Groklaw has just published an interview with Ashley Highfield, the
BBC's Future Media and Technology Director - the department
responsible for the development of the DRM'd iPlayer software:
On the positive side, he says:
...the long-term alternative solution is a world beyond DRM and how we
can work together, particularly with our rights holders, to get to a
world beyond DRM.
On the worrying side, he says that free software DRM is probably the
interim solution. Free software DRM? That doesn't make sense. DRM
is used to impose restrictions on how the software can be used, and
software is only free software if the user is free to use it for any
purpose. I guess they're still in the
research phase regarding that idea.
Another worrying tidbit is that he says it is necessary that the
copyright holders be...
...assured that the content would be available free within the UK but not
freely copying available outside the UK.
I'm not sure how they can prevent that without taking control over the
computers of everyone who watches the content. Maybe an alternative solution would be for the big customers of this content to agree to continue paying as much as they do and to abandon attempts to prevent people's computers from copying or redistributing the data.
Some of his later
comments are positive again later when asked about this supposed free
software DRM:
But even that, as I think you'd agree, is not the solution. The
solution is actually to find a solution to DRM, to move beyond DRM in
the long run.
So, this story's only beginning. Interesting interview.
I did a bit of research about "free software DRM" while discussing this with Sean Daly, so I'll put some notes on this in my blog later today.
