Slashdot Mirror
BBC to Put Entire Radio & TV Archive Online
An anonymous reader writes "The BBC is to to put it's entire radio and television archive online, free for everyone, as the BBC Creative Archive." The article is a little thin on how far back these archives go, but regardless, this is a gigantic amount of data, and to see it go online, and open to the public is very cool.
All of the programmes currently avaliable are in streaming realmedia, catered to the 56k audiance. I could see this initiative falling flat on it's face unless a burnable, portable and high quality format is used.
This would be a great use for Bittorrent. It would be expensive for BBC to distrubite these; with Bittorrent, it would keep the costs down, and present a non-piracy method to the public.
Will it include Dr. Who?
Phase 1. Make everything available online for free.
Phase 2. ???
Phase 3. Profit!
Karma: The shiznight, mostly because I am the Drizzle.
Assuming that it is workable and of reasonable quality, this is a huge development. I'd particularly recomment the BBC4 program "I'm Sorry I Haven't a Club," an amazing improv show.
Finally, I can see the last 5 episodes of "Alo, Alo"!
I believe Taco Shack have a "100 Tacos for $100" offer at the moment, if you're planning to do a Doctor Who marathon and are in need of adequate sustainance to keep you going.
That all the Monty Python episodes will be available? That would be really cool, but I just spent ~$100 on the 14 DVD boxed set. Nuts!
eleven plus two / twelve plus one
*nm*
Rock!
Hopefully they will do what they do with the BBC Broadband service - peer with DSL and cable ISPs so the bandwidth costs nothing apart from the upkeep of the system.
This also means that international folks can't access it. Which is good since I pay my TV License...
IntechHosting - Free domain, 2GB, PHP, £4.95/$8.95
After all the experiences with Ogg Vorbis, will they use that as *the* format?
Unfortunately Ogg Theora is not ready yet for video...
There was an excellent radio programme on the making of "Blackadder" on Saturday. Interviews with all the makers, and behind the scenes stories (lots of creative battles apparently). Well worth a listen.
I hope third parties can legally burn libraries of DVDs and resell them.
Back from the dead in purest digital archival form. YES!
P.S.: Those things that sound like commercials in the NPR broadcast can't be commercials, because public radio doesn't have commercials by definition. They must be "sponsorship acknowledgements."
CEE5210S The signal SIGHUP was received.
This news absolutely makes my day. Week! If they manage to do this just a little, this just made my year.
Quotes like this:
"I believe that we are about to move into a second phase of the digital revolution, a phase which will be more about public than private value; about free, not pay services; about inclusivity, not exclusion.
Doesn't that single quote look more exciting than a whole porn site? :-)
The whole BBC library! All the documentaries and stuff... all the Monty Pythons, all the Young Ones, all the Bottoms, all the AbFab, all the Men Behaving Badly, all the Blackadders!
All the cricket Test matches they used to broadcast!!
Oh... Excuse me, I think I just wet my pants.
I believe posters are recognized by their sig. So I made one.
Will this just be news/education/documentaries? Or will it really include every episode of Doctor Who and Eastenders?....
Wouldn't 'free, legal TV entertainment downloads' result in absoloute outrage from the MPAA and friends? I can't see it ever happenning....
As an non French living in Paris, this is soo good. Now we can finally watch some real TV here, instead of only 5 public channels of stupid quizzes and musical shows.
I can't wait to see the royle family again. In fact, a friend of mine just ordered the DVDs with the BBC last week.
IANAL, but imagine a beowulf cluster of in Soviet Russia all your belong are base to us welcoming the new SCO overlords.
this could be the only way to get our BBC fix... Hopefully they will allow some sort of free subscription or something.
I am going to hell and I am going to take all of you with me.
Just wanted to point out to the world that TV License paying Brits like myself pay for the BBC. Just something to keep in mind when you're downloading Red Dwarf season 3.
But don't get me wrong, I'd like to add how happy I am with the BBC; they offer fantastic services and I'm proud that they're available to everyone in the world. Without much doubt the quality of radio and TV in the UK is far better because of the BBC. Not to mention Brits won't put up with frequent or long advert breaks because the BBC channels have none!
Also, it's refreshing to see a company be happier to let people enjoy it's IP than to be obsessed with milking the consumer for every penny it can.
Benny Hill wasn't a BBC show. It was shown on ITV and made by the (now defunct) Thames Television (my father was a cameraman on it for a while).
