to provide its service for other operating systems also.
The BBC plans to launch an on-demand tv service which uses software that will only be available to Windows users. The BBC should not be allowed to show commercial bias in this way, or to exclude certain groups of the population from using its services. The BBC say that they provide ‘services for everyone, free of commercial interests and political bias’. Locking the new service’s users into Microsoft Windows whilst ignoring those members of society who use other operating systems should does not fit in with the BBC’s ethos and should not be allowed.
You must be a British citizen or resident to sign the petition. Please do so here.
MacDailyNews Note: We strongly urge British citizens to sign this petition.
Related article:
Ask the BBC make upcoming iPlayer on-demand service Mac compatible – February 01, 2007
My complaint to the BBC lodged today at http://www.bbc.co.uk/complaints/make_complaint_step1.shtml
I have read that the BBC will make your content available electronically ONLY to users running Windows for at least the first two years of your new iPlayer initiative.
I don’t run Windows and I have no intention of EVER owning a Windows machine again after switching to Mac 2 years ago.
Mind you, if your technical reporting for the BBC is indicative of a general decline in your programming standards, I won’t be missing much. Your infomercial for Vista was an extraordinary and unprecedented example of how commercial interests can corrupt a news organisation.
I read that the BBC is not planning to run a similar kind of programme for the launch of Leopard by Apple in the next month or so. Why not? Leopard, and the Mac, will be of interest to Windows users everywhere – especially individuals who use a computer at home. There are MILLIONS of people like me who have used Windows for years because we didn’t realise there was an alternative.
There IS an alternative. And as a news organisation you should be making sure that computer users everywhere are educated about the available choices. To say that Leopard is of no interest to Windows users is to say that what happens at the BBC is of no interest to those who watch ITV. Or that the release of a new Ford is of no interest to people who drive a Toyota. There really is only ONE alternative to Windows – and that is the Mac. Apple’s market share is growing very fast – and people switch in only one direction. Don’t you think that a detailed analysis of WHY people are switching to Mac, and WHAT they experience when they do, is newsworthy? I do. But then my salary is not funded by a commercial agreement with Microsoft…
All the denials of bias at the BBC are falling on deaf ears. Apple users around the world are not interested in what you SAY but what you DO.
So DO something to prevent further damage to your integrity before it is too late. Log on to http://www.macdailynews.com and search on BBC – anyone who loves the BBC will be appalled by the general consensus of the Apple community that the BBC has sold out to Microsoft.
It would be a sad irony if the BBC discovered itself sidelined by iTunes delivering content to an ever-growing audience of happy Apple users. The release of Apple TV and the launch in Europe of the video/tc component of iTunes will change broadcast television forever. The BBC is in danger of being locked out of this new paradigm. You should be embracing iTunes – it is really the only show in town…
Apple’s mindshare amongst home computer users is huge. This will translate to big gains in marketshare for the Mac – a look at what the Wall Street analysts are saying will confirm this if you bother to look.
iSigned
The iPlayer has already been done. It’s called iPod. Just make video content in Quicktime format instead of that crappy Real sh1t.
I don’t believe calling them citizens is proper.
I lived there for four months…will some enlighten me.
I’ve signed it to. Just waiting for Apple to release videos and films in the iTunes store in Europe, and we won’t need the BBC!
I copied SydneyStephen’s letter and sent it to the complaints dept. of the Beeb. Do it.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/complaints/make_complaint_step1.shtml
@ron
Thanks. Very flattering – but it will be more effective if you write your own. You don’t have to go into all that detail but an individual letter is much more effective because they summarise all the responses for distribution. If you copy my letter i think it will only appear once on the list anyway…
John Gee.
A citizen is a legal resident of a country.
In the USA we have around 20 to 30 million (give or take a couple of million) illegal immigrants who are not citizens.
SydneyStephen.
If the Beeb received 5 million copies of your succint letter, someone would take notice. Ron.
@Ron
Thats not quite right matey. A resident does not need to be a citizen and a citizen may choose to reside elsewhere.
In relation to the e-petition you need to be a british citizen – ie: someone who is entitled to hold a full british passport. you can live anywhere.
As for John Gee’s comment: was it in english? I didnt understand what he was getting at.
iSigned 2
It’s a pity the petition wasn’t written better.
“who use other operating systems should does not fit in”
SydneyStephen if they do visit this site I think they will be appalled by a lot of things. From the mindless drivel to the over the top rants, it’s pretty apalling
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I’ve signed the petition for all the good it will do.
nevermind, know-it-alls.
I was just thinking of a talk a professor gave, and I think he was off a bit. Apparently, you can’t trust professors.
and whilst all our likeminded Macophiles “across the pond” are riled up and petitioning the BBC for wider (read: Mac) compatibility, please do put in a word or two about making the TV show “Top Gear” available to the rest of New Worlders, too.
“Top Gear” rocks!
Captain Slow is King!
Clarkson the Contrary rules!
“The Hamster” should now add “Indestructable” as a middle name!
… and The Stig… well… The Stig is just that… “The Stig”.
A citizen is a legal resident of a country.
Not necessarily. A foreigner working legally in a particular country doesn’t make that person a citizen. For instance (and only one of many examples), there are thousands of farm workers in the U.S., little more than slaves, who enter the country and work legally but must return to their countries of origin after the crops are in.
Interestingly, once you sign the website sends you a link that you are required to click to register your signature.
SPAM SIEVE immediately assigned the e-mail from No. 10 as Spam. !!
How apposite.
That’s me signed too, number 1445.
Can someone tell me why there isnt an independant copany that offers platform independant DRM? Or why the BBC can’t write there own?
SydneyStephen,
a good letter. I sent this:-
I’m a Brit who has been living in Berlin for 30 years and the BBC (radio and TV) has always been very important to me – a sort of cultural lifeline.
For years though,it has been obvious that the BBC – at least the ‘tech department’ has produced programmes by Windows users for Window users – the anti-Mac bias was/is particularly apparent in programmes like ‘Click’. It was just something you had to put up with.
However, the news of the BBC’s deal with Microsoft and the fact that you exclude Mac users from your content has shocked and amazed me. Yes, I’m a Mac user and quite apart from my personal disadvantage, that it is unfair and yet another example of the BBC’s macphobia,
WHAT A FIRM TO GET INTO BED WITH!
Has nobody at the BBC any knowledge at all of this company? Look at the way MS has treated all its other ‘partners’ over the years.
But the most important consequence for the BBC, in my opinion, is that you’ve lost any remaining good-will among the Mac community that you might still have had, and, as research shows, that’s well over 25 million with above-average education and salaries – and (with good reason) it’s growing fast!
For me it’s a personal loss; my favourite auntie has turned into a malodorous strumpet.
Signed the petition – only 2044 so far…
I have already registered a complaint at the BBC after getting the link from a mac user forum.
@Charko
Excellent. We need to keep it up. Hopefully someone at the Beeb will take a closer look at the Microsoft relationship.
I wonder how the BBC will report all the bad news that is about to start coming out of Redmond. It seems that Vista has tanked and the Zune chief has apparently been shown the door… Earnings were down 28% last quarter and I imagine that will be a continuing story.
Vista sales will be exaggerated by including all the new desktops sold – but most of the corporate sales will be installed with XP for at least the next year. If XP is not on the machine when it ships, the o/s will be stripped and XP ghosted on at install time.
…and I urge you to get stuffed!!