The core of the controversy is the fact that the iPlayer system is built atop DRM supplied by Microsoft (somewhat ironically for a product that appears to be trying to leverage Apple's mind share with its choice of name). The effect of this is to lock the player to the Windows operating system.

This wouldn't be such an issue for most broadcasters, but as BBC advertisements constantly state, things are slightly different for them "due to the unique way in which [they] are funded." The BBC is funded from a license fee collected from everyone who owns equipment capable of receiving a broadcast television signal. In recent years, this has been expanded to include computers used to receive simulcast streams.

Due to this funding mechanism, the BBC is free from concerns of profitability. They are not beholden to investors or shareholders. They are, however, required to abide by a charter. This includes aims such as (from the latest version of the charter):

• Promoting education and learning.
• Stimulating creativity and cultural excellence.
• In promoting its other purposes, helping to deliver to the public the benefit of emerging communications technologies and services and, in addition, taking a leading role in the switchover to digital television.

There is some debate as to whether distributing content encumbered with Microsoft DRM falls within the bounds of the last of these points (Public Purpose "f," for anyone following at home).

Illegal Monopoly Abuse

In March 2004, the European Commission fined Microsoft for monopoly abuse. The judgment claimed that Microsoft:

"...broke European Union competition law by leveraging its near monopoly in the market for PC operating systems onto the markets for work group server operating systems and for media players."

The media player in question included Microsoft's own video and audio compression algorithms, file formats, and DRM. While the rest of the judgment was somewhat toothless (requiring Microsoft to offer a version of Windows without Windows Media Player), the fine indicates the seriousness of this breach.

The basis for the judgment was that Microsoft was using its dominant share of the market for desktop operating systems to push its way into other markets. By bundling their own media system with their operating system, they could immediately (via Windows Update) ensure that it was installed on the vast majority of desktop computers. This made life very difficult for their competitors, since it meant that users had to install extra software to use their product, but got Microsoft's (for free) without doing anything.

Interestingly, the rationale given by the BBC for choosing Microsoft as a supplier of DRM was that they have the majority of the desktop computer market share. Apparently they weren't listening when the EC handed down their verdict. If the iPlayer deployment goes ahead as planned, this will further help cement Microsoft's monopoly in this market. Their product is installed on most desktop PCs due to bundling, and now people wanting to build other devices that support the iPlayer will also have to license the formats from Microsoft.

Much of the OSC's focus is on the fact that users of other desktop operating systems are not able to access the service. The BBC points out that this still means that the majority can. While this may be true, it effectively excludes some categories of devices from supporting this service.

The Home Theater PC is a relatively new innovation. Until recently, storage and processing costs made the concept too expensive for most people. Microsoft even released a "Media Center Edition" of Windows to run on them. While Windows MCE is popular on a HTPC systems that are also intended for general purpose computing, it is by no means ubiquitous on special-purpose devices. Manufacturers building consumer-electronics type devices for this role often prefer Free Software, since it allows them to make any modifications they need to, and doesn't require a per-device license fee. Tivo is a good example of this, although not one popular with the Free Software community.

When designing such a system for the UK market in future, OEMs will have to weigh the benefits of Free Software against the fact that they can only provide iPlayer support if they use Windows. Since a device without iPlayer support is likely to sell less well than one with, they are likely to choose Windows, irrespective of other benefits.

One manufacturer likely to be affected by this is Apple. Their recently-launched Apple TV plays videos bought from their iTunes store and downloaded from YouTube, but it will be locked out of supporting the iPlayer service since it runs OS X. Microsoft's CODECs have been ported to OS X, but their DRM remains a Windows-only product.

When digital TV was deployed in the UK, it was based on the DVB-T standard. This standard can be implemented by anyone. The GNU Radio project has a pure software implementation under development, to complement their existing ATSC decoder. People with existing TVs were required to buy an external DVB-T decoder box, but they could do this from a number of different suppliers. The situation with Microsoft's DRM is very different. There is only one suppler: Microsoft. I suspect that there would have been some serious complaints if the BBC had deployed a form of digital TV that only worked with Sony TVs.

