In a speech on Sunday in Edinburgh, Greg Dyke, Director General of BBC, announced that they would make the Beeb’s vast archive freely available for digital download for non-commercial purposes, at least for those in the UK. The whole speech is well worth reading for pleasure of seeing a major media figure thoughtfully reflect on the need for the media to act for the social good.
For instance, this excerpt:
“We intend to allow parts of our programmes, where we own the rights, to be available to anyone in the UK to download so long as they don’t use them for commercial purposes.
Under a simple licensing system, we will allow users to adapt BBC content for their own use.
We are calling this the BBC Creative Archive.
When complete, the BBC will have taken a massive step forward in opening our content to all – be they young or old, rich or poor.
But then it’s not really our content – the people of Britain have paid for it and our role should be to help them use it.”