*points to clue dispenser* :)
<fnord>OBEY</fnord>
What really pissed me off a couple of months ago was that they CHARGED ME MONEY (4 USD) for watching a 5-minute part rerun on the web. I sent them a big fuck you-mail and asked what the hell was going on with the property of the people. The broadcaster is owned by the state, ergo the public. No reply.
So kudos to the BBC, crap to NRK.
Fawlty Towers for the masses.. brilliant!
The original poster can spell check the article, the slashdot internel system can use ispell and the likes, and Slashdot editors can proofread them.
I am lead to believe that Slashdot is completely automated , unattended system that looks for patterns in posts (like "Linux" , "SCO" etc.) before accepting them.
I know , typos happen. But how is it possible to make an error in a few lines of text!? And it happens so often!
I know i am going down as a troll/offtopic/whatever but this is NOT FUNNY anymore.
Especially for those of us the non-native English speakers , it is really frustrating. I had to look "giantic" through dictd jsut to be sure it was gigantic mispelled and not something else.
Slashdot Sig. version 0.1alpha. Use at your own risk.
[History of the BBC]
The BBC was founded in 1922. They broadcast radio only until 1936 when they started their first TV channel. A lot of cool stuff.
Everybody I know who heard those broadcasts agrees that it was the best HHGTG of all. I don't believe they've ever been released exactly as originally broadcast. Transcripts are available of those shows, but these miss the subtle music and audio effects that made the show really wonderful. I know I was disappointed with some audio tapes I purchased years later.
I've never been interested in ripping off Douglas Adams, or his family, by downloading mp3s that purport to be copies of the original show.
they will take those AWFUL "Absolutely Fabulous" reruns off Comedy Central, and put the channel back to good old sexist American comedy like "The Man Show."
Does this mean if you query the cluster archive with 'why' 'archive' it will tell you 42?
OH THE SHAME I fell off the wagon and use sigs again!
This seems like a good idea but I think there will be a lot of problems or limitations.
The BBC appear to have sold the rights to many of their successful programs to other channels such as UK Gold. For more recent programs, they might not own the Internet rights to them if they have been made for the BBC by third party companies (I think this has stopped them from including some radio programs in thier existing (and very good) radio archive site. Also, what about international rights - I would guess there are many cases were the BBC have sold rights for brodcast in other contries to other broadcasters.
While I think this good be very good, I wouldn't be suprised if it is limited to clips that are more useful for research purposes (like news footage and small budget documenteries) than the big money programs.
We don't get TV these days, but I used to watch a lot of BBC back when I was in India.
...). And documentaries; I've seen some really good BBC documentaries; And "Travel Show" with Jill Dando ...
Good to be able to watch those comedies again (Yes, Minister, 'Allo 'Allo, AYBS,
Really enjoyable and informative TV.
But the article doesn't mention any dates. Wonder when it wil happen!
With the huge bandwidth needed for a project like this, just wait til it's online and Slashdot links to it ;)
...moron.
my father was a cameraman on it for a while
The bastard. How does it feel to know that your father helped to purpetuate one of the most evil acts of comedy man has ever created? How can you live with the knowledge that your father helped, in no small way, to inflict pain and suffering on others of the sorts never before known?
You utter, utter bastard..
I'd be interested as to how copyright for certain shows is going to be handled. A few BBC DVDs have already been cut significantly, e.g. for The Young Ones release, as, in that example, copyright to music used hadn't been resolved.
i was introduced to Douglas Adams when PBC aired this in the states. no doubt its one of the many treasures that exist in their archives.
...vividly encapsulates that post-Watergate/pre-punk/coked-up moment when you could trust no one, least of all yourself.
isnt it 'gigantic'
Um, that's "any more", not "anymore".
"Saddam Hussein cavorts with terrorists."
The Rupert Murdoch owned media has become increasingly shrill about the BBC. Recently a top Sky (Fox equivalent in the UK ) executive made a speech about what he wants done to the BBC:
* Forced auction of any good programs the BBC makes to Sky and ITV (Honestly!! Anything good should be reaped from where it was produced, and interrupted with reams of shite car adverts.)
* Enforced licence fee reductions
* Banned from buying US imports (24, Buffy, etc)
* All kinds of other random restrictions to make life easier for the bottom feeders at Newscorp.
The Sun and Times, Murdochs bought rags, have also been consistently ragging on about the bullshit Iraq dossier affair, in which a BBC journalist is accused of actually telling the truth.
This is the ultimate reply.
" Fuck with us, we'll bury your "Footballers Wives" and "Sex in trashy Greek holiday resorts" crap in 70 years of quality broadcasting!"
This is almost too good to be true. Have to see if Tony gets a call from Rupert, and poor old Greg Dyke gets his marching orders.
