This letter was sent to the Department of Culture, Ministry and Sport, MP's, the Office of the e-Envoy, and the BBC.
14 June 2004
Dear *recipient*,
We write to express our support for the concept of a BBC Creative Archive, and our concerns relating to the form of its implementation.
Union for the Public Domain is a non-profit membership organisation, acting as an independent voice on intellectual property issues. As an organisation whose mission is to protect and enhance the public domain, we were elated to learn of the BBC’s announcement last August that it would make its sound and video archives available to the public in a freely accessible online archive. We also welcome the BBC’s recent embrace of the Creative Commons model.
We strongly support the rationale for the archive offered by Greg Dyke, then Director General of the BBC. He said, “[W]e are about to move into a second phase of the digital revolution, a phase which will be more about public than private value; about free, not pay services; and about inclusivity, not exclusion. In particular, it will be about how public money can be combined with new digital technologies to transform everyone's lives.”
Public funding enables many kinds of rich and valuable cultural production which cannot be efficiently achieved by the marketplace. Licence holders have already paid once for the creation of the material in the BBC archive; the benefit from that material can be maximised by allowing free and open access to it. Any other approach will simultaneously eviscerate that benefit and force the public to pay twice for the archive’s contents.
The BBC is in a unique position to demonstrate the social value of combining low-cost technologies with a rich collection of cultural, historic and educational artefacts. A BBC archive that is accessible to all and contains material that is freely available for non-commercial use will have a global impact on the debate over access in the digital age.
Recent reports that the BBC’s new chairman, Michael Grade, has set commercialisation of the archive as a top priority, make us concerned about the Archive’s implementation. We also know that the BBC’s plans for providing free material have come under fire from commercial broadcasters, and that the first stage of Archive implementation will only provide short three-minute clips.
We worry that these latest developments are indications that the actual implementation of the Creative Archive will not be truly free and accessible. For this reason we wish to express our strong support for an Archive that adheres to the following minimal guidelines:
- Material should be licenced under conditions that do not restrict any licence-payers from accessing, storing or sharing archive material for non-commercial use.
- No restrictions should be placed on creating modified and derivative works for non-commercial use that are licenced under the same terms as the original material.
- Material should be provided in its entirety for non-commercial use, not only in excerpted form.
- The quality of all materials provided on a free basis should be suitable for all uses, including the making of works for whose subsequent commercialisation another licence might later be sought.
- Use of material should not be hindered in any way by technological restriction measures.
- No fees should be charged for material provided under the conditions listed above and downloaded for non-commercial use.
The BBC already commands the highest respect for its leadership in the digital arena, and a full implementation of the Creative Archive will keep it at the forefront of innovation in this area. We look forward to tracking the development of the Archive.
Sincerely yours,
David Tannenbaum
Coordinator, Union for the Public Domain
