London and Manchester, England – Two weeks after the BBC officially launched the iPlayer, protesters wearing bright yellow Hazmat suits gathered outside BBC Television Center in London and BBC headquarters in Manchester to demand that Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) be eliminated from the BBC.

The BBC have activated a protection mechanism on Flash based streaming system used by iPlayer, stopping open source media players from legally playing BBC content

The Open Source Consortium has welcomed the BBC's move to make its iPlayer online on-demand TV service available for streaming on operating systems other than Microsoft Windows.

The BBC Trust has responsibility for ensuring that the correct degree of scrutiny is given to all proposals from the BBC Executive for new services (such as the iPlayer) and any significant changes to existing services.In the case of the iPlayer, following the consultation, the Trust noted the strong public demand for the service to be available on a variety of operating systems.

Just hours after the BBC said it had fixed the iPlayer streamed TV service to prevent DRM-free file downloads, a London-based programmer has bypassed the new protection.

"The Open Source Consortium (OSC) is to meet with the BBC Trust--the broadcaster's independent governing body--to discuss concerns about a cross platform version of the Beeb's iPlayer."

The BBC Trust has asked to meet open source advocates to discuss their complaints over the corporation's Windows-only on demand broadband TV service, iPlayer.

The new BBC iPlayer went live at around 5.00pm today...the streaming service is for all, whatever OS you’re using, as long as it’s got Flash support.

The BBC has been accused of forcing people to use Microsoft operating systems and has been threatened with a complaint to the European Commission. The charge concerns the use of Microsoft technology in the corporation's forthcoming iPlayer.