Smashing idea from the Beeb.


I came across this whilst ‘blog browsing’ and it seems to me to be a radical approach fro the BBC to address copyright issues for all the right reasons. Put simply, the BBC makes available to Brits its archive of things that it has commissioned (copyrights cleared) to re-mix and reuse, and generally play around with for non-commercial aims.

They have a creative archive licence that is something like a creative commons licence but not quite as open. Still not bad eh?

3 thoughts on “Smashing idea from the Beeb.

  1. Gina

    Pete and Hamish and I went to a presentation by a US lawyer, who was in the UK to launch the creative commons licence here. Great to see the BBC moving towards that. Things have to change don’t they? Seems crazy to have a whole new world of creative possiblity online and to be held back by copyright.

    It was common for composers to nick each other’s tunes and fiddle round with them all through the development of western music as we know it now. It was only with the onset of capitalism and the 20thC that things began to change. I’m sure it stopped a lot of creativity and expression!

  2. Waylon Kenning

    Have you seen the website ? It’s a place where people can upload an infinite amount of media forever. It’s backed up by the Internet Archive, so I don’t see it being an overnight thing. While it’s up to the individual user as to the license they use on the material, there’s a lot of interesting content out there that will only get larger. Perhaps some other interesting content is at the Internet Archive (, such as the Prelinger Movie Archive. I always used to enjoy showing students WW2 movies produced at that time to show students how people were thinking at that time.

  3. Stephen Powell

    Hiya Waylon, thanks for these suggestions. Certainly there is so much content that could and should be made available, but it does requires the will!


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