The BBC iPlayer and rival 10 Downing Street petitions

So the petition imploring the British Prime Minister that the BBC should not launch its iPlayer service until there’s support for Apple Mac and Linux users is up to 12,320 signatures (that’s a pretty staggering growth in the last week alone, as I could’ve sworn it was just 10K signatures strong then).

Some wag has now posted two rival petitions on the same site (though, so far, rather fewer responses):

“We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to allow the BBC to release the iPlayer as planned on 27th July.”

and

“We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to Ensure the BBC Releases the iPlayer for Windows NOW and other platforms later.”

Could Rob Ashton and Rob Greig by any chance be related (at least by IP address range)?

If this is e-government, I’m loving it — almost as much as the open sourcers statement to The Register yesterday, which, strangely, seems to pre-empt some official comment (so far not forthcoming) from governance unit, the BBC Trust.

Still, the last sentence of this piece from the New Statesman produces a wry smile.