remix the BBC! [updated version]
The BBC has launched a new site, backstage.bbc.co.uk that actively encourages people to mash up, remix, and re-invent the BBC content. “Like the Creative Archive, but for data”...read more
Worth mentioning here as well is the Wikiproxy BBC initiative: all matching words in all articles linked to wikipedia.
Added 20/6 2005:
J. Grant offers a critical outlook on the current state of the BBC Audio Download trial. While of course opening up BBC content for extended use over digital platforms is on the whole a positive step forward, the licenses used for the current BBC Interactive Media Player project involve so-called Digital Rights Management (DRM)technology, which basically severely restricts the use of this downloaded material.
The DRM software will make the content expire seven days after it was originally aired, and the user will then no longer be able to watch it. The software also prevents users emailing the files to other computer users or sharing it via disk. Why would it be in the BBC's interest to so severely limit the use of their newly-made-digitally-available content?
The answer, as the BBC probably would argue, might lie in the cumbersome nature of revisiting contracts with actors, script writers, music contributors and other copyright holders involved in the making of programmes. The nature of earlier contracts limit the re-broadcasting of content, and in the light of new, digital forms of distribution the problem becomes painfully complicated. But to counter this argument, we need not go further than a direct quote from J. Grant:
BBC is a public broadcaster, providing for people who pay the TV licence fee. The BBC agreement is set out in the Royal Charter. Providing that content over a TCP/IP should be no different from the way the BBC broadcast on Freeview. We can record programmes on VHS or DVR from Freeview, why do people with TV licences need to be restricted when the medium is an alternative digital form?Yes, why? Is it simply so that there still is a lurking, not-fully-discernable fear of the fickle, fast-moving nature of digital media, especially after recurrent reports on DVD/CD piracy and mass-scale, allegedly illegal file-sharing? Doubtlessly, the issue of releasing audiovisual content into the public realm is still surrounded by a veritable morass of moral panic...
The BBC has a leading role here, though. Just as with the introduction of the concept of public service into the broadcasting technosphere 50 years ago, the BBC could make a bold strike and introduce a fuller realisation of this concept into the current digital technosphere!
posted by Jonas Andersson @ 4:58 pm
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