Paul McGuigan, Grant Morrison, Stephen Fry In New BBC Thriller

Submitted by Rich Johnston on February 23, 2010

      

 

Paul McGuigan, director of Gangster No 1, Lucky Number Slevin and the upcoming Sherlock Holmes TV series by Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss, has confirmed for LiveForFilms that he will be indeed working on a new TV series for BBC Scotland, written by Grant Morrison and starring polymath Stephen Fry. Bleeding Cool reported on this possibility previously, and McGuigan says that currently Morrison has written a treatment. McGuigan describes the series;

It's seven episodes. It takes place over seven days around an event that happens in Scotland. It's a modern take on an old fable or fairy story. If you know Grants work you might have an idea of what it will be like. It's like Twin Peaks meets Brigadoon! It's off the wall and smart but in a watchable commercial way. It's still in the early stages but I'm very excited about it.

The BBC wants to have control over the kinds of devices that can display and record its shows. Photograph: Gareth Fuller/PA

Last summer, the BBC tried to sneak "digital rights management" into its high-def digital broadcasts.

Now, generally speaking, the BBC isn't allowed to encrypt or restrict its broadcasts: the licence fee payer pays for these broadcasts, and no licence fee payer woke up today wishing that the BBC had added restrictions to its programming.

But the BBC tried to get around this, asking Ofcom for permission to encrypt the "metadata" on its broadcasts – including the assistive information used by deaf and blind people and the "tables" used by receivers to play back the video. The BBC couched this as a minor technical change, and Ofcom held a very short, very quiet consultation, but was overwhelmed by a flood of negative submissions from the public and from technologists who understood the implications of this move.

Fundamentally, the BBC is trying to leverage its broadcast licence into control over the devices that can receive broadcasts. That is, in addition to deciding what shows to put on the air, the Beeb wants the power to decide what kinds of tellies and set-top boxes will be able to display and record those shows – and it wants the power to control the design of all the devices that might be plugged into a TV or set-top box. This is an unprecedented amount of power for a broadcaster to have.

As Ofcom gears up to a second consultation the issue, there's one important question that the BBC must answer if the implications of this move are to be fully explored, namely: How can free/open source software co-exist with a plan to put DRM on broadcasts?

A brief backgrounder on how this system is meant to work: the BBC will encrypt a small, critical piece of the signal. To get a key to decrypt the scrambled data, you will need to sign onto an agreement governed by a consortium called the Digital Transmission Licensing Administrator (some of the agreement is public, but other parts are themselves under seal of confidentiality, which means that the public literally isn't allowed to know all the terms under which BBC signals will be licensed).

DTLA licenses a wide variety of devices to move, display, record, and make limited copies of video. Which programmes can be recorded, how many copies, how long recordings can last and other restrictions are set within the system. To receive a licence, manufacturers must promise to honour these restrictions. Manufacturers also must promise to design their devices so that they will not pass video onto unapproved or unlicenced devices – only DTLA-approved boxes can touch or manipulate or play the video.

DTLA enforces these rules through a system of penalties for non-compliant vendors. It also has the power to "revoke" devices after they are sold to you, so that the BBC's signals will refuse to play on your set-top box if the DTLA determines that its security is inadequate and they pass it a revocation message (even though you always used your box in accordance with the law).

With DTLA devices, the integrity and usefulness of your home theatre is subject to the ongoing approval of the consortium, and they can switch it off if they decide, at any time in the future, that they don't trust it any more.

The entire DTLA system relies on the keys necessary to authenticate devices and unscramble video being kept secret, and on the rules governing the use of keys being inviolable. To that end, the DTLA "Compliance and Robustness Agreement" (presented as "Annex C" to the DTLA agreement) has a number of requirements aimed at ensuring that every DTLA-approved device is armoured against user modification. Keys must be hidden. Steps must be taken to ensure that the code running on the device isn't modified. Failure to take adequate protection against user modification will result in DTLA approval being withheld or revoked.

This is where the conflict with free/open source software arises.

Free/open source software, such as the GNU/Linux operating system that runs many set-top boxes, is created cooperatively among many programmers (thousands, in some cases). Unlike proprietary software, such as the Windows operating system or the iPhone's operating system, free software authors publish their code and allow any other programmer to examine it, make improvements to it, and publish those improvements. This has proven to be a powerful means of quickly building profitable new businesses and devices, from the TomTomGo GPSes to Google's Android phones to the Humax Freeview box you can buy tonight at Argos for around £130.

Because it can be adapted by anyone, free software is an incredible source of innovative new ideas. Because it can be used without charge, it has allowed unparalleled competition, dramatically lowering the cost of entering electronics markets. In short, free software is good for business, it's good for the public, it's good for progress, and it's good for competition.

