I won’t be joining the celebrations around the launch of the BBC’s iPlayer on Mac and Linux.
The encroachment into the network of broadcasting corporations such as the BBC should be vigorously resisted both as a tremendous waste of bandwidth by a company that already enjoys a monopoly on huge swathes of the spectrum and as a step towards the licensing of internet access.
UK readers sensible enough not to own a television will have first hand experience of the Gestapo-like tactics of the BBC licensing authorities whose regular, nasty, intimidatory letters misleadingly and illegally threaten prosecution to anyone found using equipment capable of receiving a television signal including “computers connected to the internet.” The more organisations like the BBC pollute the web with their output, the stronger the calls to extend the license to cover access to the internet.
Already the iPlayer is being tested as a justification for bringing a tiered internet into place.
Combine that with a quixotic and sinister plan to introduce cinema style ratings to websites being considered and we have all the makings of Chinese-style censorship.
Paranoid? Perhaps. But I do live under a government planning on tracking everyone’s calls, emails, texts and internet use.
And so it begins: £20 broadband charge to fight online music and film piracy