“The BBC has been accused of forcing people to use Microsoft operating systems and has been threatened with a complaint to the European Commission,” BBC News reports.
The Beeb reports, “The charge concerns the use of Microsoft technology in the corporation’s forthcoming iPlayer. The web service, set for launch later this year, allows viewers to watch shows up to 30 days after broadcast. The BBC has said it does intend to allow access to its content from computers with other operating systems [however] a statement from the organisation read: It is not possible to put an exact timeframe on when BBC iPlayer will be available for Mac users. However, we are working to ensure this happens as soon as possible and the BBC Trust will be monitoring progress on a six monthly basis.“
“The accusations against the BBC have been made by advocacy group the Open Source Consortium (OSC),” The Beeb reports. “‘The BBC has a mandate to provide equal access to people irrespective of platform,” said Mark Taylor, president of OSC. ‘We don’t think it is appropriate to lock people into a particular desktop technology.’ The OSC has compared the situation to the BBC offering programmes that only work on certain makes of television.”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Macaday” for the heads up.]
Stupid quotation marks and lack of a preview function… grr.
Okay…
EVERYONE in the UK that uses the Beeb programs has to pay a license fee to fund the Beeb — or has to wait for an Enforcement Officer to visit you to confirm that you do not need a licence, if you’ve choosen to never watch Beeb programs on the device that you own which is capable of watching?
Everyone that pays for the TV licence is ENTITLED to watch Beeb programs, regardless of the equipment used to watch the broadcast.
No EQUIPMENT BRAND or OPERATING SYSTEM preferences.
The BBC tech IT side was bought up by Siemens recently.
Translation: part of the BBC that was funded by UK taxpayers money, has been sold off to a private company. Where has that money gone, and can I have my dividend please?
The Beeb have recently gone into an ‘agreement’ with Microsoft on future tech projects.
Translation: The Beeb, whose content in the main is created on Mac systems & Mac software, has an IT department that is full of 1990’s pissed off IT managers who have an in-built hatred of all things Apple. Seeing day-after-day the new Mac hardware being used by the content makers, who they have no control over, they have decided that the part of the system they are in control of, will be as hostile to Apple as possible.
Need I say more, apart from, ‘this stinks” ?
We have a similar situation in Flanders (Belgium) with the way telenet (the major cable ISP) offers internet TV/Movies. It is the MS DRM that they are using, of course, that is the culprit.
And to say that the CEO used to work for Apple Belgium!