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Re: [News] Corruption Blamed for Erosion and Loss of Freedom, Culture

Verily I say unto thee, that Tappit Hen spake thusly:

> As you quoted the article I thought you would have read it. How does 
> £5.7 million become £131 million? The £131 million covers bandwidth 
> costs for providing the service, data storage, rights costs, ... over
>  a 5 year period (26.2 million / year). These costs would apply no 
> matter what client the BBC chose.

iPlayer is not just software, it is a service, therefore saying that
"iPlayer cost 131 Million" *is* correct according to their own figures.
To claim otherwise is just nit-picking. As to your assumption that it
would have cost the same regardless of which route the BBC chose, well
you are assuming that the BBC's figures are accurate and truthful, which
IMHO they are not. The BBC has already lied to parliament over iPlayer's
capabilities and costs, what makes you think that any other claims they
make are any more truthful?

For one thing, where is the /specific/ breakdown of precisely how much
the BBC has paid Microsoft?

I have never seriously claimed, nor do I pretend to know, what
proportion of that 131 Million was actually paid to Microsoft. That
specific detail is irrelevant, although it would be very interesting to
know for a fact, should the BBC ever decide to comply with their charter
of full accountability.

> I'm as opposed to the MSBBC iplayer as both you and Mark are but
> lying isn't the way to win your argument.

I'm not lying, and there is no argument. The BBC wasted 131 Million
pounds of taxpayers money (license fee) on a solution that depended on
Microsoft's encumbered technology, and further shackled users of that
service to Microsoft's products. Fact.

It wasn't until protests spurred a public enquiry that the BBC finally
capitulated and provided a Flash based streaming service ... a service
that is now more popular than Microsoft's non-interoperable solution by
a factor of 8:1. Fact.

It is also interesting to note, that these streams are not encrypted
(and can be ripped), which raises the question of the BBC's claim, that
their "content providers" insistence that all content must be
"protected" with DRM was intractable. Obviously *that* was a lie too.

The Microsoft/BBC iPlayer has been in development for *years*,
presumably accounting for a significant proportion of that 131 Million,
and yet the streaming service (which is more popular) only took a few
weeks to implement, again ... presumably at a much lower cost.

The BBC have wasted taxpayers money, they've lied repeatedly, they've
become completely overrun by ex-Microsoft personnel, and they have
forged extremely unhealthy relationship with Microsoft that is
anti-competitive, non-transparent, and in violation of their own
charter, since they are no longer acting in the best interests of
license fee payers, but rather in the interests of their new found
"business partner".

Why you would be less concerned with that corruption, and more concerned
with the specifics of how much the MSBBC has conned out of the British
taxpayers, I have no idea.

Yes, there are plenty of lies being expounded in this fiasco, but
they're not coming from /me/.

-- 
K.
http://slated.org

.----
| "[Microsoft] are willing to lose money for years and years just to
|  make sure that you don't make any money, either." - Bob Cringely.
|  - http://blog.businessofsoftware.org/2007/07/cringely-the-un.html
`----

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