As anyone that's sane knows, DRM is just silly. It's also pretty insulting - as it implies that you can't be trusted and need barriers in place to stop you doing the wrong thing. And perhaps even things that aren't even wrong, just incompatible.

It's a bit like if you bought a cake from a cake shop, but the owner was some kind of crazy control freak who decided you were only allowed to look upon the cake and under no circumstances eat it.

Just to make sure - because weirdo cake chef clearly doesn't trust you - the cake is locked inside a glass box and you haven't got the key. For some reason, the megalomaniac muffin maker has also decided that you can't sell on said cake and just to make sure you don't try and do it behind his back, has chained it to your ankle too. DRM is a bit like that, only weirder.

As easy A BBC

The BBC - playing cake maker in the above example - has decreed that we, the licence payer that pays for the chuffing programs it produces, are only allowed to watch them online for seven days. Now, yes iPlayer is a wonderful thing. But seven days is an awfully short time and last time I checked, my video recorder had no such restriction.

Just to make sure no one flouts this arbitrary rule, every download is wrapped up in its own clear plastic DRM box. Which is all fine and dandy - providing the device you want to watch the downloads on supports the chosen DRM encryption scheme.

The big Apple

If everyone uses the same device then it's all okay. Problem is, they don't. While there are a lot of Windows PCs out there, that still doesn't cover the whole market. Move onto MP3 players and mobile phones and there are tens, if not hundreds, of different systems available. All which need their own protective plastic box.

Although the BBC worked closely with Apple to get iPlayer streaming working on the iPhone it apparently hit a brick wall when it came to downloads. Not because Apple doesn't support DRM - it runs a pretty profitable cake shop of its own, thank you very much - but because it wasn't willing to let anyone else use its very special see through boxes.

According to Rapid TV News, Eric Huggers, BBC Head of New Media, said: "The only function that doesn’t work on iPod Touch or phone is the download functionality. This is not because the BBC doesn’t want to. The reason is that Apple doesn’t want to licence its DRM technologies which it calls Fairplay."

Instead, the BBC would have to put its programs on iTunes - something which it's apparently not prepared to do. Its solution, rather, was to court Nokia and get iPlayer downloads working on the N96 instead. While that may be one in the eye for Apple, it still means that iPhone owners can't download iPlayer shows to their phones. And iPlayer downloads alone are hardly a sufficient draw for iPhone lovers to switch sides.

It took forever for record companies to realise that DRM tracks were not only stupid, but really annoying for consumers - while also being inferior to tracks you could rip yourself from CD. How long will we have to wait until the TV companies realise the same thing?