12.19.07

As the Days Go By, Less Hope is Left for Neutrality in Media

Posted in Microsoft, DRM, Windows, Deception, Bill Gates at 3:49 am by Roy Schestowitz

As we recently pointed out, Microsoft controls media outlets and sometimes even search engines. Bill Gates continues to own some of the press and several media companies, so there is gross bias therein. Microsoft’s role as an advertiser has an effect as well, but none of this is news. At the end of the day, public understanding of the Novell deal and OOXML, for instance, will be a case of media projection.

The sad news from yesterday relates to a video that we showed just the day beforehand. The Federal Communications Commission refuses to police control of the media, thus relinquishing control and letting corporations run it for their own benefit.

By the narrowest of margins, the Federal Communications Commission adopted proposals by its chairman to tighten the reins on the cable television industry while loosening 32-year-old restrictions that have prevented a company from owning both a newspaper and a television or radio station in the same city.

Only last week, Bill Gates wrote an article that was published very generously by the tax payer-funded BBC. The article spoke about a new Microsoft-commissioned study (Microsoft’s Bill Gates invests in analysts too). It was arguably self-praising and The Register was very sarcastic about this:

BBC pinches hot new columnist from Microsoft

[…]

In response to the BBC’s move into business leader PR expert opinion, El Reg has decided to up the ante with a special video webinar on the secrets of success from the important leather-bound office of one of America’s A-grade entrepreneurs…

Let’s take a quick step back and consider the BBC’s iPlayer, which we mention quite regularly [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]. iPlayer is a product built by Microsoft using Microsoft’s own proprietary stack. It seems like a response to open delivery methods of video content. DirectX, for example, was done as a response to OpenGL because OpenGL facilitates competition (cross-platform)

Microsoft doesn’t like competition, so it made ActiveX, DirectX, OOXML, and lots of other anti-standards weapons. iPlayer is just one of these weapons. It’s also one of the latest. There’s a new Microsoft DRM issue at the BBC and it isn’t resolved yet. As Glyn Moody puts it:

This does matter, because if the catch-up service remains Windows only, it turns the BBC into a vector of Microsoft’s DRM and products - hardly what the public broadcaster should be doing.

Moreover, fine words butter no parsnips: can we trust the BBC Trust to follow through on this? If they don’t, at least we can be sure that the OSC will be there with a sharp stick goading them to do so.

”They are, in essence, agents for monopoly.“This is a nice small step, but the corruption cannot be forgotten (see links at the bottom). The download service is still Windows-only because of Erik Huggers and Ashley Highfield (among a few others who have connections with Microsoft). Until they port this software to other platforms (which they said they would), they treat all platforms except for one like second-class citizens. They are, in essence, agents for monopoly.

Mind you, only public backlash made a difference here. They would not have bother to make any changes otherwise. What’s more, a proprietary stack was never needed, but the BBC is now virtually a Microsoft partner. As we showed above, using an example from last week alone, Bill Gates started writing self-praising columns for the BBC, which is funded by tax payers. The bias remains.

Related articles:

Lobby Group: Microsoft Too Close to BBC [Expired]

A software lobby group is campaigning to highlight the role of software giant Microsoft Corp. in the British Broadcasting Corp.’s digital media strategy by petitioning Great Britain Prime Minister Gordon Brown to address the issue.