Hurrah! The BBC has finally started making a selection of broadcasts available online to (UK based) internet users equipped with a web browser running the latest Flash plugin.

Previously you had to download some ludicrous bit software and run that to get at the content, and all in the name of protecting downloaded content from "piracy." Arrr, Mateys!

What this meant for the eight or nine people who downloaded the software was that they couldn't prevent it from deleting programmes a few days after they'd been downloaded, thus making it inferior, in rough order of merit, to:

• Pirated Downloads
• Hard Disk Recorders
• Laptop with TV Tuner
• VHS Video Recorders
• Cine Camera pointed at screen

Now that these programmes are being made available as Flash video, it will at last be possible to watch them legally, and rip them (slightly) illegally, online without having to go to any notable inconvenience. It will also be possible to watch them on a Mac, on a Linux machine (despite Ashleigh Highfield's idiotic parroting of a figure of "600" BBC Website using Linux users in the UK...) or on platforms more obscure even than these. Doubtless there are Amiga users somewhere working themselves into a fever of excitement about this.

Given the various alternative mechanisms available to swipe this content, I'd be astonished if it made any practical difference to the copyright holders. It's not like VHS tapes put anyone out of business - on the contrary it turns out people will quite happily buy stuff on tape, and later DVD, that they could record when broadcast.

Now. If only they'd put the unavailable back-catalogue online, I'll be truly happy. Don't give me any of that rubbish about the need to negotiate with rights-holders; the BBC's a big enough organisation to swing legislation in its favour if it puts a suitably public spirited spin on it. And another thing (rant fades into distance...)