One of you chaps has a contact in the BBC, I believe.
I've been thinking about the BBC and some of its news/factual content and whether they might be willing to release some of it under CC-BY-SA and therefore appropriate to embed in Wikipedia.
Obviously a lot of content needs to remain under restrictive licenses; a lot of output (most of it, I would guess) is produced by independent companies and one can't expect the Beeb to start renegotiating with them.
But it strikes me that they produce a lot of in-house stuff that simply won't have much resale/repeat value and for which I don't think (but I am willing to be challenged on this) they would need to worry about royalties and rights.
There's also the argument that "due to the unique way the BBC is funded" some of their content *should* be more available to the public and to release some content (content of little to no future value) under a more sharing-friendly licence would be the right thing to do.
I intend to look and listen to BBC content more carefully to pick out which specific programmes are independently produced and which are in-house, so I'll be vague in what I'm going to say next, not mentioning specific programme titles:
They produce a lot of output that relates to specific political issues, they have interviews with public figures, they cover science topics and produce other content that would be educational.
So I'm wondering if our BBC insider could maybe use his contact to propose CC-BY-SA licensing for some content and see what their reaction is. Perhaps before that's done though it would be well to have a list of, say, five illustrative examples of what we'd be talking about. I foresee a slight problem in doing this; the BBC puts content online but it is usually available for a relatively short period, so if we wanted to *link* to these examples the content might be gone by the time our contact is approached. I'm not sure what a good solution to that problem is. It may just be a case of noting very carefully the date of transmission, programme title, channel and the 'timestamp'(?) of any individual segment we're inspired by.
In summary, I propose:
1. That we, over the next seven days, all take note of programmes that are not specifically credited as being produced by independent companies. 2. Consider whether what we've watched/listened to would be good for Wikimedia projects and report likely candidates to this thread.
Having done that:
3. Think about how we can present a case to the BBC for some CC-BY-SA licensing.
I'm just imagining some really great stuff being made available to Commons and, once it's there, all the amazing things volunteers can do with it. What do you chaps think?
User:Bodnotbod (en:wp)
Perhaps the same day on which they announced a 50% reduction of the size of their website is not the best time...
-----Original Message----- From: wikimediauk-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikimediauk-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Bod Notbod Sent: 26 February 2010 3:22 PM To: wikimediauk-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: [Wikimediauk-l] BBC Content 'n' Commons
One of you chaps has a contact in the BBC, I believe.
I've been thinking about the BBC and some of its news/factual content and whether they might be willing to release some of it under CC-BY-SA and therefore appropriate to embed in Wikipedia.
Obviously a lot of content needs to remain under restrictive licenses; a lot of output (most of it, I would guess) is produced by independent companies and one can't expect the Beeb to start renegotiating with them.
But it strikes me that they produce a lot of in-house stuff that simply won't have much resale/repeat value and for which I don't think (but I am willing to be challenged on this) they would need to worry about royalties and rights.
There's also the argument that "due to the unique way the BBC is funded" some of their content *should* be more available to the public and to release some content (content of little to no future value) under a more sharing-friendly licence would be the right thing to do.
I intend to look and listen to BBC content more carefully to pick out which specific programmes are independently produced and which are in-house, so I'll be vague in what I'm going to say next, not mentioning specific programme titles:
They produce a lot of output that relates to specific political issues, they have interviews with public figures, they cover science topics and produce other content that would be educational.
So I'm wondering if our BBC insider could maybe use his contact to propose CC-BY-SA licensing for some content and see what their reaction is. Perhaps before that's done though it would be well to have a list of, say, five illustrative examples of what we'd be talking about. I foresee a slight problem in doing this; the BBC puts content online but it is usually available for a relatively short period, so if we wanted to *link* to these examples the content might be gone by the time our contact is approached. I'm not sure what a good solution to that problem is. It may just be a case of noting very carefully the date of transmission, programme title, channel and the 'timestamp'(?) of any individual segment we're inspired by.
