Totem BBC plugin:
"A while back, the BBC approached Canonical about providing seamless access to unencumbered BBC content for all Ubuntu users (in the UK and elsewhere)....At the moment the content available from the BBC at present is mostly audio, but support for video is in place and the feed is expected to be fleshed out here over time. We have a genre classification scheme in place, and will see how that scales as the amount of available content grows."

There are some geographical restrictions that are handled at the server end. The BBC plugin is available to any Linux distribution that wants it, so if it catches on it should someday appear in your own favorite distro. Another small step forward, hurrah.

Wikipedia has a good overview of the iPlayer follies.

Here is a BBC blog discussing it in more detail-- the short story is no DRM, and no DRM content such as popular TV series.