Forum Moderators: goodroi
[news.bbc.co.uk...]
---Mr Highfield said the BBC would not be hunting down all BBC-copyrighted clips already uploaded by YouTube members - although it would reserve the right to swap poor quality clips with the real thing, or to have content removed that infringed other people's copyright, like sport, or that had been edited or altered in a way that would damage the BBC's brand. "We don't want to be overzealous, a lot of the material on YouTube is good promotional content for us," he said. ---
That's absolutely astonishing. There's a vast, vast amount of BBC material already on there including entire series of very popular programmes which are readily available on DVD. For the BBC to officially say that they're going to turn a blind eye to all of that is incredible, it's a completely different attitude to the one previously taken by large copyright owners.
Even more interesting is the open admission that pirated material can sometimes promote series instead of damage their sales.
The BBC also has a website set up that lets you do whatever you want to within reason with some of its content ( [backstage.bbc.co.uk...] ).
As the BBC is publically funded I suspect that it would be happy to share all its tv content in any suitable way, with the exception of programs bought in that come with usage restrictions in the contract signed.
But they seem to be very positive towards new technologies, compared with most media companies to who seemed to be frightened sensless when anything new emerges.
But it almost certainly does help that the BBC is a public broadcaster and not commercial, that must free them up a lot to try new things.
I just wonder if this will have an effect on commercial broadcasters, if BBC programme ratings are unaffected or even rise after material is placed for free on YouTube.
The major difference here is that whereas access and usage of archival material under Creative Commons was restricted to UK, now the proverbial picture has been broadened.
Syzygy
Ultimately, someone has to pay for all that faboulous BBC material.