In summary, I propose:
1. That we, over the next seven days, all take note of programmes that are not specifically credited as being produced by independent companies. 2. Consider whether what we've watched/listened to would be good for Wikimedia projects and report likely candidates to this thread.
Having done that:
3. Think about how we can present a case to the BBC for some CC-BY-SA licensing.
I'm just imagining some really great stuff being made available to Commons and, once it's there, all the amazing things volunteers can do with it. What do you chaps think?
User:Bodnotbod (en:wp)
_______________________________________________ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediauk-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
On Fri, Feb 26, 2010 at 3:26 PM, Tom Holden tom.holden@economics.ox.ac.uk wrote:
Perhaps the same day on which they announced a 50% reduction of the size of their website is not the best time...
Oh dear.
I did actually catch a slither of the news and heard they were cutting down but I didn't realise it was going to be anything like that profound.
Damn.
I don't spend *much* time on BBC microsites but they're very good when I do. That's a shame.
Looking into it a bit more, you have to feel sorry for the Beeb sometimes; here they are having to report The Times reporting on the BBC :o/
On Fri, Feb 26, 2010 at 3:26 PM, Tom Holden tom.holden@economics.ox.ac.uk wrote:
Perhaps the same day on which they announced a 50% reduction of the size of their website is not the best time...
No problem, we'll just take the 50% they have to cut...
I all seriousness, this might be the perfect day. Not asking for scraps, but offering cooperation. When you have to cut millions of £, the prospect of sharing in the manually curated output of thousands of unpaid volunteers worldwide might suddenly seem attractive.
Magnus
Context below - yes, I'm top-posting.
Just to point out that, in the consultation form which I've just filled out in an attempt to save BBC 6 Music from the axe [1], there's a box to give comments about access to the BBC archive. I used this to give a brief advocacy for BBC content to be made available under a Creative Commons licence. Two birds, one stone (I live in hope).
Cormac
[1] < http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/consultations/departments/bbc/bbc-strategy-rev...
On 26 February 2010 15:26, Tom Holden tom.holden@economics.ox.ac.uk wrote:
Perhaps the same day on which they announced a 50% reduction of the size of their website is not the best time...
-----Original Message----- From: wikimediauk-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto: wikimediauk-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Bod Notbod Sent: 26 February 2010 3:22 PM To: wikimediauk-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: [Wikimediauk-l] BBC Content 'n' Commons
One of you chaps has a contact in the BBC, I believe.
I've been thinking about the BBC and some of its news/factual content and whether they might be willing to release some of it under CC-BY-SA and therefore appropriate to embed in Wikipedia.
Obviously a lot of content needs to remain under restrictive licenses; a lot of output (most of it, I would guess) is produced by independent companies and one can't expect the Beeb to start renegotiating with them.
But it strikes me that they produce a lot of in-house stuff that simply won't have much resale/repeat value and for which I don't think (but I am willing to be challenged on this) they would need to worry about royalties and rights.
There's also the argument that "due to the unique way the BBC is funded" some of their content *should* be more available to the public and to release some content (content of little to no future value) under a more sharing-friendly licence would be the right thing to do.
I intend to look and listen to BBC content more carefully to pick out which specific programmes are independently produced and which are in-house, so I'll be vague in what I'm going to say next, not mentioning specific programme titles:
They produce a lot of output that relates to specific political issues, they have interviews with public figures, they cover science topics and produce other content that would be educational.
So I'm wondering if our BBC insider could maybe use his contact to propose CC-BY-SA licensing for some content and see what their reaction is. Perhaps before that's done though it would be well to have a list of, say, five illustrative examples of what we'd be talking about. I foresee a slight problem in doing this; the BBC puts content online but it is usually available for a relatively short period, so if we wanted to *link* to these examples the content might be gone by the time our contact is approached. I'm not sure what a good solution to that problem is. It may just be a case of noting very carefully the date of transmission, programme title, channel and the 'timestamp'(?) of any individual segment we're inspired by.
In summary, I propose:
- That we, over the next seven days, all take note of programmes that are
not specifically credited as being produced by independent companies. 2. Consider whether what we've watched/listened to would be good for Wikimedia projects and report likely candidates to this thread.
