Yep, it is odd. There's also an entire piece of R&D that the BBC are doing that I know people on called "Public Service Internet" https://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/projects/public-service-internet
The BBC generally has quite good online services (e.g. news, iPlayer) but would be interesting to see what this project is thinking about.
I remember when iPlayer came out: it was _worse_ than what we were already using (Windows Media Center DVR, BitTorrent from UK TV tracker forums) simply due to the content expiration policy… which is downright Orwellian.
I know it’s the fault of overbearing rightsholders, but it was a dark-day overall because a lot of the UK TV tracker sites became a lot less useful because fewer people were seeding and many sites had a strict “No torrents for iPlayer content” rule to avoid being shut-down.
I wish the iPlayer launched with transparent DRM policies that named-and-shamed whichever rightsholder demanded content-expiration - instead of the blanket policy, even when the restrictions are against the wishes of the rightsholder, ugh.