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.

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...

How about Creative Commons

[JoaoPinheiro]

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

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).