The amount of historical material is mind boggling! I'll be eager to support once it is available. We should have more broadcast companies trying to give "public value." Heh. I honestly can't imagine a company in the U.S. doing something like this.
However, just to ponder, I remember reading that the BBC was getting a lot of flak for the suicide of David Kelly. I hope it's not too cynical to suggest that perhaps in some way, they are doing this to restore some of their image that may have been tarnished?
At any rate, this is definately a very magnanimous thing for the BBC to do, and I am glad to see it.
If the BBC releases their Radio Archive, they might be distributing great artist live performances like Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin. I know that theses performances have been released on CD by major record labels.
Will the RIAA go after the BBC for distributing their own recordings of someone else's material? Will they have to get permission from every artist they want to feature in their archive?
If an artist knows I am recording their performance and chooses to perform anyway, do they own the rights to distribution or do I?
I know they are dumb questions, but the mechanics of the ownership seem really confusing to me in an archive or library format.
I'll take the classic Klitch opening move of Waterloo. Anyone to follow?
There are tons of options, but it means this can't be a free lunch forever. A tax on broadband use? A tax on number of computers owned (similar to TVs)? Commercials in downloaded content?
- How can it be determined whether the use is commercial or not? I assume they mean you can't re-distribute the content for profit, but what about using the material as research for books or other for-sale works?
- What will the RIAA say? Surely they won't just lie down while Beatles performances, John Peel Sessions, and other huge cash cows are available for free.
- What will the MPAA say? Apologies for not having done my research, but surely there are DVDs for sale at Best Buy of content distributed by members of the MPAA?
- Will it only be material the BBC explicitly produced? Surely they, like other networks, have broadcast shows or footage that they didn't create.
- What formats will be used? This seems like a thorny issue. Many of the most popular formats have strings attached. With the hoo-ha surrounding proprietary image and sound recording formats, what's the best set of technologies to use?
- How long will it take to get the material online? It seems like this will be a never-ending project, with new content being created 24/7.
- What will the order of precedence be? Will it be FIFO, FILO, by popularity, by media type?
This is terribly exciting... I hope other media outlets follow suit."Stop throwing the Constitution in my face, it's just a goddamned piece of paper!" - George W. Bush Nov. 2005
Its good to know my tv licence which funds the BBC is going to go to more good use.
--Mods giveth, Mods taketh away--
it was an ITV not BBC show :)
Libertarian, optimistic to the point of denial, gleeful...and modestly better then the naked news.
If the BBC put all of it's programming on the Internet for free, wouldn't some people - maybe a lot of people - ditch their TVs and just watch stuff using their computer?
Of course, there might be some delay between broadcast and release on the Internet, so maybe that's enough to keep the English license system in place. But what about the money from foreign sales, like to PBS in the US? Those programs are already old - how much will they be hurting demand if the same programs are already legally available in high-guality from a reliable source on the Internet?
"Lord, grant that I may always be right, for Thou knowest that I am hard to turn" -- A Scots-Irish prayer
You trolls need to get fp first.
F*ckin A! This is great for those of us who don't have cable, and it shows those a**holes in American media up a thing or two. Plus, you know. Legal alternative to downloading illegal American TV shows. -- Funksaw
You must all be thinking what I am thinking... FREE Fawlty Towers!!
I am a viral sig. Please help me spread.
Please let it be divx instead of realmedia or other crap!
fucking liberals
yeah i can see everyone here complaining about what an awful thing it is to have all that media at your disposal
if thats liberal, im all for it
and look up what liberal means in a dictionary, you might be suprised
...Yes!
And quiet well with a nice data archive.
Yes! I listen to NYC Speedcore and do math at 3AM. I suggest you try it too.
Because it will be a free service, and include such a HUGE amount of Data, I think it's safe to assume that the compression quality will be less than stellar.
Having just paid >$80 CDN for the Blue Planet DVD set, I still feel that it is money well spent. The quality will be vastly superior to whatever is available online.
On that note, I'm still all about giving money to the BBC.
0110100100100000011000010110110100100000011000100
You can't forget things like Faulty Towers, and Yes Prime Minister. Classics.
Before we rejoice and pop off the champagne to celebrate, allow me to pour some water on the fire:
- the article was quite vague, and it was clearly aiming to state that releasing for free material is a duty (newly discovered...) of a public broadcaster, while for other endeavours there are commercial broadcasters, who should not be charged huge licence fees (winking to them...);
- this is obviously a not particularly bright attempt by the BBC to defend a role which is no longer clear to themselves nor to the spin-based Blair dictatorship, recently torpedoed by the Kelly affair; with the review of the Royal Charter, which provides the conditions under which the BBC operates, due soon (I think in 2005, in any case before Tony the liar gets the boot); it looks like pre-emptive defensive action thus...
