There was some good news from the BBC’s Backstage Blog today regarding the potential progress towards a future cross-platform compatible iPlayer solution (See these posts for a bit of background on the issues associated with the current BBC iPlayer "Dear BBC…" and "Flash: Can it be a viable alternative to Windows Media DRM for the BBC").
The BBC have announced that they have employed Anthony Rose, formerly of Kazaa and Sega, to be the new head of Digital Media at the BBC. With more than a hint of humour the Backstage post states:
In a move which promises to shock those who believe the BBC is in the pocket of Microsoft. It was announced Anthony Rose formally from Kazaa and Sega will be the new head of Digital Media at the BBC.
So, this looks like good news in regards to the BBC’s progression to a non-microsoft centered solution for delivering the DRM’ed iPlayer content. In case you don’t know much about Anthony Rose’s (I’d never really heard of him before) or Kazaa then it’s worth checking out Wikipedia’s entry for Kazaa. Hopefully some good things can come out of this, I’ll try not to let the fact that Kazaa themselves don’t offer a Mac or Linux version of their own client bother me!
~Rick