A Man and his Penguin

Here is the text of my reply from the Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy. It looks like they’ve done some homework and asked the ABC for a Please Explain.

Dear Mr Lees,

Thank you for your email dated 8 August 2008 to the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy concerning the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) Shops Downloads Service. The Minister has asked the Department to review your correspondence and reply on his behalf.

The Government provides an overall level of funding for the ABC but has no power to direct the ABC in relation to operational matters. Parliament has guaranteed this independence to ensure that what is broadcast is free of political interference.

The ABC has advised me that ABC Shop Online uses Digital Rights Management (DRM) to secure distribution rights to the materials it has made available. Producers and rights holders cite the known scale of unlawful distribution of content on the Internet when insisting on protection for their content before agreeing to release it online. Without these distribution agreements the ABC would not be able to make any content available to the Australian public via download.

With regard to those users who do not wish to have DRM on their computers, the ABC regrets it is unable to supply content via download that can be copied to multiple computers and devices as this would violate its agreements with the producers of the programs it is making available for download.

The ABC advises there are currently no World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) or Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) standards for secure online media distribution. Given this situation, the ABC decided to adopt the technology currently best suited to do this. Microsoft’s Silverlight technology (based on the W3C standard AJAX) allows for the cross-platform playback of video content (currently available for all major browsers on Apple Macintosh and other personal computers). With the release of Silverlight Version 2, there will be DRM playback on any system that has the player installed. The ABC further advises a version of Silverlight for Linux (called Moonlight) is being developed under Novell’s leadership in cooperation with the free software community and Microsoft, and this will ensure that the ABC Shop Downloads service will be available on all platforms.

Support for Mac operating systems has always been an integral part of ABC Shop Downloads and was a crucial factor in choosing the Silverlight technology. Version 2 is expected before the end of 2008. In the meantime, the ABC chose not to deprive Windows users who represent 80% of its total website audience of the service. When Mac users have access to the service in this way, more than 98% of computer users in Australia will be able to access the service.

The ABC Shop Downloads service is not a taxpayer funded service and has been set up to return funds to the ABC to invest in the creation of new Australian content. The ABC is continuing to look for news (sic) ways to deliver content to the Australian public which will support production of further Australian content in a sustainable way.

I note you have contacted the ABC directly about your concerns. If you have not already done so you should also provide the name of any particular program you have been unsuccessful in downloading and any error messages you have experienced so that the ABC’s technical staff can troubleshoot the problem, or find an alternative product as a replacement.

Thank you for bringing this matter to the Minister’s attention. I hope this information will be of use.

Yours sincerely,

Ann Campton

Acting Assistant Secretary
Broadcasting Industries Branch.

Okay. Thank you for your letter, and I appreciate the time you have taken to research things and get information from the ABC.

There are still things that remain unaddressed:

As I mentioned in my original letter, the software that the ABC uses to enforce its DRM is known to leech of the user’s internet connection to distribute the content to other people, without the user’s knowledge. Software that uses your computer for other people’s benefit without your consent is regarded as “Malware”. Viruses, trojans, spyware and keyloggers are all examples of malware.

The ABC requires that you install malware onto your computer in order to use their shop service. They might not be using taxpayer’s money to do so, but it is a surprising and disturbing thing for the ABC to be doing.

Moonlight is indeed an open-source project, and it does work of a fashion, but it is NOT compatible with the ABC Shop downloads. It lacks the DRM decryption software, and the makers of the DRM software will not license a decryptor for Moonlight. This is especially moot when you consider that Moonlight can’t even legally contain the video codec necessary for unencrypted playback, due to software patents.

And even the video codecs issue is moot at the moment. The ABC Shop Downloads site crashes Firefox 3 before you are able to even look at previews.

Therefore, Moonlight is not, and will never be, a solution for using the ABC Shop Downloads on Linux.

On the other hand, Flash Player is available RIGHT NOW for Windows, Macintosh, Linux, and embedded platforms. It includes the codecs necessary for video playback. In addition, there are multiple Free Software implementations that are known to play web videos.

I would like to contact producers and copyright holders for these hosted TV shows and ask them whether they have heard of DRM before. I’d also like to ask them whether they know that TV shows can be recorded off the TV and distributed, sometimes in better quality than what the ABC Shop allows. The ABC HD stream is unencrypted and is available in 1080i HD with less compression than Internet clips.

In my original e-mail, I raised the point that people who download the clips must watch them in front of their computers, and that they cannot be burnt to DVD, moved to portable media players, or streamed to media centre PCs.  I also mentioned vendor lock-out, where the ABC’s customers could be denied access to the content they have rented if the ABC has a disagreement with the DRM producer.

Privacy is also an issue - the same software that is leeching off users’ internet connections is not open for study and may be compromising users’ privacy. The ABC claims to be committed to maintaining its viewers’ privacy.

The Silverlight platform is based on .Net C#, not on AJAX. C# is not a W3C standard (I don’t expect or want anybody to use W3C standards, but I didn’t make the claim).

None of what Ms Campton has said changes anything. Users are still being asked to install malware. Their privacy could be compromised. Macintosh users still don’t have Silverlight 2. Linux users still don’t have any Silverlight implementation capable of watching rented videos, and are not ever likely to even with Microsoft’s help. Linux is still growing at a huge rate. Windows users can watch videos downloaded through the service, but cannot transfer the content to portable media players or DVDs. They also cannot watch the downloaded videos if the DRM vendor goes out of business or decides to end the contract with the ABC.

The ABC has not replied to my letter. As they are directly responsible for their shop, they should have replied rather than leave it to the Minister’s office.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 25th, 2008 at 3:20 am and is filed under Defective By Design, Proprietry software, Web/Tech. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.