BBC goes P2P
p2pnet.net News:- Following recent news that the movie studio cartel is now after BitTorrent TV sites comes a BBC announcement that it plans to use p2p in a new interactive Media Player (iMP) TV trial.
Five thousand people with high-speed Net access drawn randomly from around the UK will be able to search for programs, filter them by channel, select subtitles and, in for some series, “collect and watch episodes that they may otherwise have missed,” it says.
Will non-British surfers be able to check out iMP? Definitely not, says the Beeb. “Geo-IP technology to restrict iMP to UK internet users only."
But as usual, there’s DRM.
“A technical trial took place in Summer 2004 with a limited number of participants and a small amount of rights-cleared programmes to test the concept of using peer-to-peer technology and digital rights management (DRM) to protect rights holders,” says the statement
And DRM will also be part of the new trial.
“The pilot will use digital rights management software to delete programmes seven days after the programme has aired on TV and users will no longer be able to watch it,” it says.
“DRM also prevents users emailing the files to other computer users or sharing it via disc.”
The pilot will run from September to December this year to assess the demand of particular types of programs and determine if iMP, “has an impact on the commercial market,” says the item, adding, “This will assist the BBC Governors in evaluating its public value.”
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See:-
BitTorrent TV sites – MPAA targets TV sites, p2pnet, May 13, 2005
BBC – BBC announces iMP content trial, May 16, 2005
May 17th, 2005 at 9:36 pm
Yay! I thought only the United States didn’t realize that the rest of the world existed. I guess that applies to the UK as well.
Discrimination. It’s what’s for dinner.
May 18th, 2005 at 12:58 am
well, uk citizens pay a license fee for the bbc channels. most countries do this – except for the usa. if there were some sort of tv licensing fee in the states – even if it was only for PBS – something like this could happen. not that DRM is a good thing, but at least people who’ve paid for it would be allowed to download it.
so the uk people have more right to be able to use this service because they’ve already paid for it.
i really don’t think that this type of system with DRM will work. probably the files will be in a useless format like wmv or whatever this iMP will be able to play. so people will be forced to watch it on a monitor.
another reason i don’t think that fee-based p2p or some other form of pay-per download p2p service (with/without DRM) can work is because there will eventually be less and less seeders in the network, and people who have paid for a specific download might not be able zo get it. if a system like BT were implimented in this way, eventually there will be a lot of dead torrents without seeds and many angry people who have paid but can’t get the files they want.
the channels that do this – especially withg a BT-based network – will have to keep hundreds of torrents continuously active at optimum upload speeds. even with a non-BT network they’ll have to keep hundreds of copies of the same files available online.
May 18th, 2005 at 12:59 am
Even if the limitations put on this uh, program are a drag I like to see big ligitimate organizations using P2P technology. It can only help in the fight to keep P2P from being made illegal by the “entertainment industry”. There’s some torrents for some of the stuff on archive.org too. Bring it on. We need more!
May 18th, 2005 at 9:16 am
Being in the UK, i’m pleased the bbc is starting this – I only hope they drop this DRM muck after they start getting complants from normal users. If nothing else they need to drop the 7 day limitation – If i’m holiday for a fortnight its going to be really annoying!
May 18th, 2005 at 9:58 am
I like the idea of BBC. Though my only concern is that its is locked to one country only (or 4 because UK is composed of 4 countries).
I agree that UK people should get the programs free without ads, and the Rest of the world, might get the programs with Ads, BBC would be earning money from the ads!
But lets Imagine for a second that all (big)countries upload online their shows, and only people from those countries are allowed to watch them, then The rest of the world, (people like me who don`t live on these countries), I will have always to revert to p2p for tv shows, Because I do not live in one of the big countries and I would have no way of getting them tru the “legal” distribution system.
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