BBC's Magic TV Detector Vans Kept Secret

from the state-secrets dept

As many of you probably know (especially if you live in the UK), you have to buy a license to have a TV (or even a TV tuner card for a computer). The license fees go to pay the BBC to operate. Apparently, the BBC has some secret "TV detector" vans that can sit outside your house and determine if you have an illegal TV (I only wish I were making this up). Someone filed a Freedom of Information request to find out how these supposed detector vans worked, but the request has been denied, and these magic detector vans shall remain a state secret. The BBC claimed that it could not reveal the details of the van "because if it did so it would damage the public's perception of the effectiveness of TV detector vans." I'm not sure, but I think that statement alone destroys the public's perception of the effectiveness of the TV detector vans. I'm guessing that the vans are totally empty but someone drives by your place at night and looks for the flickering glow.

Filed Under: detector van, tv license, uk
Companies: bbc

BBC And IBM Reinvent The Music Chart

from the and-it's-about-time-too dept

The idea of the "Top 40" music hit seems like a relic of a different age, and the Billboard best sellers list hasn't done much to really update with the times. However, reader Will North writes in to point us to a rather interesting experiment being done by the BBC and IBM to basically reinvent the concept of the music chart with a beta test of a new offering called Sound Index.

Rather than just checking on sales at certain shops which (as Will notes in his submission) can be easily gamed, Sound Index tries to look at a variety of online sources to find out what music people are really interested in:

"Crawls some of the biggest music sites on the Internet - Bebo, MySpace, Last.FM, iTunes, Google and YouTube - to find out what people are writing about, listening to, watching, downloading and logging on to. It then counts and analyses this data to make an instant list of the most popular 1000 artists and tracks on the web. The more blog mentions, comments, plays, downloads and profile views an artist or track has, the higher up the Sound Index they are."

In other words, they're reinventing the music charts, but making it much more accurate and relevant. But it doesn't stop there, either. Rather than assuming there's just one single chart to rule them all, the system lets you create custom lists for a better understanding of more niche-targeted music. So, say, if you wanted to know who's hot on YouTube and Last.fm in the indie and punk worlds among US listeners between the ages of 20 and 30, you can create just that list. Or, as per Will's suggestion, you could find out what female Emo fans between the age of 15 and 20 are talking about on Bebo -- and get that list.

It does seem a little limited right now, but it's definitely a step up from the lists you normally see these days, and shows that niche appeal can actually be worth something these days. That's a big deal, because the believers in old time copyright insist that with more file sharing and such, only "mass market" music will survive. Instead, the opposite seems to be happening, as it's easier than ever (often by leveraging such tools) for more targeted niche music to create a modest success by being tremendously successful within its own niche. Tools like Sound Index should make it easier to get even more recognition of success in those niches.

Filed Under: music charts, niches
Companies: bbc

BBC Upset That Fans Are Knitting Dr. Who Characters

from the send-in-the-daleks dept

While many people are familiar with copyright issues concerning things like music, movies and software online, there's another community that also has been quite active: the knitting community. For a few years now there's been an ongoing battle between hobbyist knitters who have uploaded patterns that others feel are infringing on their copyrights. Now it appears that issue is touching on the tech/sci-fi community as well. Boing Boing points us to the news that a fan of the famed BBC show Dr. Who had created some knitting patterns of his own that would enable anyone to knit various characters from the show. This isn't a case where he was uploading someone else's patterns -- but he had created his own. The BBC, however, flipped out and told him to remove all such knitting patterns as they infringed on the BBC's copyrights and trademarks. This seems like yet another case of overly aggressive enforcement of intellectual property rights because someone can, not because it's a good idea.

It's nearly impossible to see how a fan getting people to knit versions of Dr. Who characters somehow diminishes the rights of the BBC. All it's doing is enabling fans (who are also into knitting) to express their fandom. If anything, the BBC should be encouraging this kind of fan support, rather than trying to stifle it and shut it down. It's stunning that after all these years, people still don't realize that helping fans express their feelings towards something is a good thing, rather than infringement.

Filed Under: cease and desist, copyright, dr. who, knitting
Companies: bbc

BBC To ISPs: Don't Traffic Shape Me, Bro

from the name-and-shame dept

While there have been some complaints from ISPs about how much bandwidth the BBC's iPlayer offering takes up, the BBC is being rather aggressive in responding. mike allen writes in to let us know that the BBC has announced that it will publicly "name and shame" any ISP that tries to traffic shape in a way that harms its iPlayer offering. As the BBC's Ashley Highfield says: "Unlimited broadband should mean unlimited." He then goes on to suggest that other websites also agree to name and shame traffic shaping ISPs: "Content providers, if they find their content being specifically squeezed, shaped, or capped, could start to indicate on their sites which ISPs their content worked best on (and which to avoid)." Sounds reasonable enough. Of course, you might say that if all ISPs agree to traffic shape, then naming and shaming them won't do much good. But, if there's a truly competitive market, that would simply open up the opportunity for one ISP to publicly claim that it wasn't traffic shaping, and then happily watch customers come running.

Filed Under: iplayer, traffic shaping, uk
Companies: bbc

BBC Takes Six Months To Not Really Criticize Its WiFi Scaremongering Report

from the that's-the-best-you-can-do? dept

You may recall that back in May the BBC's "Panorama" TV show was accused of running a scaremongering TV program about the supposed "dangers" of WiFi on children. There were numerous problems with the program, from bad science to bad reporting. You would think that the BBC might take those sorts of accusations seriously. Apparently, it was enough for the BBC's Editorial Complaints Unit to take a look at the issue. It took the ECU six months, but its report is out and it admits that Panorama made some mistakes, but really only cops to one particular mistake: that it presented the one dissenter on the program in a very biased light. It doesn't seem to say anything about the fact that a major source for the program happens to sell equipment designed to test how much "radiation" there is as well as products of questionable scientific value to "protect" you from such radiation (radiation protecting beekeeper hat anyone?). The whole thing was such a joke that even the kids in the school where some of the program was filmed pointed out how unscientific the experiment was. Unfortunately, the BBC doesn't seem to address any of that in its review of the program at all. Perhaps we'll need to wait another six months.

Filed Under: bad science, dangers, scaremongering, wifi
Companies: bbc