Nitro API

[David Lake]

The idea of an API key is fine - the fact that Beeb has limited it to "commercial operators" and "BBC Employees only" is not.

I can freely and openly get an API key for a myriad of other services just by signing up; it is used as a method for opening up access.  Beeb are using it as a method of closing-down/controlling access. 

I DO understand why - the Beeb have just been through a bruising experience with the US media and their deep/selfish pockets.   Although no-one will publicly say this, Global iPlayer failed because they were unable to launch in their target market which was the US, because the US networks were concerned about competition from Auntie.    I suspect that Nitro was an attempt to control IPR - something US companies are obsessed with.

So in the case of an open-API to, say Google, you have to ask who benefits more - you or Google ?  The answer is obviously Google as they attract a lot more data that they can then sell-on.    Not the case here.

So we're tied-up with rights-holders who are protecting their patch and Beeb caught-in-the-middle.  It's a nasty, commercial media landscape.

________________________________________
From: get_iplayer <get_iplayer-bounces at lists.infradead.org> on behalf of David Cantrell <david at cantrell.org.uk>
Sent: 03 June 2015 07:51
To: get_iplayer at lists.infradead.org
Subject: Re: Nitro API

On Wed, Jun 03, 2015 at 03:42:02PM +0100, Jon Davies wrote:
> On 3 June 2015 at 15:08, Kevin Lynch <klynchk at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Looking at it in glass half full way maybe the use of the nitro API
> > could be something that's easily incorporated into get_iplayer if the
> > implementation of the API is get_iplayer friendly
> The nature of the licensing for Nitro probably makes it unsuitable -
> you need an API key to gain access, and so either that API key would
> be published in the get-iplayer source, and probably abused and then
> disabled, or we'd have to build some server infrastructure between
> get-iplayer and Nitro (the intended approach) - which I can't see
> being viable.

Or, as is a *very* common model for stuff like this, users would have to
get their own API keys.

--
David Cantrell | Official London Perl Mongers Bad Influence

Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human.
At best he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear
shoes, bathe and not make messes in the house.
   -- Robert A Heinlein

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