Hacking the iPlayer, and innovation in media forms

That the BBC iPlayer has been 'hacked', as the Guardian reports, is unremarkable (BBC 'opens floodgates' to iPlayer hackers, March 13), and BBC News Online reports the hack is being fixed (BBC releases fix for iPlayer hack, 13 March 2008).

All human systems are subject to mastery by other humans. But most people won't have the wherewithal, or time and energy, to take advantage of such a hack. A few will. Part of the design of a digital rights management (DRM) system, and most other control systems, is to make circumventing it sufficiently difficult that a sufficient number are discouraged, such that the business model remains viable. But circumvention is taken for granted.

The flip side of difficult is easy, and Apple and others have demonstrated that when you properly design an entire service experience – for instance music finding, acquisition, listening, management and sharing – around the people who will use it, and reflect accepted patterns of sharing, people will gravitate towards it.

However, the little acknowledged challenge is the creation of new media forms that are of the medium, rather continually peddling old forms that are simply acquired over it. Just as Web-based software cannot be pirated, these new forms will lay the basis for viable future businesses. Neither the music and broadcast industries, nor the 'media should be free' crowd, has seriously addressed this exciting challenge.

Published as a letter in the Guardian, March 14 2008 under the heading Rights and wrongs of the BBC iPlayer

Comments

[Colin Donald]

"The little acknowledged challenge is the creation of new media forms that are of the medium, rather continually peddling old forms that are simply acquired over it."

That exactly describes the dichotomy in online TV production.

British producers - funded by the BBC or C4 - create shows such as Signs of Life that have interactive elements like games built-in via Flash (bbc.co.uk/signsoflife). You can't pull it off to pirate it, because it needs a database and breaks.

US producers make shows that are more like traditional sit-coms, though online, but are more creative about finding new sources of funding.

[Nico Macdonald]

Colin: Interesting observations here, and a good example to expand on my point. I am also interested in examples of the core 'product' being of the medium, rather than having an adjunct element that is of the medium. At a recent London Word Festival event, The Creative Word: Book Futures: Reading, Writing and Publishing in the Digital Age at the Bishopsgate Institute, Chris Meade of the Institute for the Future of the Book made a profound observation: "What we are really waiting for is the Beethoven or the Beatles that have us rushing to our laptops to see what they have done" [quote may not be verbatim]. We have to some extent achieved this in games, but not in media.