- as to the format in which stuff will be made available, let's see: recently BBC changed even its teletext format to prevent users who receive spill-over broadcast (like myself in Belgium) to fully access teletext information; I have my doubts on their willingness to make something available for free outside of Little England...
Thufir Hawat
Part-time Mentat
Just imagine how much more content they [the BBC] would've had available had they not incinerated so many cannisters of film in the 70s because they saw no use in keeping it...and I'm not just speaking of all the episodes of Doctor Who they torched either...
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
A new medium comes along e.g. the Internet or digital TV . The BBC then gets worried - what if people can use this new medium to get news or entertainment without paying a licence fee ? So the BBC then starts putting out programming on the new medium (even if virtually nobody watches it) so that it can put in a claim at some point in the future for a licence fee to use it.
The BBCs moto should be "Big brother is taxing you !". Bastards.
Now I can catch all those episodes that I missed
Hopefully!
-ravan_a
Even with Sky satellite TV in the house, my wife and I spend most of our TV hours tuned into BBC1 & 2. Apart from the lack of annoying commercials, the BBC have consistently out-done all the commercial channels in terms of the quality of its programming. Way to go, BBC. We love you!
Others have mentioned Dr Who, Black Adder and Monty Python's Flying Circus. Here are some other BBC classics, just a few favourites that spring to mind:
Period Drama: Elizabeth I; I, Claudius
Drama: Casualty
Comedy: Fawlty Towers; Steptoe and Son; Only Fools and Horses; One Foot in the Grave; Red Dwarf; Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Lately the British Government has been rather waging war on the BBC, they don't like the license fee, and they don't like there being a totally independent news source.
Could this be that the guys at the top of the BBC see heavy trouble just ahead of them, and they want to free the data before the government manages to privatise the BBC and lock up the data forever?
It could have been worse. I know someone who worked as a cameraman on Noel's House Party.
Not only that, Fawlty Towers without commercials. The BBC does not do commercials.. :)
Another great reason to love BBC is their BBC worldservice AM 648 :)
... And I, not being a British subject, would still be willing to pay a lesser "TV tax" subscription for the access to a near-TV quality, downloadable archive in a portable format.
Let's be fair: the cost of these fine productions (and let's not get into the nit-picks about cardboard sets and cheesy sci-fi aliens) has already been borne by the TV-tax paying British public. They got to see ad-free television produced by people who were willing to take artistic risks because the they weren't subject to the tyranny of the marketing department.
If this is your style, I suspect you'd like to support them in producing more of the like. I like the sci-fi and the some of the comedy the BBC produces. If I could have access to new productions, even if it was a year or so after the first run in England, I'd would be willing to pay for it.
I think this archive of older radio and TV is a fantastic idea, even if it's not in a portable format right now. Fair enough: if you getting it for free, you can't complain how you're getting it. If the BBC would like an extra revenue stream, earmarked to support risk-taking entertainment that might not be universally popular, but still take direct feedback from the public, rather than markerters, I'll find a way to convert a few US dollars to pounds sterling to support it.
So, a question for anyone who wants to take it on: What would be a good business model for the BBC to take, understanding that their mandate is to produce entertainment for the British public, to enable foreigners to have access, provide support and feedback without jeopardizing that mandate?
Yeah - I'm no longer a starving student, so I've been snapping up DVD collections of HHGTTG, Red Dwarf, Blackadder, etc. Frankly, if I could get the beeb on my TV, unedited and straight from the UK, I'd happily pay the license fee. Unfortunately, Canada's crappy satellite companies (is there even more than one?) only offer their BBC Canada, amongst dozens of sports channels and duplicate channels (Like sci-fi? Then you'll love Space - East Coast, three hours IN THE FUTURE!!! Gag.). They probably put in commercials, too.
Thats just sick. Does the depths of humanity know no bounds?
The more people willing to do this kind of thing, the more it makes the RIAA look like jerks. I just hope they know enough to avoid streaming media, or at least provide an alternative.
I can see how this can be a project that will be instantly way too expensive to keep going for the BBC. Because we all know that on opening day, the announcement will be here on Slashdot, home page of the entire world's geek population. And of course, we'll all be clamouring to download their entire archive all at once. If we don't make their servers beg for mercy, we'll melt their routers with the traffic.
But I guess we'll just have to see. If it hasn't been done already, we should write them and recommend Bittorrent, or perhaps find good mirroring sites.