Having done that:
- Think about how we can present a case to the BBC for some CC-BY-SA
licensing.
I'm just imagining some really great stuff being made available to Commons and, once it's there, all the amazing things volunteers can do with it. What do you chaps think?
User:Bodnotbod (en:wp)
Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediauk-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediauk-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
On 26 February 2010 15:21, Bod Notbod bodnotbod@gmail.com wrote:
But it strikes me that they produce a lot of in-house stuff that simply won't have much resale/repeat value and for which I don't think (but I am willing to be challenged on this) they would need to worry about royalties and rights.
I suspect it would not be as clean-cut as that. In an average 30 minute news bulletin for instance, I think there are often a few shots pulled in from the AP or similar agencies, or from partner broadcasters. Then in the sports segments the footage is often marked as "courtesy of" and then BSkyB, ESPN, ITV Sports or similar (depending on who paid for the rights). Therefore there is a strong possibility that it would still require a lot of sifting through the rights, which would increase the cost of doing it.
On Fri, Feb 26, 2010 at 4:12 PM, James Hardy wikimediauk@weeb.biz wrote:
I suspect it would not be as clean-cut as that. In an average 30 minute news bulletin for instance, I think there are often a few shots pulled in from the AP or similar agencies, or from partner broadcasters. Then in the sports segments the footage is often marked as "courtesy of" and then BSkyB, ESPN, ITV Sports or similar (depending on who paid for the rights). Therefore there is a strong possibility that it would still require a lot of sifting through the rights, which would increase the cost of doing it.
Fair points. News *audio* would be easier from that perspective then?
On 26 February 2010 15:21, Bod Notbod bodnotbod@gmail.com wrote:
I've been thinking about the BBC and some of its news/factual content and whether they might be willing to release some of it under CC-BY-SA and therefore appropriate to embed in Wikipedia.
Speaking from some slight internal knowledge - my work used to cross over very strongly with BBC stuff - there is basically a strong faction in the BBC that wants stuff to be available under free licenses, and a strong faction that doesn't. The latter is smaller but more powerful.
Getting a major news organisation to go for free content would be a MASSIVE WIN for free culture, even just the *teeny tiniest bit*.
So yeah, this has been floating around for at least the past five years ... no reason not to push it now as well.
- d.
On Sat, Feb 27, 2010 at 2:21 AM, Bod Notbod bodnotbod@gmail.com wrote:
There's also the argument that "due to the unique way the BBC is funded" some of their content *should* be more available to the public
One problem is their funding can be interpreted as meaning the content should only be made available to the public _in the UK_. Which led to the strange "UK only licence" at http://www.bbc.co.uk/creativearchive/licence/index.shtml http://www.bbc.co.uk/virtualrevolution/licences/digitalrevolution_licence.sh... is a second example of them making up their own license. They have also released some things under a real Creative Commons license, but as far as I know, only ever one of the "non-commercial" ones. eg http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/13946
Angela
On Fri, Feb 26, 2010 at 5:53 PM, Angela beesley@gmail.com wrote:
One problem is their funding can be interpreted as meaning the content should only be made available to the public _in the UK_. Which led to the strange "UK only licence" at http://www.bbc.co.uk/creativearchive/licence/index.shtml http://www.bbc.co.uk/virtualrevolution/licences/digitalrevolution_licence.sh... is a second example of them making up their own license. They have also released some things under a real Creative Commons license, but as far as I know, only ever one of the "non-commercial" ones. eg http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/13946
Thanks for the links, they've led me to some content I didn't know about.
A shame they've made their own licence. I suppose I understand the 'non-commercial' aspect. Still, perhaps they can be persuaded towards Wikipedia friendliness.
On 26/02/2010 19:21, Bod Notbod wrote:
A shame they've made their own licence. I suppose I understand the 'non-commercial' aspect. Still, perhaps they can be persuaded towards Wikipedia friendliness.
And BBC Worldwide are tasked (through the Charter) to make money from BBC content.
They even auctioned a few Daleks this week!!
Gordo
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