Yesterday, BBC Director General Mark Thompson and other BBC representatives appeared in front of the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee. During the meeting, Dr John Pugh MP tackled him about the iPlayer. You can watch the full Public Accounts Committee meeting here (the talk of iPlayer starts about 10 minutes in).
During the meeting [...]

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The resounding message of the Olswang’s and Greenberg Traurig’s Friday Open Source Summit (PDF) was that software patents are bad for business. Bruce Perens’s message against software patents and that the European Patent Litigation Agreement (EPLA) should not become a reality was echoed throughout the day by numerous speakers to be restated once again during [...]

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My interview with Sean Daly at Groklaw went online this morning:
Q: Now, let’s talk about DRM for a moment. It seems that the current situation the BBC finds itself in with the iPlayer is largely due to the choice to use DRM. My understanding is that without DRM, the rights holders of third-party producers of [...]

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It’s taken a while to pick apart Neelie Kross’s announcement that Microsoft have accepted the conditions of the European Commission’s 2004 ruling on abuse of market position. The European Commissioner for Competition Policy stated at a press conference on Monday that:
“Put together, these changes in Microsoft’s business practices, in particular towards open source software [...]

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On Tuesday, John Pugh MP led an adjournment debate on IT software procurement, where he accused the UK government of excluding Linux and Mac Users from government services such as the Department of Work and Pensions online benefits system.
“The Government are spending public money, and in doing so, it is difficult to see how they [...]

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John Pugh MP will today lead a Westminster Hall debate on government software procurement. The Liberal Democrat MP for Southport (and veteran speaker at ORG’s e-voting events) is a well known advocate of free and open source software. Yesterday, he released the results of a survey he had conducted which showed that many local authorities [...]

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This morning, the European Court of First Instance announced that it would uphold the European Commission’s decision that Microsoft has abused its dominant market position.
The Court ruled that Microsoft did this by refusing to supply and authorise the use of interoperability information and by tying together the Windows client PC operating system and Windows [...]

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…And it’s pretty lacklustre. Over 16,000 people signed the petition, demanding that the BBC stop excluding license fee payers who don’t have computers running Microsoft software from its new on demand TV service. But Number Ten are apparently satisfied with the BBC Trust’s commitment that the iPlayer would be cross-platform “as soon as possible”, and [...]

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DRM protesters Defective by Design braved the drizzle today to make their feelings known about the BBC iPlayer. I went down to join in, and found Hazmat-suit clad protesters calling for the BBC to reconsider its decision to use Microsoft DRM on the new online catch-up service, released in beta at the end of last [...]

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The House of Lords Science and Technology Committee have published their fifth report today, which makes a variety of recommendations to legislators, the police, businesses and citizens to improve personal security on the internet. The full report is now available to download.
Much of this morning’s media coverage is focussing on recommendations to create a dedicated [...]

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