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
of being able to watch BBC, I'm not sure how I feel about them simply giving away stuff which in the past I've had to pay for. BBC broadcasts all over the world, things like BBC America etc, this is just wrong, British taxpayers pay for the BBC, the BBC then broadcasts in other places away from the British Public, the BBC's funding should be cut, they're simply not economically viable.
Comment: Yes I realise the username 'fuckfuck101' makes me sound intelligent, no you cannot buy it from me.
Don't quite get what you mean, but I do have plenty of Red Dwarf and other media that the owners have made public domain available for sharing through OpenFT. Download the gift daemon, the openft plugin and a gift client and look up this username.
Hooray for the BBC, god damned do I love free stuff.
No, I love even more when it's paid for by UK taxpayers and an infinetesmally small portion of my donation to public television.
PBS has a huge library of great documentaries and other things they've made over the years that I'm pretty sure they own the rights to. What can we do to get them to follow BBC's lead in making this old stuff available from their web site?
Currently they only allow you to watch small snip-its of selected shows. Then if you see something you like you have to pay to get the video tape. That stinks since public taxes and donations funded most of this stuff!
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
Please let it be XviD instead.
KVCD would be fine however.
SCIREV.NET - fanfics,reviews & more
If so, YAY!!!!!
will there be any porn?
They did throw away or wipe the tapes of many of the old Dr Who shows.
Link to missing episodes
Will it include Doctor Who!
Let's hope so!!!!
SCIREV.NET - fanfics,reviews & more
...and I came across this paragraph
Newsreader Bruce Belfrage was on air when 500lbs of explosives hit Broadcasting House in October 1940. He paused as he heard the bomb go off during his nine o'clock bulletin - but continued as normal, as he was not allowed to react on air because of security reasons. Seven people were killed.
Did this man have balls of steel or what?
Find funky gifts
Here in Canada the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) offers some of it's shows (Quirks and Quarks) in .ogg format. And at least their radio messages have no commercials! (net even "sponsorship acknowledgements.")
They may have started TV in 1936 but that isn't when radio broadcasts stopped - there are several BBC radio stations, plus the BBC world service, still broadcasting. For radio play enthusiasts there should be an enormous amount of material to be had
Now i can complete my collection, legally...
Though realaudio format.. bleh..i hope they offer other options..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
For years I've dreamed of getting hold of all the old episodes of "I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue".... Now I can, and it's not going to cost me a penny more than my 80-quid licence fee.... And then there is the 1001 other things that springing to mind. No, 1002 things.... No 1003.... No,...
I love the Beeb. It's the one of the few things that makes me proud to be British.
Although I wonder how this announcement will effect UK TV - the commercial broadcaster which mainly runs BBC repeats (and, last time I checked, is 40% owned by Aunty).
Do you mind, your karma has just run over my dogma.
One easy way for repayment is to ask other governments to release *their* publicly-funded works on the internet. For the US, that would be PBS. This would draw a lot of fire, since it is in the spirit of open-source software, which is, as we all know, a tool of the devil, pinko communists, and bleeding-heart liberals everywhere.
I'm not sure what other countries have to bring to the table; but, it would be nice to see public works open to, say, the public.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
I'll bet there is some sort of deal whereby the BBC gets some compensation for the bandwidth that will be sucked out of the servers. If so, then this concept should extend to _ALL_ servers since content is content is content and what is good for the goose should be good for the gander!
Does anyone know?
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but this may not be the entire archive but only parts of certain TV and radio broadcasts mainly for educational purposes. Quoting the speech given my Greg Dyke:
"We intend to allow parts of our programmes, where we own the rights, to be available to anyone in the UK to download so long as they don't use them for commercial purposes."
Read the entire speech: here.
CBC has archives back to 1938 online HERE. The radio broadcasts from the front line of WW II are really something.
i hardly see how this is free to inhabitants of the uk - we have to pay a tv licence fee which basically funds the bbc. and all we get is bloody repeats and abismal tv programs in an organisation run as a toy by the middle class in my opinion the bbc shouldnt even be online - the name itself is british BROADCASTING corporatation - the web is narrowcast! in many ways the current bbc online presence is stiffling innovation as people cant compete with such a pervasive organisation
And for streaming (which I don't like personally, but some people seem to do), it would be cool to have bittorrent'esque clients such that the seeding server could say: You can listen/watch this stream of you agree to dedicate X KB/s to at most Y other clients.
Sure, you'd have to save the stream or a window of it, and there might be problems with latency -- this would probably need deep ahead caching, but it's an interesting possibility.
