The UK Open Source Consortium has complained to British regulators about the BBC's decision to use Microsoft DRM for its online TV offerings. No one is allowed to make Microsoft DRM players without permission from Microsoft, and the company tightly controls which features you're allowed to put into a DRM player, and absolutely prohibits the creation of open/free players for Microsoft DRM-crippled media.
The BBC chose the DRM instead of making good on its promise to deliver an open "Creative Archive" of freely licensed content that Brits could share and remix. Brits are required by law to pay for the programming that the BBC commissions, and most of that work ends up gathering dust on a shelf somewhere, never to be seen again. The BBC's "Worldwide" division markets a tiny sliver of it abroad (the proceeds from this account for less than five percent of the BBC's budget, with the other 95 percent being involuntarily extracted from the British public), and there was fear that producing a true Creative Archive would limit the BBC's ability to serve as a glorified Blockbuster Video for Americans.
(Thanks, Joel!)
