The BBC Trust, the broadcaster’s independent governing body, will give a hearing to concerns from the digital rights lobby over lack of standards neutrality for the BBC iPlayer web TV catch-up service. The Open Source Consortium (OSC) was amongst several organizations, in the Trust’s consultation on the iPlayer proposals, to say the publicly funded software should not be limited to Windows-only Kontiki DRM as planned initially. Despite the online outcry, the Trust was more concerned with limiting content storage times to safeguard the commercial sector from the BBC’s new service, pledging to review plans to offer iPlayer on non-Windows platforms only every six months and conceding “a two-year deadline is unworkable” (even though the BBC itself has said a Mac version could be available by fall). Now the Trust has agreed to meet OSC representatives to discuss concerns.

Isn’t this a bit late? The consortium made its first complaints to the Trust in January. After receiving the Trust’s approval in May, four years after the plan was first drawn up, the BBC now has a firm delivery roadmap for the project, which launches in beta on July 27. Open-source activists are unlikely to win concessions from this latest meeting lest the Trust disrupt roll-out by ordering the BBC make yet more modifications. (Via BBC News).

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