BBC seeks TV encryption through the back door

A BBC / Ofcom consultation is seeking  to rush through permission for the BBC to encrypt the ‘electronic program guide’ and thereby impose new restrictions on HD TV devices in the future.

ORG has registered a protest at this blatant attempt to impose encryption of TV through the back door, despite years of assurances that public TV in the UK is committed to free-to-air broadcasting.

By encrypting the signal, the BBC will be able to impose restrictions on devices and drivers that receive and decode signal, as they will need to accede to the license conditions to use the programme guide – an essential if you’re going to make proper use of your equipment.

Furthermore, by attempting to rush through the consultation in a mere two weeks, with no notice to key stakeholders like Open Source developers and consumer groups, the consultation itself needs in our view to be scrapped and restarted.

We have written to Ofcom and the BBC to state:

1. It is a violation of the implicit promise the BBC made to the public during the DTV transition, that an investment in Freeview receivers were future-proofed — this is especially grave if the public is to be asked to participate in an HD transition on the heels of this betrayal;

2. It will generate a mountain of ewaste, by rendering otherwise useful and functional equipment useless because it fails to adhere to the license requirements of a copy-restriction cartel made up of foreign media- and technology-firms. This means that households will not only have to buy new equipment to get HD signals on the primary receiver, they’ll also have to discard all secondary receivers (such as those in bedrooms or garages);

3. It will set up a trade barrier between the UK and the rest of the EU, because portable HD sets and HD cards for laptops purchased abroad will not work in the UK market.

In making the request the BBC has failed as follows

 

• Market distorting effects by excluding free software and using the BBC to grant to arbitarily control over who may produce boxes that decode public HD service s to a foreign cartel of rightsholders and manufacturers
• Harming innovation in the free to air market
• No public value test – the removal of innovation versus sharper images on a few live programs which will be available on pay TV in that form anyway
• Staging the consultation using misleading terminology and implications

 

We thus request that the BBC trust enforces the duties of the BBC in this matter and

 

• Suspends or invalidates the “consultation”
• Requires the BBC consults openly with the public at large on this matter
• Publishes proper competitive impact and public value assessments before being permitted to scramble, encrypt or otherwise “compress” content to “protect” it.