http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinternet/2009/10/freeview_hd_copy_protection_a.html

Nick Reynolds (Social Media Executive, BBC Online)

The encryption and digital rights management that the BBC proposes to place into consumer set top boxes is DRM by proxy for Third Parties. That is, the licence fee is being used to subsidise Third Parties’ Intellectual Property Rights. That is, surely, not something that the BBC is allowed to do.

Third Parties do have Intellectual Property Rights but obliging the BBC to police those Rights is an outrageous misuse of both Licence Fee Payers money and a commercialised taxation onto every single set-top box. In effect the Licence payer is double charged.

The BBC should be encouraged to rebuff such third parties. If HD content is too valuable for Third Parties to allow onto the Internet without policing then they should attend to it without involving the BBC.

I watch HD content using a Linux PC using Open Source software on my TV. These proposals will, I believe, remove my ability to watch content I have paid for.

I don’t want to be forced to buy a consumer set-top box with a hidden DRM ‘tax’ .