Legal Research

Ofcom and HD DRM: Hook, Line and Sinker

By scott

Congratulations must go out today to the big TV programme and film producers who actually managed with the help of our terrestrial broadcasters in convincing Ofcom that unless they agreed to a BBC proposal to amend to its digital multiplex licence (Multiplex B), to allow the BBC to restrict the availability of programme listing information for HDTV services only to digital receivers (digi-boxes) that implement content management technology, that they would stop some or all of their content being broadcast in HD over the platform.

[For more deatils of the argument, I first wrote about this here ]

For digi-box/receiver manufactures what this means it that they will now all have to sign licensing deals with the BBC to gain access to Huffman Code look-up tables, for their boxes to be able to ?see? the HD content. These rules will also apply to the other digital multiplex licences (C and D)

One of Ofcom’s central duties is to further the needs of citizens/consumers. In this instance Ofcom claim this “will deliver net benefits to citizens and consumers by ensuring they have access to the widest possible range of HD television content on DTT.” Why? Well because they bought the idea that the producers of content would really pull programming from HD channels without this. Had Ofcom bothered to look across the pond to the US and looked at what happened when the US tackled this same issue ? Broadcast Flag ? they would have seen that there was NO way that the content producers would have gone though with their threat.

In the US they lost the argument and nothing changed. Had Ofcom had the balls to do what it is supposed to do and actually put the interests of the consumer first, NOTHING would have changed. Ofcom disagrees:

“Whilst some stakeholder responses asserted that, even if Ofcom were to refuse the BBC?s proposal, rights holders would continue to supply HD content on the same terms as they would if the proposal were approved, the information provided by broadcasters does not support this view.”

Ofcom says it saw evidence from the broadcaster that rights holders in contract negotiations had been holding back content: ” we consider that the evidence put forward by broadcasters does provide material and credible evidence that the lack of an effective content management framework on the HD DTT platform is currently resulting in a reduction of the range of HD content available and is a material factor for ongoing and future content rights negotiations.”

Call me a cynic , but if I knew that a regulator was weighing up whether to introduce some form of DRM, wouldn’t you instruct your negotiating teams to threaten the holding back of content unless it went through ? KNOWING that the broadcasters would have to give this EVIDENCE to Ofcom? This is basic ‘head slap’ logic.

The result: “We have therefore concluded that it is likely that content would be withheld from the HD DTT platform in the absence of the introduction of content management.”
Hook, Line and Sinker. Well done Ofcom, and well done the (mostly US) TV and Film Industry.

Ofcom’s Statement

Full post as published by Information Overload on June 14, 2010 (boomark / email).