By Chris Williams for The Register. This story has
been reproduced with permission.
As part of a Public Accounts Committee session on BBC
procurement last Tuesday, the director-general was grilled by
Liberal Democrat John Pugh MP on the decision to release the
download version of the iPlayer for Windows and Internet Explorer
only. The move has prompted anger from Mac, Linux and Firefox
users.
Thompson claimed the Christmas day marketing launch of the
service had been a great success. "All the feedback we've had is
that consumers are enormously enjoying using iPlayer. About a
million people in this country have tried it already."
Pugh followed up the meeting with a letter to Thompson on
Wednesday. He wrote: "By guaranteeing full functionality to the
products of one software vendor [the BBC] is as a public body
handing a commercial advantage to that company - effectively
illegal state aid!
"What might be a pragmatic choice for a privately funded company
becomes deeply problematic for a public corporation."
Pugh is the MP for Southport and takes particular interest in IT
issues, especially around public sector procurement and
interoperability.
The Open Source Consortium, a lobby group for Linux, has vowed
to pursue its illegal state aid complaints in European Court if the
BBC does not release the iPlayer application for other operating
systems and browsers soon.
Thompson erred under Pugh's questioning over the current level
of interoperability offered by the iPlayer desktop application. He
was asked: "At what stange will you be able to download and stream
to a Mac or a Linux computer?"
"You can do that now," Thompson replied.
He later recanted the statement, conceding that only streams are
currently available on non-Windows computers. "We will get those
[downloads] as soon as possible," he said, noting the two-year
deadline set by the BBC Trust.
"I recognise and welcome the assurances that the BBC and you
personally have given on this subject but wonder whether the sheer
novelty of the new media has blinded many to the clear commercial
inequity in the delivery of it," Pugh replied in his letter. He
argued that the plan to release Mac and Linux versions within two
years is not "sufficient excuse for past sins or indeed much of an
explanation".
In previous public statements, the BBC has insisted that desktop
versions for Mac and Linux were not developed because it could not
provide the Digital Rights Management demanded by TV production
companies.
In a statement on Friday, the BBC said it will respond to Pugh's
letter in due course. "We would like to underline our commitment to
universal access to BBC iPlayer, as with all other BBC services,
which BBC director-general Mark Thompson reiterated to the Public
Accounts Committee on Tuesday," it added.
Video
of the session is available (relevant passage begins
at 12 minutes 15 seconds). The Register has also published the
full text of Pugh's letter.
© The Register
2008
