12 April 2005
The BBC Creative Archives Project, first announced by the former BBC Director-General Greg Dyke at the Edinburgh TV Festival in August 2003, is set to be launched very soon. Through this initiative, millions of hours worth of radio and 500,000 television records will be made available online allowing people to download multimedia clips for non-commercial use.
The idea of Creative Archive project further took shape in an expert consultation in May 2004, involving representatives from 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.
BBCs Charter Review, which outlines the public service broadcasters plan of building a new broadcasting infrastructure that would reach every household, delineates how the project will operate:
53% of internet users download content for their own compilations. For the first time, the BBC will open up its treasure chest of programmes to the public who own it and make its contents available to individuals and to families for learning, for creativity and for pleasure. Two-thirds of current and prospective broadband users say they are interested in the Creative Archive service.
The BBC Creative Archive will establish a pool of high-quality content which can be legally drawn on by collectors, enthusiasts, artists, musicians, students, teachers and many others, who can search and use this material non-commercially. And where exciting new works and products are made using this material, we will showcase them on BBC services.
Initially we will release factual material, beginning with extracts from natural history programmes. As demand grows, we are committed to extending the Creative Archive across all areas of our output.
We are developing this unique initiative in partnership with other major public and commercial audio-visual collections in the UK, including leading museums and libraries. Our ambition is to help establish a common resource which will extend the publics access while protecting the commercial rights of intellectual property owners.
Commending the ambitious plan, Prof Lessig said 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
If the vision proves a reality, Britain will become a centre for digital creativity, and will drive many markets in broadband deployment and technology that digital creativity will support.
In its pilot phase, a limited selection of archival records on natural history, archeology, BBC Parliament and BBC orchestral production will be uploaded on internet. During this period, set to run for the next 18 months, the project will be reviewed for further improvement of its service.
Rather than simply making the archival audio and video records live, the project aims to foster learning, creativity and innovativeness among the public, especially the young audiences. BBC has partnered with Channel 4 and British Film Institute to frame a multimedia public distribution mechanism, called Creative Archive Licence, based upon the existing Creative Commons framework.
Using the new flexible licensing scheme, the audience will be able to create novel content, home movies, music videos, school projects, and so on by storing in personal collection, manipulating and sharing contents downloadable from the creative archives website. Channel 4, a publicly owned media company, aims to engage young people in such activities.
Also, the creative archive license will compliment to BBCs Interactive Media Player (IMP), a media player software to run multimedia content on internet.
Literary holdings of BFI, notably its old newsreel footage, early adaptations of Shakespeare and out of copyright silent comedies are expected to be released using the scheme. Similarly, the Open University, unveils its plan to initially offer five hours of video footage under the new licensing scheme.
As most of the UK homes are already connected with high-speed broadband lines, Creative Archives content can reach to most of the public.
(by Atanu Garai)
References:
Creative licence
Full text of Greg Dyke's Edinburgh International TV Festival speech.
BBC Creative Archive pioneers new approach to public access rights in digital age
BBC Charter Review
|
