FreeCulture UK has created an open letter to the head of the BBC's Creative Archive project, calling on him to accelerate and open up the archive project. This is a project that, when announced, promised to clear and redistribute the millions of hours of video and audio that the BBC had commissioned or created with public money, using a Creative Commons or similar license. The idea is that Britain paid to have this stuff made, and leaving it to gather dust in some offline archive does them no good (I wrote a paper about this for the Department of Culture, Media and Sport).
The Archive started with a bang. It was included in the "charter renewal" that gives the BBC its marching order for the next ten years. The highest levels of management at the Beeb made public announcements promising to deliver it.
But more than a year later, the visible progress of the Archive is pretty slow. Mostly, the BBC seems to be clearing short clips from "factual" programs, not giving us the stock we need to roll our own Doctor Who episodes. They're using a pretty restrictive license, too.
FreeCulture UK hopes to change that by gathering signatures from BBC license payers and other interested parties who want to see this given greater priority at the Beeb, and to see it returned to the simple, grandiose vision it started with: clear everything, put it online.
We wish to commend you and your colleagues on the steady progress of the archive over the last year. The Creative Archive is a wonderful idea and one whose value is already being demonstrated with projects such as the Radio 1/1Xtra "Rip, Mix and Win" competition. However such activities have only scratched the surface of the Archive's vast potential and much yet remains to be done if that potential is to be properly realised. In particular we would like to draw your attention to the set of suggestions laid out below which we believe would greatly increase the value of the Archive to the British public.
(Thanks, Rufus!)
