Over 10,000 sign petition against iPlayer's Windows-only launch

Not appropriate to lock people to particular desktop tech

24 July 2007 14:35 GMT / By Amy-Mae Elliott

An e-petition to stop the launch of the BBC iPlayer on a Windows-only platform has been signed by 10,200 people.

The petition on the Downing Street website says that the BBC's catch-up on-demand video streaming service, iPlayer, due to launch on Friday, is unfair.

The petition statement reads: "We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to prevent the BBC from making its iPlayer on-demand television service available to Windows users only, and instruct the corporation to provide its service for other operating systems also".

Mark Taylor, president of the Open Source Consortium sates: "The BBC has a mandate to provide equal access to people irrespective of platform, we don't think it is appropriate to lock people into a particular desktop technology".

The protests stem from the fact that the iPlayer will only be compatible with PCs running Windows XP and will not work on PCs running Vista, Macs, or computers running open source operating systems such as Linux.

In the BBC's defense, the version launching at the end of the week is only a public beta, and the BBC spokesperson clearly stated when the date for the launch was announced that they would be introducing a version for Macs by the Autumn, with other platform versions coming soon after.

The BBC previously stated: "This is the approach we have always taken but we have always started with the platform that reaches the most number of people and then rolled it out from there".

Representatives form the Open Source Consortium are due to meet with the BBC Trust, the watchdog of the BBC and have threatened to take the issue up with the European Commission.