Paying for BBC programming twice. It's an interesting subject, and I've commented on another blog that this issue rises because of an ambiguity of what is actually being sold by the BBC, in this case through iTunes. With DVDs and videos before them you were buying the material to own because you loved the series or the show and wanted to own it with all the special features and comedy offcuts. The iTunes plan blurs the world between iPlayer where people are supposed to be able to watch again for free and that same ownership. I can watch something for 7 days but on the 8th I have to buy it to catch up. It's essentially that segment of the population that might hear about something too late to catch it on iPlayer but doesn't plan on waiting for the DVD to see if it's any good and worth watching as it runs on the TV.

I personally think the BBC is perfectly within its rights to sell its content as it always has done, and as long as it's clear about the permanency of such sales, as if they were DVDs for example, then people have little to complain about that practice.

I have a bit of a backlog on news that I wish to write about, though some will probably be kept for a rainy day...but it does mean that there are a few stories here that are small enough to warrant small mention but that I'd like to talk briefly about. The issues are about just who is going to University now and the potential re-emergence of the rich/poor gap in higher education, an update on the idea of ISPs monitoring our internet usage for illegal downloading, and Labour actually making a positive announcement for once. I know, the last bit is actually scarily unreal.

Another day another party deciding there is something else that needs banning or enforcing through extreme prohibition. I thought Labour could get no more idiotic after last week's series of woeful announcements on housing, dental health and internal investigations...yet here we are again, this time with kicking "illegal file sharers" off of the net.

Initially this throws up several questions; How does the government and ISPs intend to tell conclusively that someone is file sharing illegally or legally? What assurances can the consumer have that ISPs won't just "play it safe" when it comes to high bandwidth and kick off anyone with high usage no matter how legitimate? How is this truly enforceable with so many unsecured networks around the UK, and indeed internet Cafes, without truly spying on what every person is accessing on the net? Do we really need to resort to French policy to solve our own issues?