Free love in swingin’ London
/ Oct. 17, 2008 / 12:58 p.m.
Noticed in the comments on this post about the BBC’s (very tentative) open-source initiative: Auntie Beeb is actually releasing its album reviews via a Creative Commons license. In other words, they’re willingly giving other web sites (or publications) the right to reprint their reviews, free of charge.
The BBC had years ago announced its intentions to use CC on some archival material, but this is for brand new content the BBC presumably just paid for, either via a staffer’s salary or a freelancer. Has there been another big media titan who has embraced Creative Commons that much?
Tom Scott, the project lead on the BBC’s /music project, tells me that the CC content they’re publishing already has some takers, including Channel 4 who are reusing it on their own music pages (although I don’t have a link to hand for the Channel 4 page yet).
One thing I’m learning in my project to document the BBC’s efforts at openness is that there’s a lot more work being done to open up the broadcaster’s assets than you’d imagine: several new open source technology standards are being developed at BBC labs, lots of open source code comes from developers in various departments and the main obstacle to the freeing of BBC content is the various intractable rights regimes. A funny thing about the CC music reviews: one of Britain’s other national broadcasters, Channel 4, is already using the BBC’s CC reviews on its own web pages: how’s that for interdependence!