BBC Presents An Open News Archive

Cus writes "The BBC have opened a section of their news archive under a Creative Archive license. Nearly 80 items covering the last 50 years are available, with the full list available on their site. Paul Gerhardt the project director of the Creative Archive License Group, from the official announcement: 'The BBC's telling of those stories is part of our heritage, and now that the UK public have the chance to share and keep them we're keen to know how they will be used.'"

Comments

What about the rest of us

[JonN]

"and now that the UK public have the chance to share and keep them"

And the rest of us don't?

However on to more important ideas, I believe this is another great step forward in opening knowledge to everyone, such as when Princeton's collection of more than 10,000 works will be categorized, posted for world to study. These are pieces of work and acadamia that everyone should have access to, as it expands minds and ideas, and pushes us forward, intellectually.

Re:What about the rest of us

[hug_the_penguin]

UK The Creative Archive content is made available to internet users for use within the UK.

Looks that way doesn't it? Given the BBC has a definite worldwide presence, would it not make sense for them to open it up to other countries as well? It's a bizarre choice, just like they used DRM on the iMP service to lock it into the UK. I can see they don't want to waste bandwidth on non licence paying countries, but either stop broadcasting BBC World and pull out of the world altogether or just do the sensible thing and let other countries share the archive.

Re:What about the rest of us

[LordSnooty]

It's a very, very good point. Also note that stations like BBC World, America, Prime etc etc are all advertiser-funded, not paid for by the licence fee.

Re:What about the rest of us

[camperslo]

The problem is that there are many people in the UK who would love to end the TV license system of funding the BBC

After seeing what's happened to tv in the U.S., I hope for your sake it doesn't happen. At least not if it means running advertising. With the exception of public television, news coverage and programming here have been getting worse and worse.

Advertising is pushing many things that are not in the public interest, and the media news barely covers the negative impacts of those companies/products. There are no longer any limits on how much advertising stations can air. Some of the smaller stations where I am run infomercials more than half of the time. Many half-hour long infomercials are aired, many of them are promoting scammers. Many drug companies run ads at a time when we're spending more money than ever on drugs and it is driving health insurance costs to where many individuals and even businesses cannot afford them. There is heavy advertising for products made in China even though there is a huge trade deficit. Between the operation and purchasing power of Wal-Mart, a huge distributor of mostly Chinese products, many retail and manufacturing businesses have closed costing many jobs.
TV ads promote many very unhealthy and relatively expensive foods at a time when many Americans are grossly overweight and still more suffer from eating unhealthy processed junk. Even children are developing diabetes from bad eating habits.
Political corruption is a serious problem. Much of the bad legislation that it passed gets little public outcry because the media don't put enough importance on it. Much of the corruption of politicians starts when they have to resort to funding from the wrong sources to wage competitive (usually nasty and misleading) political ads. Of course its the media getting all that money. If the media didn't run paid political ads things wouldn't be as bad. The media is all about consumption. Frequent ads promote credit cards with incredibly nasty contracts, at a time when the average family has close to $10,000 in credit card debt. While there is some coverage of global warming and environmental issues, they fail to take politicians to task for bad legislation, and continue promoting things that are bad for the environment. Broadcast ownership has been largely taken over by huge corporations. The old limit of 7 AM, 7 FM, and 7 TV stations by one owner is gone. Clear Channel owns over 1000 tv and radio stations. This leads to more political corruption, less diverse news, and far less diverse exposure of music nationally. It is pretty much all or nothing exposure for musicians now.

The media mentions computer malware but never points to alternate operating systems for relief.

