"I am delighted to welcome Anthony to the BBC," said Erik Huggers, controller of BBC Future Media and Technology Group, and a former employee of Microsoft.

"His knowledge and expertise in the digital media field is world class. I look forward to working closely with him to take our on demand services to the next stage."

The BBC has already courted controversy over the shape of the corporation's digital strategy.

A project to create a broadband TV player known as the iPlayer opted to use proprietary technology from Microsoft -- shutting out users of Macs and Unix boxes amongst others.

At the same time, the BBC hired the above quoted Erik Huggers to head up the coming programme of digital services -- a man who worked at Microsoft for over a decade, ending his career as senior director of Windows Digital Media, responsible for the business strategy at their entertainment division

This latest hiring shows that Ashley Highfield, the corporation's head honcho in the field of New Media, is unafraid of making controversial decisions.

As well as Rose's experience of P2P file-sharing, he also has expertise in the field of Digital Right Management (DRM) -- the anti-piracy technology advocated by Microsoft that restricts the rights of users to playback and store the media they own.

It is Microsoft's use of DRM that prevents the BBC iPlayer from working on other platforms such as the Mac -- the Redmond-based software company refuses to support computers that don't use their Windows operating system.

Although the BBC press office released the news through their own site, at the time of writing it is conspicously absent from their main news site.

Perhaps Highfield is afraid of controversy after all?