[note for the future: This is obvious for any expert and many non-experts. It is not worthy of a blanket patent. ]
Belief is the currency of delusion.
Greg Dyke's actual quote:
"We intend to allow parts of our programmes, where we own the rights, to be available to anyone in the UK to download so long as they don't use them for commercial purposes."
Note the *parts*. All this is going to provide is a bunch of clips.
I find it very unlikely that every single show ever broadcast on BBC TV and Radio will be put online.
For one, it would be an *immense* undertaking, and secondly, what about liscensing issues? For example, BBC2 shows The Simpsons. They will have had to pay at some point to get that, this is obvious because they don't have any of the more recent series. Did the fee they paid give them the right to distribute the content on the Internet? I very much doubt it. It seems much more likely this archive will only be actual BBC made programs, not just shows that have been on the BBC - The Simpsons no, The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy yes.
There's a lesson you could all learn: Doing something for the PUBLIC GOOD! GOOD for YOU and ME and the little MAN in the street. Not just for the F*CKING shareholders and the top directors.
I knew it all along, the fact that people have to pay for watching reruns of Starsky and Hutch, Loveboat and the A-Team is what has made the US the single most dispised country in the world!
Take that you uber greedy american corporate swine!
- It took western civilisation 2000 years to ensure popular literacy, and now we work with icon driven GUI's. Go figure.
... I can see this announcement being followed by "Of course, this can only happen once the govt grants us the #100M needed to convert our archives into digital formats and commit to increasing annual grants by #10M to cover operating expenses" at which time the whole thing will probably go the way of the dodo.
...
"And why doesn't the real pound sign survive being posted to slashdot?" he mumbled, being too lazy to look up its proper HTML encoding
sigs are hazardous to your health
The big question is what acutally consitutes the "BBC archive"? Is it everything that's ever been shown on the BBC, or is it only the in-house produced BBC programs?
To take an obvious example, The Simpsons, their definately not BBC property, so I doubt they'll be in the archive, neither will any of the other American imports (24, Buffy, Star Trek, etc.). But then, what about Blackadder? Surely that was made by the BBC? The rights to Blackadder are owned by Tiger productions (Rowan Atkinson's company), this includes the DVD rights for example. Will this be in the archive?
What about Monty Python, 'Allo 'Allo, Red Dwarf, Dr Who or Hitchhikers? A (non-authoritative ) Amazon check suggests that they are all distributed by BBC worldwide, which is the commerical arm of the BBC (and produces all of the commercial UK-* stations on Sky), but how many of these have additional rights? Red Dwarf (the book) is owned by Grant Naylor, Hitchhikers by Douglas Adams. How many books will get sold if these episodes are available for free?
There's also the digitising problem, It might not seem like it, but only in the last 5 years have any TV programs been digitally stored. And the BBC tend to lose things, they lost episodes of Dr Who for example (one is still missing I think), so how many of these archives will be complete?
I am truly hoping that most BBC aired programs will be there (you might have to wait for "The Office"?) but I have a horrible feeling it'll be an archive of Eastenders (bad bad soap opera), Casualty (no blood-n-guts E.R. clone) and Noel's house party (please god no).
--
What a time to be sitting on a Gigabit university network... :)
How nice it would be to be able to access the radio version of Sherlock Holmes or Agatha Christie or even the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy! I love those.
But I'm less attentive to detail as I should be. ;-)
So all those tax dollars and donations Americans have been paying to public broadcasting which makes its way back to BBC through licensing...that's imaginary money?
They got to see ad-free television produced by people who were willing to take artistic risks because the they weren't subject to the tyranny of the marketing department... ... and ended up with Noel's House Party.
creation science book
The BBC has been receiving American tax dollars through PBS for a very long time.
Everyone will be downloading different stuff. Bittorrent only works when everyone is trying to get the same content at the same time. Freenet on the other hand might work, at least for moderately popular stuff.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
Don't forget the best, most important work ever produced by the BBC
That's right The Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy!
Man I wish we had such a good public service here.
This is the best news I've heard since someone told me GWB had been assasinated (:$)! \o/
Yay BBC. Just hope they do it right.
Woohoo! I'm stoked!
But y'all forgot another reason why this rocks: the Goon Show!
This was the radio show that inspired the Pythons and a LOT of great absurdist British comedy.
Spike Milligan and Peter Sellers available to the rest of us! Yeehaw!
--- The American Way of Life is not a birthright. Hell, it's not even sustainable.