Many TV programs are now so-called reality shows. Many are produced at low cost using members of the public. Basically anything cheap to produce that gets a large audience is aired. An early episode of Fear Factor, had contestants eating animal penises in their competition for the prize.
The media tend to all focus on some "big" story, while ignoring far more important things.
For instance when they were all preoccupied with coverage of the jury selection for Michael Jackson here, the BBC had coverage of about 60% of the Iraqi oil money that was overseen by the US to be used for reconstruction being unaccounted for. (If the BBC hadn't had this on the web, I would have never known. I haven't been able to find that story again though. Hmmmm)
Most tv in the U.S. is very bad, at least we still have PBS (public television). It includes some programming from the BBC also. US radio is even worse than tv. The audio is overprocessed, most of the programming comes from satellite sources and computer automation (which inserts local-sounding announcers). Half of the time if there's a major power outage, fire or other problem in the medium sized community I'm in, none of the stations will be talking about it while it is happening. Small-market news operation

The BBC and Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

So much for the BBC committment to open standards... has anyone seen and tried the BBCs much vaunted trial for on demand content?

Microsoft Windows DRM infected crap that expires after seven days, combined with a BitTorrent client. It's almost like they threw some money at a Visual Basic firm and who scripted a BT ActiveX control (written by someone else natch) and Microsoft's Media Player.

The result is a totally closed system that demands you pay Microsoft for the right to watch programmes that you've already paid for with the license fee. What a sack of crap...

Re:The BBC and Microsoft

[hug_the_penguin]

I did launch a complaint against this a while ago as a concerned licencepayer, and i will be following it up with complaints to OFCOM and going to town with the press as well. Under the Freedom of Information act, the BBC is required to answer any questions I may have relevant to the spending of money, schedule selection etc. and so it will be interesting to see just how much has been spent on this tacky DRM system, why they feel the need to lock it into the UK, how they feel they can justify breaking numerous laws regarding rebroadcast (i've researched that quite heavily) and how this fits into their so called `platform neutrality policy`

Berlin Wall footage

[Winlin]

I was just thinking the other day about some of the most memorable events I have watched on the news, and the one I most wished I had taped more of was the Wall being swarmed by those happy crowds. And now the BBC has given me a late Xmas present:)
    Those were the days...when you turned on the news to see what new GOOD stuff had happened since you last watched.

Re:Berlin Wall footage

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but the question is, does the footage include David Hasselhoff standing on a raised platform singing Looking For Freedom, while wearing a leather jacket adorned by Christmas tree lights?

Seriously. Not only did it happen, but the song was #1 in Germany for five weeks. I know this sounds like a joke, but it's really true. Use Google if you don't believe me.

Fantastic idea, I hope they expand on it...

[Aphrika]

I had a quick flick through what's there and it's currently mostly MS Encarta kind of material: those landmark events that put the last 50 years on the map. So in a way it's great as an additional resource for school projects and that kind of thing. However, I can't help but think that the clips are each like islands - there's so much more that the BBC could offer around each clip - a bit like their On This Day section which I absolutely love.

I can't but help think that if history began 50 years ago, the BBC would be the best record of it. Over time, the information the BBC collects and stores will become more relevant and more complete than most archives out there, and the fact that they're opening it up for use is great. My only fear is that they'll stop with the 'big' stuff - the Encarta style stuff we're seeing here.

The other interesting point is: if there are x new organisations in the world collecting, collating and storing y amount of information(*) each on a minute by minute basis, is there a possibility that Google(**) would cease to be able to deal with the capacity? Currently it indexes what it can see, but what about the millions and millions of pages, articles, scripts, reports, audio and video recordings that are not online? People I've met that work at the BBC assure me that they have access to tools that 'put Google to shame' when cross-referencing information (I'd love to know more about this if any Beeb employees would like to reply).

I digress, in any case this is a good thing. Free information is a good thing...

(*) Important to note that Google just indexes what's there, rather than it being an information supplier.
(**) Can we coin a Law describing the point in a thread when Google is first mentioned in a Slashdot thread? Goodot's Law?

Re:And yet their DRM...

[hug_the_penguin]

And when I travel on business? I'm buggered, non? This is going to affect british people who travel. And do I stop paying my licence when i travel? I don't think so....

Re:YES!

[gowen]

He who controls the past, controls the future.
We are at war with Eurasia. We have always been at war with Eurasia.
Eurasia had proven links to the 9/11 evildoers.

Thanks BBC, now where are the torrents?

[Willuknight]

This is wonderful, i can already see an entire range of clips i want to watch, yet when i click, i see a horrid "brits only" sign... Anyone posted torrents yet ?