BBC Plugs The Hole On Third-Party iPlayer Apps

re.watch iplayer app

The BBC says it has now plugged the loophole in its online services that has seen third parties develop unauthorized apps to stream iPlayer content.

This was the subject of controversy when it emerged that other companies were developing apps to stream iPlayer content on mobile and other platforms. As we revealed last month, the BBC issued a cease-and-desist order against Camiloo, which had developed and was promoting an app, Rewat.ch, to stream iPlayer content via the iPhone. The legal order came at the same time that the BBC itself announced its own, official move into developing a series of new apps for mobile devices.

(While the BBC has already made an iPlayer app that works on selected Nokia (NYSE: NOK) handsets, it has not yet released an app to stream iPlayer on Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) iPhone and iPod Touch devices, although this is apparently now in the works.)

At issue are developers that use the open-source coding that underpins applications like iPlayer to feed that content into their own applications. “We know that a number of applications have been making unauthorised use of some media types and we have tightened security accordingly,” writes Ian Hunter, the managing editor of BBC Online, in a blog post.

Now “some applications that ‘deep link’ to our content may no longer work,” writes Hunter.

But it’s not been only mobile developers getting up Auntie’s nose: IPTV company IP Vision in December got barred from building its own implementation of iPlayer for its Fetch TV set-top box.

For downloads, the BBC uses digital rights management systems such as Windows Media, Adobe (NSDQ: ADBE), and OMA. For streaming, it uses SSL, RTMP, RTSP, HTTP.

“If an application becomes broken, people will be able to find alternatives which are legal and that we support. BBC iPlayer is already available on many, many devices and platforms which are legal and supported and in the coming year we will be adding as many new ones as we can.”

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