[Reader-list] Pay or free? Newspaper archives not ready for open Web... yet

[tripta chandola]

BBC is releasing it's creative archive under creative commons license. 
cheers
t. 
Press Releases
BBC Creative Archive pioneers new approach to public access rights in
digital age
Category : BBC
Date : 26.05.2004
 Printable version 

The BBC outlined the broader scope of its Creative Archive initiative
for the first time today with the first meeting of a consultative
external panel including other broadcasters and public sector
organisations.

Panel members include Channel 4; the British Film Institute; the
British Library; ITN; JISC (the Joint Information Systems Committee);
The National Archives; the Natural History Museum; the Museums,
Libraries & Archives Council; senior figures from the independent
production industry; BBC Worldwide and Stanford Law Professor Lawrence
Lessig, chair of the Creative Commons project.

The BBC Creative Archive, first announced by former BBC
Director-General, Greg Dyke at the Edinburgh Television Festival in
August 2003, launches in autumn 2004 and will allow people to download
clips of BBC factual programmes from bbc.co.uk for non-commercial use,
keep them on their PCs, manipulate and share them, so making the BBC's
archives more accessible to licence fee payers.

However, the initiative also has broader public service ambitions to
pioneer a new approach to public access rights in the digital age.

Paul Gerhardt, Joint Director, BBC Creative Archive explains: "We want
to work in partnership with other broadcasters and public sector
organisations to create a public and legal domain of audio visual
material for the benefit of everyone in the UK.

"We hope the BBC Creative Archive can establish a model for others to
follow, providing material for the new generation of digital creatives
and stimulating the growth of the creative culture in the UK."

Access to the BBC Creative Archive will be based on the Creative
Commons model already working in the United States
(www.creativecommons.org) which proposes a middle way to rights
management, rather than the extremes of the pure public domain or the
reservation of all rights.

Using the internet, it offers rights holders the opportunity to
release audio visual content for viewing, copying and sharing but with
some rights reserved, such as commercial exploitation rights.

So, in the case of audio visual material, the public are allowed
increased access but the exploitation of the same material in the
commercial arena by rights holders is protected.

The US experience suggests that this model can benefit rights holders
by increasing the size of the market for their work.

"Should we be successful with our approach," says Paula Le Dieu, Joint
Director, BBC Creative Archive, "we may be able to release, over time,
more programme genres – sport, music, drama – and possibly longer
formats to the public.

"We can build on the initial factual clips offered at launch by the
BBC Creative Archive and offer a new public asset drawn from broadcast
content for the whole UK."

Professor Lawrence Lessig, chair of the Creative Commons project,
adds: "The announcement by the BBC of its intent to develop a Creative
Archive has been the single most important event in getting people to
understand the potential for digital creativity, and to see how such
potential actually supports artists and artistic creativity.

"If the vision proves a reality, Britain will become a centre for
digital creativity, and will drive the many markets – in broadband
deployment and technology – that digital creativity will support."

The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.







On Mon, 21 Feb 2005 16:19:20 +0100, Patrice Riemens <patrice at xs4all.nl> wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 21, 2005 at 02:56:16PM +0530, Adreesh Katyal wrote:
> > Pay or free? Newspaper archives not ready for open Web... yet
> >
> > Wouldn't it be great if Google searches brought up every past
> > newspaper article? But publishers aren't interested in opening up old
> > articles if it would hurt their value in lucrative after-market
> > database sales.
> 
> It is not only newspapers publishers who are reluctant to make their
> (past) content available online for free, journalists, especially the
> 'free lance' ones, saw the web from the very beginning both as a threat to
> their rights and as an opportunity to milk out further revenue,
> vigourously argumenting that a newspaper's website constitutes a 'new
> publication' for which they should be remunerated over and again.
> 
> All this clearly shows the need for a new economic model for financing
> 'content' - especially remunerating creators - if we want to get out of
> the current dog eat dog quagmire. But I am not very optimistic, given the
> distinctly 'petit bourgeois' mindframe (aka 'entrepreneurial syndrome')
> of an unfortunately large majority of these 'creators', particularly the
> modestly succesfull ones. (Am I stiring up a controversy here? ;-)
> 
> cheers from Istanbul, patrizio & Diiiinoooos!
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