Belgium state television website & drm

[Alain De Vos]

Why would a state Television force the use of DRM ? For regular news.
I received a mail message from our Television containing next link:

Watch DRM content on Firefox | Firefox Help

Learn about Digital Rights Management (DRM) content in Firefox and how to disable and re-enable DRM playback or troubleshoot problems.

support.mozilla.org

Could it be for author rights assigned to certain region ? I know nothing about legal stuff.
Feel free to elaborate.

 

[mendenlama]

I wouldn't say it concerns "authors" but rather "rights holders". Generally tv channels acquire the rights for broadcasting movies, sport events and so on only for a specific region. So it makes sense for them to do geoblocking and restrict the access.

Years ago, there was a football championship. While in Germany the matches were shown on a pay tv channel and people had to give money for it, they were shown in Belgium for free on RTBF or the Flemish channel. So, Germans in the adjacent territories could just switch to Belgian tv and watch the matches paying nothing. A nightmare for the "rights holders".

 

[zirias@]

Yes, same answer as the question "why is ORF encrypted on satellites?" – because that way, they can restrict the broadcasting region. Broadcasting licenses for 3rd-party content are cheaper for smaller regions, simple as that.