Security threats Toolkit

Story: Fixed BBC iPlayer hacked again

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'Hacking' SPIN covers BBC's untenable position

The succession of hacked/patched/hacked/patched/hacked stories, whilst very exciting, have two fundamental flaws:

1) The BBC's so-called 'copy protection' for the iPhone is merely 'security through obscurity'. It's all based around 'identifying' an iPhone from characteristics of its web-browser. Describing cirmcumventing these trivial and shallow techniques as 'hacking' is a very long stretch of the imagination. All very good for distracting readers from the real story - people won't ask questions about what this *really* means if the are spun an exciting story about system 'hackers' in some escalating war with the BBC.

2) THERE IS NO DRM INVOLVED IN THE iPhone's SO-CALLED 'COPY PROTECTION'. The BBC's 'Future Media' department have consistently claimed that they cannot do a cross-platform iPlayer because of the DRM requirement, and have consistently claimed that the DRM requirement means Microsoft DRM.

The BBC, by their own actions, have invalidated their single biggest argument for not creating a cross-platform iPlayer.

Naturally, they are not exactly trumpeting the fact they are quite happy to drop the DRM for a 'favoured' platform (oh, and btw, what are the relative numbers of iPhone users to Linux users?).

The press attention on the 'hacker' wars is perfectly welcome - it keeps the questions away from the *real* story here...

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