British Groups Launch Creative Archive License

icerunner wrote in to mention that several British institutions have banded together to create the Creative Archive License. From the announcement: "BBC, Channel 4, British Film Institute and OU (Open University) issue call to action for Creative Archive Licence. Media and arts organisations, universities and libraries have today been urged to join an innovative new scheme designed to give the public access to footage and sound from some of the largest film, television and radio archives in the UK, as well as specially commissioned material." We've previously covered this as The BBC Creative Archive.

Comments

Copyrights...

[timtwobuck]

Isn't this how copyrights in the US are supposed to work? Won't the same thing happen in the UK that happens over here, some large corportation (read Disney) keeps on spending and spending on lawyers to have the laws changed so their mascot can't be used in explicit material

How about Creative Commons

[JoaoPinheiro]

Creative Archive = (Creative Commons) - (Derivate Works) + (UK Only) + (No Endorsement)

Re:How about Creative Commons

[GigsVT]

Creative commons lets you pick and choose which elements you want to use, this license is an all or nothing thing, but it was obviously inspired by creative commons.

Another step

[sellin'papes]

The next step is to license the archives under the Creative Commons license so that the footage in the archive could be altered by anyone and then recirculated.

Very ex-Catherdra

[ites]

It's fine for licensing an archive that is unlikely to change.

But if the intention is to create a living culture, restrictions on use are counter-productive.

What the license says is "you can use our stuff". What a really far-sighted license says is "here are a set of rules for creating stuff. Oh, and our stuff falls under these rules too."

For instance, why ban commercial use? To prevent competition? Sure... but competition is what makes the living culture.

It'd be far more valuable to allow commercial use of - e.g. old BBC broadcasts - so long as the vendors also made their derived products freely available under the same conditions.

Re:Very ex-Catherdra

[gowen]

It'd be far more valuable to allow commercial use of - e.g. old BBC broadcasts

The BBC makes an enormous amount of money repackaging and reselling its old programs. There's simply no way they'd allow others to undercut them on stuff they've spent a lot of money on producing (and since we Brits are paying for the BBC, I support them thoroughly on this.)

I think their ideas are pretty well thought out (and not massively dissimilar from how Lucas allows his universe to be used for non-commercial fan films).

Re:Very ex-Catherdra

[ites]

If the archive is open for free access, no-one is actually going to pay a premium for commercial versions of it.

People will pay for additional services provided over and on top of the existing material. This is what I call a "living culture". But many people won't provide such services gratis. There has to be at least the possibility of reward.

So banning commercial reuse is actually pointless - because the free archive is already a flat competitor to the Beeb's existing commercial sale of those programmes - and counter-productive - because it turns many potential contributors away.

Re:Very ex-Catherdra

[gowen]

will without the slightest hesitation be spread across the four corners of the internets.

Well, yeah. But anything they release on DVD -- even with the most restrictive licenses you can imagine -- will get spread to the four corners of the internets. Ask the MPAA.

There's no way they can control illegitimate copying and distribution, but that's not actually the issue here.

Rip It Mix It TV (shudder)

[DumbSwede]

I like the idea of free access to media. I'm not sure about the idea of Cuisinarting this stuff into derivative materials. Don't get me wrong I'm not opposed to creativity, early sound sampling in music was used to great advantage, but it seems like we've entered an age of endless recycling when it comes to media. Even when not reusing the original material directly (as is so common in music) we are re-shooting it. I just watched Dennis Quaid in "Flight of the Phoenix" last night. Wow, here is a remake that didn't need to be. The original was much better. There was nothing even approaching the famous maniacal laughing scene when it is discovered the engineer designs model airplanes. But I digress.

Perhaps the idea is to encourage independent documentary style work, but I still shudder at the idea of hundreds of avant-garde like film stuttering remixes of old stuff. Call me old fashioned but I just want to see good stories told in film and video. I hate "Reality TV" and now I may have to suffer through the advent of "Rip It Mix It TV"

Hopefully people will limit them selves to intermittent flashes of things like train-wrecks and other visual punctuation marks with this stuff, but it is unclear to me where this is all going.

One thing does seem certain -- production costs for creating quality content should continue to drop for independents. At some point big budget TV and Hollywood will have a problem keeping up, and this I am for.

#4: No Endorsement and No derogatory use?

[adamfranco]

4. No Endorsement and No derogatory use
The Creative Archive content is provided to allow you to get creative with content, not for campaigning, soapboxing or to defame others! So don't use it to promote political, charitable, or other campaigning purposes and remember to treat others and their work in the way that you'd expect them to treat you and your work...with respect!

This license seems pretty decent except for this part. Who gets to decide what is derogatory or an endorsement?

For instance, lets say I am trying to raise money for a nonprofit program to get health care workers to poor women in rural Africa. As part of my fund-raising campaigning I do a screening of some BBC documentary from the archive on health care in rural Africa and ask people for donations. This seems like a pretty legitimate use of the material, but may prohibited by section #4.

Now, what if I had a link to this supposed documentary from my example organizations website. Would that be endorsement? I view it as public education of the plight of a certain people that I wish to help. It would aid my position for getting donations though.

Re:#4: No Endorsement and No derogatory use?

[gowen]

As part of my fund-raising campaigning I do a screening of some BBC documentary from the archive on health care in rural Africa and ask people for donations

versus

Don't use it to promote political, ***charitable*** or other campaigning purposes

Seems pretty unambiguous to me.

Don't ask for money. Don't ask for votes.

Re:downloads will be limited to UK only

[Anonymous Coward]

Because the Brits already paid for it in license fees. What's it like having a peanut for a brain?

Re:Confused

[Neeex]

Of course, it's perfectly possible to live in Britain and not have a TV licence - as long as you don't watch TV.

And limiting access by IP is dangerous. As a result of my ISP buying its broadband wholesale from a large European business ISP, I'm living in England, but my IP addresses always seem to come from the German address space.

Proxy, anybody?

[Anonymous Coward]

Since this will only available to us Brits how long will it be before a whole host of proxies spring up to supply this content to the rest of the world?

Imagine using Squid to download The Blue Planet.