I guess this means I can watch all my favorite Dr.Who, and Black Adder Episodes with ease since they waved their copyright
I would give my left arm to be able to look up old episodes of Coronation Street. Hardly a geek show or Sci Fi related, but its a classic.. and not so classic...
- Jimbob
Would that include shows such as Monty Phython or Fawlty Towers?
The power of Christ compiles you!
I can't wait to be able to download all my favorite Monty Python and Benny Hill episodes!
Many reside in jail? How many exactly?
Wow! What a ploy for taking over the world! That'll put us colonials back into the can.
Big Brother Bush is doubleplus ungood.
(There are other examples, but that's the largest one I can think of off the top of my head.)
For legal audio distribution via Bittorrent, check:
MusicFreaks.net, PhishHook... there's a few more, but I can't remember them off the top of my head.
I can only hope that the BBC will eventually use FLAC or some other lossless audio codec to distribute and preserve their archive for future generations!
Well, as anxious as I am to watch Dr. Who and the Tomorrow People (which I haven't seen in over two decades), I have to wonder what kind of financial impact this will have on the BBC.
What I read of this is that the BBC is going to put these up on the net, and hope people will pay for them anyways... somehow, I'm not perfectly certain it's going to work the way we want it to...
"Their focus would move away from commercial considerations to providing "public value", he said."
Moving away from commercial considerations? Are they moving away from having food on the table, too? I smell something fishy... a company, I don't care HOW well-intentioned, doesn't allow such a move unless it won't impact it's bottom line.
I will admit, one consideration mentioned, that this, being less quality than a DVD, would actually spur DVD sales.. in that respect, this would indeed be a fortuitous decision indeed... those who are curious will get to see what they're missing, and when they're hooked, they can go and buy the DVDs to see it in their full glory.
The Penguin Producer
The leftist Pacifica station here in Houston, KPFT has already done something like this. Since it went up about 6 weeks ago, www.kpftarchive.org"> has been serving all of the local, voluneer produced public affairs shows (about 10-12 hours worth a day) online for stream or download.
The shows are even available while they are being broadcast!
Doctor Who, Monty Python, Fawlty Towers, and Goon Shows to my hearts content! Something tells me their site won't be able to handle the load.
....this is WONDERFUL! That one of the world's largest boardcaster can see that sharing their library with the world enriches us all rather trying to squeeze every little shilling out every waveform (like Disney, for example) is wonderful.
These is what the digital revoluntion is about. Make all information free to all and we are are enriched. Let the dinosaurs at the MPAA/RIAA tremble and die.
Next is services, via self-replicating robots.
Then goods via replicators or assemblers.
Someday, money will be irrelevant to the human condition. We will all be born rich.
Although Blair is desperate to get rid of the BBC or to change its mandate to make it advertiser-funded (in no small part because it criticises "New Labour") any change made to the way the BBC operates or is funded would spell the end of one of the greatest organisations anywhere in the world.
The BBC can produce the programs they do, and report news in the way it does, because it answers to no-one. Not the UK government, not to sponsors, not to advertisers. It doesn't have to keep anyone happy. Think of this: How in-depth was the reporting of the M$ vs DoJ debacle on MSNBC? How in-depth was the reporting of AOHell's financial woes on CNN?
The BBC recently came under huge criticism for their claim that the UK's official government dossier on Iraq's WMD was "sexed up". In the viewer feedback section they had on this, at least half of the comments posted on the BBC's site were anti-BBC. Some were calling for it to be shutdown and disbanded. Can you imagine CNN doing the same?
I think the decision to open up their content archive to the public for free is truly wonderful. I think it also has business possibilities for the BBC. Would ISPs in the USA, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and other English-speaking countries get business from advertising a high-speed BBC content mirror? I think so. ISP pays the BBC to mirror their content = ISP gets more customers = BBC gets more money.
If the BBC's sale of DVDs and videos remained unchanged or even went up as a result, it would also put a final nail in the coffin of the MPAssA and RIAssA's arguments that: free download = doom, gloom, bankrupt artists = death of civilisation as we know it. The BBC has the might to compete with anyone on the world stage. Their public popularity is, and has been for many year, the envy of every other media company in existence. The RIAssA and MPAssA would not have a leg to stand on should the BBC come out in favour (backed up by figures, of course) of making content freely-available.
Now, where do I get that OC43 connection from?
Windows Tweaks
Hey, that headline was terribly misleading :(
--
Are you a Chipotle Fan?
