Sean Daly interviews Ashley Highfield re BBC’s DRM’d iPlayer
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.