But free software is bad for DTLA compliance.

Free software is intended to be examined and modified by all comers.

Generally, the licence terms for free software require that it is licensed for public examination and adaptation. It is literally impossible for a device to be both "open" and for it to prevent its users from retrieving keys hidden in its guts, or from changing the code that runs on it. This, of course, is totally incompatible with the DTLA requirement to hide keys and prevent modification of code.

And so, when the BBC threatens to infect its high-def broadcasts with DTLA, it also threatens to remove free/open software from consideration for any device that can play, record, or manipulate the video that the licence fee pays for. It means that you can't use a GNU/Linux phone to watch a show, or an open video player like VLC on your laptop. It means that your kids can't use free/open video-editing software to cut some of last night's news into a presentation for class.

It means that British entrants into the DTV device market can't avail themselves of the free software that their competitors all over the world are using, and will have to spend fortunes reinventing the wheel, creating operating systems and programs that do the same things as their free counterparts, but in such a way as to enforce restrictions against the device's owner.

Ofcom is meant to guard the public interest in matters such as these. If the public interest is to be upheld here, the BBC must explain how it intends to do the impossible: add DRM without banning free/open source development.

Gino D'Acampo, pictured with Samantha Fox, faces charges of animal cruelty. Photograph: ITV/Rex Features

Gino D'Acampo, the winner of I'm a Celebrity ... Get Me Out of Here!, and his fellow contestant Stuart Manning face criminal charges for animal cruelty after cooking and eating a rat on the ITV programme, it emerged today.

The pair were part of a group in "exile" during part of the series, which meant they had meagre rations of rice and beans.

A lack of meat apparently prompted the contestants to catch, kill and eat a rat.

D'Acampo, a 33-year-old chef, said in the show's video diary, the Bush Telegraph: "I saw one of these rats running around. I got a knife, I got its throat, I picked it up."

The group, including 30-year-old actor Manning, ate the rat.

Chief Inspector David Oshannessy, of the New South Wales RSPCA, said it was not acceptable that an animal had been killed as part of a performance.

"The allegation is that an animal was cruelly treated on the set," he added. "It was a rat that was killed.

"There is a code of conduct in New South Wales that dictates how animals can be used. The killing of a rat for a performance is not acceptable."

The charity sends staff whenever animals are used for filmed or live performances, he said, and had been in contact with the programme's producers before the rat was killed.

When they were told what had happened, they decided to take action.

"Police from Murwillumbah ... issued field court attendance notices to two men aged 30 and 33 for the offence of animal cruelty," a spokesman for New South Wales police said.

"They are due to attend court at Murwillumbah local court on 3 February 2009."

ITV was unavailable for comment.

UK section to host full-length episodes of Peep Show, Hollyoaks and other shows from providers including Channel 4 and ITN

• Katie Allen
• guardian.co.uk, Thursday 19 November 2009 12.19 GMT
• Article history

Peep Show: one of the Channel 4 series being hosted on YouTube. Photograph: Linda Nylind

YouTube has launched a new shows section for UK users as it taps into rising online demand for full-length television programmes.

The new section provides the first shows from a landmark deal with Channel 4 announced last month and will include full-length episodes of Peep Show, Hollyoaks, Gordon Ramsay's F Word and Jamie at Home. Shows from other media partners include Dead Ringers, ITN News and Baywatch.

At launch, YouTube is posting around 5,000 videos, of which almost 4,000 are full-length programmes, from more than 60 partners. YouTube said it "expects this to significantly increase in the coming months" and the full range of Channel 4 shows will be available in early 2010 .

For established broadcasters, including Channel 4, partnering with YouTube is a response to the trend of both viewers and advertisers leaving television channels for the internet. Channel 4 is hoping that posting content on YouTube can bring in new advertising revenues.

All programmes on the shows section will be available free of charge and, where the content owner has enabled it, they will carry advertising. Channel 4's shows will feature advertisers including Virgin Media, Universal, Orange, Samsung and Pepsi.

Patrick Walker, YouTube's video partnerships director, said the launch would bring more big-brand programmes to viewers on top of the site's home-made clips.

"The shows section of the site will make it easier for users to discover videos from the biggest names in British broadcasting, and help our content partners reach new audiences and generate new revenues," he said.

Google, YouTube's parent company, has been working hard to convince the rights holders of music, film and TV shows to make advertising revenue from their content rather than remove it from the video-sharing site for breach of copyright.

By putting advertising with clips, YouTube makes money from revenue sharing deals with the rights holders.