While I applaud the BBC for this attempt to make its archives available, I wonder if they have truly considered the actual costs of distribution. Leaving aside broadband connectivity costs (something that's been considered elsewhere) I am curious as to how they are going to negotiate the retransmission rights for all this archival stock. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation did a feasibility study into this as part of their preparation for digital television and found the costs of renegotiating transmission rights for that intellectual property were more expensive than creating new television content. I imagine the internet would be even more expensive, as the penetration of internet is global, where broadcasting is geographically limited.
Thoughts on this anyone?
Many of us already support NPR or PBS, our public radio and television networks in the United States. Perhaps offering paid access to the same programming in digital formats could be a way to help fund these public resources. Being able to download and keep a copies of favorite television or radio broadcasts would be a real perk for paying subscribers.
"In particular, it will be about how public money can be combined with new digital technologies to transform everyone's lives."
Everywhere in hollywood, stars and middlemen, flunkies and directors, aging rockers and CEOs woke up screaming.
"No.. no, not the Internet! Don't put it ON the INTERNET AAAAHHHHHH, OUR CONTROL, OUR MARGINS! NO PEOPLE NEED USSSSSSSSSSSS!!"
You heartless British bastards.
Novel theory: Modern Man evolved from psychopath
The poor British public has been paying an exorbitant "tax" for years to pay for the Beeb, even as its quality has descended in to the latrine pit of slanted news.
So when we start listening to all this, raise a pint to our cousins across the pond!
Once again, Britain contributes rather than detracts from Western Civilization, and I thank them for it!
--TheGoldWater
Sellers: THree Gooons?
...free goons
..I wonder when the light will stop blinking.
Seacomb: No no
Milligan: Eh, I do not understand
Geldray: Your all dead.
Eccles: Ahhh is that why i havent been bothered with the taxes this year.
Moriarty: Shut Up Eccles
Eccles: SHUT UP ECCLES!
BlueBottle: Looking at hard drive (dot dot dot) and wondering when the light will stop a blinking
MajorBloodnock: Never, Never Tell you , not untill each and every All Leather Goon Show is resting on its platters!!
Sellers: So we have time for a quick one round the back?
(Sound of mad dash to the bottle)
(cue band)
Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap! Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap! Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap!
Furry cows moo and decompress.
Where the hell did I get that subject line from, that's what I want to know. Stupid automatic password-entering feature...
The BBC at its finest.
He looks like our current Prime Minister (Australia), which explains the Uglyness and the my automatic distrust of him. :-)
in my life God comes first.... but Linux is pretty high after that
Francis Smit
alright cats, lets creep
the fireball of milton street. ahh. its good to be alive..
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
If the bbc feels obliged to put it's archive online as an act of public service it rather highlights the way one of our other public institutions - the Ordnance Survey (http://www.ordsvy.gov.uk/) - seems more than happy to keep all it's data heavily restricted and screw every last penny our of anyone who wants to use it.
Also, what about the excellent Horizon - sorry, most of those programs are coproductions. The coproduction company would probably have to also agree.
What does this leave, I guess just the news. Which would still be fascinating and good for historians in particular. It would be great if some of the rest of the archives could be made available, but how could they do this without copyright issues.
See my journal, I write things there
Someone in the bbc knows about ogg vorbis, so I wouldn't count it out of the running.
http://support.bbc.co.uk/ogg/
-- hjw http://puzl.info/
Wow, I know real player is very intrusive but the majority of the users use Windows. Real works fine for them.
BBC is not obliged to put all its content online for free. But they are going to do it.
One should be happy about that itself. The amount of data it will put up will be massive.
And some of you guys can complain that its available only in Real player.
BBC has been using the Real format for sometime now and it works very nicely.
Why will they want to mess with it?
Something to think about is the bandwidth bills. It will cost a bombload.
I don't understand why they are putting it up for free. I for one am willing to pay 5 $ for about 3 hours of programs. Some programs like Horizon etc are available for 125 quid right now.
I don't want the quality of their programming to fall once they start offering content for free.
Paying a nominal price and getting quality is a better choice.
Bush is on fire and its not good for my lungs.
Over the years, BBC has gathered tons of live performances by everyone from Beatles to Rolling Stones to Pink Floyd to The Sisters of Mercy to Nirvana, most bootlegged to death, some never even broadcast.
As the archives are rehauled for putting online, some gems are sure to be discovered ("lost" footage of the archives comes up from time to time, this will be perfect time for it).
Live BBC sessions were started to be released officially (Led Zeppelin, Cream and others), but the releases in most cases are incomplete (for example, of the 275 songs Beatles performed for BBC only 52 were released on the 1994 "Live at the BBC" album).
I'm keeping my fingers no legal barriers will stop the music appearing online.
Andrius