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

Two questions?

[Flywheels of Fire]

From WS on TFA:

The Creative Archive is a product of this exciting era of digital media and the internet. It's possible because of innovations in technology and content licensing, along with editorial vision. However, it remains a challenging and complex project with many unknowns. To help us understand the best way to deliver the Creative Archive, we have decided to start with a pilot project.

And that in English means?

I wonder how long before the IFPI gets into the show.

Europeans, listen up

[Anonymous Coward]

When will you ever learn that copyrights and patents are the way forward?

Re:Europeans, listen up

[rovingeyes]

When will you ever learn that copyrights and patents are the way forward?

When American's start suing their ass off

Only for UK

[m_dob]

This service is only intended for people who have IPs in the UK. Finally, a reason to be proud to be a British geek...

Re:Only for UK

[r4bb1t]

Super. Another way to prevent me from getting (at least, in my opinion) less biased news from outside the US. I try to read/watch/listen to the BBC as much as I can here in the States, given that the US media doesn't so much cover the rest of the world. I would have looked forward to being able to sift through the archives to see what I've been missing.

Re:Only for UK

[gowen]

A rip-off of rockford, a french cheese and, of course, vastly superior to blue stilton.

Right... I'm gonna take cheese advice from a man who can't spell Roquefort.

And whoo seems unaware that Stilton and Roquefort are made from cow's milk and sheep's milk, respectively. And because of that, do not actually taste terribly similar (roquefort is considerably sharper, and crumblier). Me, I prefer Shropshire Blue and Saint Agur.

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.

Playing to the Long Tail

[jessmeister]

This really plays into The Long Tail scenario that is so often spoken of these days. I wonder how long before the major portals starts making deals with these owners of massive amounts of content. When a revenue model is established around this release of content we will see things really pick up. I am betting on instream advertising as the way they do it.

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

[TobascoKid]

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

Because the majority, if not all, the content has been payed for by the British taxpayer. Why should the taxpayer foot the bill for somebody's commercial use of the material?

However, the BBC and C4 already have extensive commercial operations - the idea being that commercial users would pay for what they use and then that money gets sent back into the public services.

Re:Very ex-Catherdra

[Morosoph]

Because the majority, if not all, the content has been payed for by the British taxpayer. Why should the taxpayer foot the bill for somebody's commercial use of the material?

Because the taxpayer gets extra utility for no extra funds, which means, of course, that they don't foot the bill, for the bill's already been paid!

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.

But what about satire

[j()nty]

From the summary

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!

But if I want to satirise a piece covered by this license the original author could get all huffy and claim that I am defaming them.

Let the lawyers arguments begin...

Makes Me Proud

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I'm so proud to be British at seeing this news.

Also proud to be paying my fee to the BBC. The quality and integrity of our media is improved and upheld over and over again because of their unique position and charter.

I wonder what formats will be used to distribute it though - will it be Mpeg or perhaps the new system the BBC have been devloping? So long as it's not WMV or RealMedia like the BBC currently seem to offer then I'll be happy!

downloads will be limited to UK only

[Anonymous Coward]

Note that all the files will be restricted by IP. Meaning that outside the UK, we won't be able to download anything (without a UK based proxy)

from the faq: The Creative Archive will not be using DRM around the content. The BBC's pilot site will be using a technology called GEOIP filtering to ensure that content sourced directly from the BBC will only be available to UK citizens.

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.

Re:The influence of Open Source

[Anonymous Coward]

This is clearly down to the philosophy of Open Source (or however you like to phrase it, depends if you are RMS or not)

Have you ever actually LISTENED to what RMS is saying? The difference between open source and free software isn't in which words you use, there are actual, significant differences between the two philosophies.

Open source is about improving the quality of service through an open development model. Free software is about providing the user with freedom to do what they like with their software. There are overlaps, but they have different goals.

All you do when you refer to RMS' points as mere differences in phrasing is prove that you've heard the argument, but it went in one ear and out the other without you understanding it.

BBC Creative Archive reference articles

[Anonymous Coward]

Since Slashdot is visited mostly by Americans, I shall supply some reference articles discussing the BBC Creative Archive (which was basically an idea presented by BBC's ex-director general Greg Dike suggesting to regroup and distribute all of BBC's past, present and future media under the Creative Commons licence).

• The original press release;
• BBC Creative Archive to be based on Creative Commons;
• another detailed article.

A whole bunch of other articles are available.

#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.

Fantastic!

[The Dodger]

This is cool for two reasons. First, this is extending the concept of open source to content which, even if it has been done before, has never been done on this large a scale.

Secondly, it's a step towards the BBC making their programming available for download. The BBC produce a huge amount of programming and, while they make a fair amount of money out of selling DVDs, videos (stuff like Blackadder and Doctor Who) and tapes/CDs (e.g. the HHGTTG radio series), there's a heck of a lot of other stuff that it doesn't make commercial sense to publish in that manner - e.g. programmes like Horizon and Top Gear ).

I bet the biggest problem with putting programmes like those on the Archive will be the licencing terms for stuff like incidental music and events rights (like for sports and so on), which are presumably all currently based on the concept of broadcast, with extra payments for repeats. I wonder if they'll have to strip out anything that's not the original, complete creation of the contributing organisations.

D.

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.

Europeans ahead in Sonny Bono race to bottom

[tepples]

The European Union had a copyright term extension years before the United States had the Bono Act. In fact, the EU term extension directive re-copyrighted works that had already entered the public domain, unlike the Bono Act.

Re:P2P + UK only ?

[aslate]

They have a FAQ entry saying this:

I heard that Creative Archive will be using P2P technology. Isn't that illegal?

So they are using P2P methods of distribution.