That trend is bringing YouTube a badly needed increase in revenues. Three years after Google bought the video sharing site for $1.65bn, it has yet to turn a profit and there are concerns the division is devouring the internet group's cash reserves.

Hmm... remember this?

Today's tabloids express mock outrage at the appearance of N*ck Gr*ff*n on the BBC Question Time programme. But they have short memories.

Here's today's Star:

Hang on, though. Isn't that the same newspaper that did this?

and this?

The Express, meanwhile, is also clutching its pearl necklace, claiming that the party is going to get taxpayer-funded broadcasts at the next election. Not a big lead on Griffin, because there's apparently another twist in the Diana saga (and as ever the stock image of her wearing a seatbelt, which would have saved her life in the crash, nutjob neenaw whoop-whoop conspiracy or no conspiracy)

But it's got those because it's gained votes. I wonder why? I wonder which newspapers are read by BNP supporters? Maybe ones that say stuff like this

or this?

or even this?

And not forgetting the all-time classic:

Not some. Not five hundred. Not even a thousand. Not half. Not three-quarters. No. ALL. IN BIG RED FUCKING LETTERS SO YOU'RE MADE CLEARLY AWARE THAT IT'S ALL.

Hey, and please let's not forget this:

I almost didn't include this!

Which is almost the same as this!

But no. The Express doesn't like the BNP. They just happen to share entirely the same views on immigration, but Griffin is bad, because... well. I haven't quite worked out why he's bad. Maybe he doesn't hate Muslims enough for their tastes?

The Mail have also had a bash, but as ever they're more concerned with attacking their nemesis the BBC than they are about hand-wringing over Griffin:

Having said which, I still think

it's worth making the point

that the Mail doesn't always steer so far away

from using content

which the BNP and 'bigot' N*ck Gr*ff*n

might completely agree with

and it's not long

before you might start thinking to yourself

are they really protesting a bit too much? And what's the difference, really, between the BNP bigots and the supposedly mainstream newspaper which claims to distance itself from them so much?

And you have to start thinking: do these newspapers which select certain types of images of ethnic minorities and use them again and again

really have such different views or agendas from the likes of the BNP?

It's all very well people blaming Labour, or the BBC, or whoever, for the 'rise' of the BNP. But if there has been a significant increase in BNP support - and it hasn't translated into votes yet, despite a severe recession and growing unemployment - perhaps that might have more to do with the legitimisation and absorption of their extreme views by newspapers creating scare story after scare story concerning race and immigration, often baseless stories created simply to scare? It's one thing going to a BNP meeting but it's quite another to hear exactly the same thing over the breakfast table from a publication which purports to report the facts.

But no. It's all the BBC's fault. Let's blame them.

A great post.

Friday 23 October 2009, 22.00

Compilation of live performances by the godfathers of electronic music, Kraftwerk. Filmed during the Teutonic foursome's 2004 world tour and featuring some of their most notable tracks, including Autobahn, Radioactivity. and Trans Europe Express.

Friday 23 October

9.00-10.00pm BBC FOUR

This documentary film examines how a radical generation of Krautrockers rebuilt a new German musical identity out of the cultural ruins of war.

Overlooked in their own country, these bands were grouped under the unsympathetic heading of Krautrock by an inquisitive British music press, when Dad's Army and war jokes were the lingua franca of the times. Nearly all of the bands objected to the term, apart from when it helped to shift records.

Today, Krautrock is one of the coolest influences any band aiming at credibility can drop.

Devotees include The Fall, Franz Ferdinand, Radiohead and Kasabian.

In 1968, the world was in the grip of a youthful revolution, and nowhere were the stakes higher than in Germany. Despite a post-war economic boom, the youth of the country felt that nothing had changed for a generation growing up in the aftermath of war. Power was still in the hands of an older generation and Germany's once magnificent artistic culture lay trashed and looted, much of it sullied by Nazi associations. For young people in cities like Berlin, Dusseldorf, Cologne and Munich, it was time for something new.

Between 1968 and 1977, bands including Neu!, Faust, Can and Kraftwerk looked beyond Anglo-American pop to create some of the most radical and original sounds ever heard in the country. The experiments of Tangerine Dream, Kraftwerk and Cluster would give the world its first taste of electronica.

By the late Seventies, some famous English and American ears took notice as David Bowie, Brian Eno and Iggy Pop decamped to Germany in an attempt to tap into the Zeitgeist. Meanwhile, in a studio overlooking the Berlin Wall, Iggy and Bowie would record Low, Heroes and Lust For Life, taking the sound and feel of Krautrock to the bank and to the world at large.