Ofcom Approves Anti-Piracy Technology for BBC Freeview

by Jordan Yerman | June 14, 2010 at 09:23 am

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BBC's Anti-Piracy Add-On Given the Okay from Ofcom

Despite protests from consumer advocacy groups, the BBC has gotten the go-ahead from Ofcom to deploy anti-piracy technology to its Freeview HD service. This move basically limits who has the right to develop technology for the broadcasting ecosystem in the UK. Basically, subscribers will have to agree to a new license (the whole terms of which they cannot even see) to be able to decrypt the shows they pay for already. (Ofcom Freeview statement)

This change has three basic effects:

Limits the role of open-source and open-standard technology in favor of an "old boys' club"
Forces British TV customers to buy and use equipment that is broken by design, affecting their ability to copy and share content
Will have no effect on piracy, because DRM has been proven, time and again, to only punish law-abiding users

End-Run Around BBC Encryption Restriction

For UK subscribers who are wondering if this is an end-run around the BBC restriction on encrypting its signal, the answer is "yes": as a license fee payer, you are entitled to watch BBC content without having to jump through additional hoops... until now.

Ofcom said today that only manufacturers of set-top boxes and Freeview HD TV sets that include anti-piracy technology will be allowed to be compatible with the Freeview electronic programming guide. This will allow broadcasters to stop piracy of shows.

Correction: it will attempt to allow broadcasters to stop piracy of shows. A casual glance at the history of DRM will reveal why that's such a flawed proposition.

Eagle-eyed readers will of course spotted the contradiction in terms between “open source” and “the proposal may introduce some restrictions on how it is used”, which Ofcom either does not understand or simply doesn't care about – despite the “large number of individual responses” it received on the subject.

"This is a serious blow to UK licence-payers, who will be forced to buy non-standard equipment that does less at a UK premium price," said Jim Killock of the ORG. "Ofcom's remit is to protect consumer interest and competition. They have failed to do either. The USA's regulator rejected such restrictions, because of the barriers to innovation and trade. The UK should be doing the same."

BBC took four years to develop iPlayer, and a further 13 months of private beta testing. With this in mind, perhaps locking down their technology isn't the best use of subscriber money, and not the best way to maintain subscriber confidence.
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