UK PM & the BBC iPlayer

Well, we have a Prime Ministerial response to the iPlayer petition:

iplayer - epetition response

Sadly the biggest issue, that of the use of a proprietary format for encoding the content for the iPlayer, was not addressed in the petition. I doubt the response would have been any different though.

In summary, the PM says "Not my problem. See the BBC trust.". Well, fair enough if the Trust were doing a good job, but in this case, they are not. A review of "supported" platforms in a few months time is a waste of time when the underlying content is encoded using a closed proprietary format and the use of this format is not going to be reviewed at all.

The BBC are handing Microsoft a big slab of lock-on on a silver platter. A higher authority than the BBC needs to point out that this is not in the public interest.