[Ecommerce] Wired on BBC Creative Archive

[David Tannenbaum]

The BBC's pioneering plans to put its archival material online for free
non-commercial use would be a landmark in the digital age, and a group
of us in the UK have been working to insure that the Archive isn't
undermined by the forces aligned against it.

Wired has a story today on our efforts, pasted below and at
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,63857,00.html.

Last week Union for the Public Domain signed on to a letter with the
"Friends of the Creative Domain" coalition that we helped organise, and
sent a letter of our own. Both are available at
http://www.public-domain.org/?q=node/view/36.

To stay up to date on the Friends of the Creative Domain campaign,
including reactions to the letter, sign up for the creative-friends
e-mail list at
http://lists.essential.org/mailman/listinfo/creative-friends. Our
success depends solely on the number of supporters for a full archive,
so please do encourage others to join up.

This grassroots effort is driven by volunteers, and if you are
interested in helping out, please do contact Rufus Pollock of Campaign
for Digital Rights, rufus.pollock at witbd dot org!

David

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BBC to Open Content Floodgates
By Katie Dean

Story location: http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,63857,00.html

02:00 AM Jun. 16, 2004 PT

The British Broadcasting Corporation's Creative Archive, one of the most
ambitious free digital content projects to date, is set to launch this
fall with thousands of three-minute clips of nature programming. The
effort could goad other organizations to share their professionally
produced content with Web users.

  The project, announced last year, will make thousands of audio and
video clips available to the public for noncommercial viewing, sharing
and editing. It will debut with natural-history programming, including
clips that focus on plants, animals and birds.

  "The Creative Archive is fuel for the creative nation," said Paula Le
Dieu, co-director of the initiative. "It allows people to download these
excerpts and be able to edit them and incorporate them into their own
creative works."

  Other organizations, including some small music publishers in the
United States, have begun to offer their content to users under liberal
licensing terms. In contrast to record companies and Hollywood -- which
are trying to lock down their content with help from legislators --
these organizations believe that liberal licensing terms will generate
even more interest in their content. In fact, in the BBC's case, access
to its programming archive is part of its charter. In the United
Kingdom, anyone who owns a television must pay a BBC-allocated fee, so
the public owns its programming.

  In the past, the BBC has not been efficient at making its archives
accessible, Le Dieu said, but the Internet makes it much easier. In
addition, digital distribution and editing tools now enable audiences to
modify the content for their own creative endeavors.

  The BBC archive would only be available to British citizens who pay
the yearly TV license fee. Anyone who tries to visit the site through a
foreign IP address won't be allowed to log on, Le Dieu said.

  She said the BBC is working on ironing out various legal and
contractual issues. The BBC plans to license its materials using a
system similar to Creative Commons, an American organization that has
developed a set of flexible copyright licenses for creators of digital
content.

  But clearing the rights is a significant challenge. Some clips contain
elements like musical soundtracks, which may require getting permission
from the copyright holders.

  "Much of our programming is interspersed with other programming owned
by other people," Le Dieu said. "We completely understand the audience's
interest in getting the full programming. We're trying to balance that
desire with the rights of the (content) ownership."

  Those technical and legal challenges may render the archive
incomplete, some fear.

  "We want to make sure that the archive is more than just shagging
marmots," said David Tannenbaum, coordinator for the Union for the
Public Domain. "There's been no public discussion of how they are going
to get beyond these nature clips."

  Tannenbaum said the group hopes to build support to change the BBC's
charter in 2006, when it comes up for review, so that the BBC will
commit more fully to open access. Also, the group wants the BBC to clear
rights with other copyright holders in its future contracts, so that the
BBC can freely distribute other producers' works.

  But observers expect commercial broadcasters to oppose the archive and
the expansion of liberal licensing efforts, arguing that they cannot
compete with free programming.

  "We hope that by getting this into the charter, that people within the
BBC will be able to stand up to the objections that get raised as time
goes by," said Cory Doctorow, European affairs coordinator for the
Electronic Frontier Foundation. "They will have the ammunition they need
to say, 'This is exactly what the BBC is there for: to really move
public broadcasting into the next century and define what public
broadcasting looks like in an Internet world.'"

  Lawrence Lessig, Stanford law professor and founder of Creative
Commons, said the BBC's plan would help the world understand that there
is more at stake in the copyright war than "piracy."

  "If the archive succeeds ... then that will drive demand for
computers, broadband and software to enable that creativity," he said.
"Businesses -- beyond the content industry -- will recognize just what's
at stake."

  The BBC hopes others will follow its lead.

  "We hope that we can provide a model so other rights holders can do
something similar," Le Dieu said.


--
David Tannenbaum
Coordinator
Union for the Public Domain
http://www.public-domain.org