One question that doesn't seem to have been asked much is "who actually wants to watch TV on their computer?" This seems like it's going to be a fairly small subset of the total number of computer users, and this should be taken into account when making this kind of decision.

Desktop users are unlikely to watch TV on their computers. The average desktop computer has a smaller (although higher-resolution) screen than the owner's TV. It often has worse sound, and generally makes too much noise to provide an enjoyable viewing experience. The exception to this is desktop computer owners who have broadband Internet connections but not TVs. I suspect that most of the people in this market are students. From wandering around campus, it seems that Apple has a much larger proportion of the market share than in the real world, and Linux does very well amongst science and engineering students.

Discounting the desktop, laptop users seem like a larger potential market. Laptop sales have now passed desktop sales, so most computer users will be laptop users quite soon (I've been desktop free for about four years, and never want to go back to using a computer that doesn't let me work outside in a deck chair).

In May, almost 15% of all laptops sold were Macs. Assuming that some fraction of those that weren't were going to run Linux, *BSD, Solaris, or something more esoteric, this means that only around 80% of laptops sold were going on to run Windows as their primary operating system. While 80% is a lot, it's still a long way from 100%.

While watching on a laptop is attractive for laptop owners, since they can do it in places where they usually don't cart their TV, laptop owners are still only a comparatively small part of the population. When we get away from traditional computers, things get even more interesting.

While not everybody owns a laptop, almost everybody owns a mobile phone. The latest generations have reasonably sized screens (for something that goes in your pocket) and enough resolution to watch reasonable quality video. I got my current phone a little over 18 months ago, free with a cheap contract, and it is capable of playing back MPEG-4 videos. With 1GB of storage, it's also capable of storing quite a few. Of course, it can't play back Microsoft DRM's content.

Why do I say "of course?" Because, in the mobile phone market place, Microsoft only has around 6% market share. When it comes to mobile phones, making a Microsoft-only product makes as much sense as making a Mac-only desktop product. It's worth doing sometimes, but not if you're aiming for the biggest market possible.

This could change a lot in the next year. Imagine going into a mobile phone shop and being told "this one can play back BBC TV, and this one can't." Which one would you choose? Unless you have a pathological hatred of Microsoft's SmartPhone OS (which would be quite understandable, since most mobile phone interfaces tend to engender this feeling), you'd probably go for the BBC-compatible one, and watch Microsoft's market share climb. Well, maybe you wouldn't, but if one in twenty people used that as their main purchasing criterion, Microsoft's market share would double. This doubling would come not from developing a better product, but rather from the fact the BBC had chosen to only support one platform.

Straying slightly from mobile phones, a lot of people seem to be wandering around with portable media players these days. Most of these are iPods. In the UK, currently, none of them are Zunes, since the Zune UK launch has been delayed until 2008. So, in the portable media player market, one of the prime candidates for watching downloaded TV shows, we see the following breakdown:

• Apple: 70-80%
• Others: 20-30%
• Microsoft: 0%

Are there more people who own iPods than own TVs that are better than their computer monitors? Are there more people who own a Symbian mobile phone than own a Windows laptop? I suspect the answer to both of these questions is a resounding "yes." While choosing a Windows-only solution might make sense if your only market is desktop operating systems, it starts to look slightly ridiculous when you look at people who might actually want to use the service.

The obvious solution for interoperability is to choose some form of MPEG-4 without any DRM. I could play an MPEG-4 video on my MacBook Pro, my FreeBSD machine, my Symbian phone, my Nokia 770, and the iPod I don't own. Looking back at the BBC charter, I find my eye drawn to this section:

"...helping to deliver to the public the benefit of emerging communications technologies..."

Does DRM deliver the benefit of emerging communications technologies? Internet-connected desktop PCs are certainly not emerging; they are old and boring technology that is on the decline. By locking content to a single supplier's products, they reduce innovation. Any product that is built to take advantage of the content made available by the BBC though the iPlayer must run Windows, or must contain technology licensed from Microsoft. Unlike the BBC, Microsoft are a for-profit corporation who have no requirement to license their technology for use in products that would threaten their business.

In an era when even EMI are selling their content without DRM, it seems somewhat anachronistic to be considering introducing a new product based on it.

© 2007 David Chisnall, InformIT.com. Original article

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