Reasons to have an Open Creative Archive
Rufus Pollock wrote:
More Money - An open archive will ultimately generate more income for the BBC (See PrelingerLetter)
- Opening for non-commercial promotes commercial use (via trialling, exposure, ease of use)
- Moreover the gains in commercial use outweigh losses from non-commerical use side
- Public service tradition and ethic
- License Payers have already paid for this content so no reason why they should pay again.
- Openness as good in itself (Free Software ....)
- The 'multiplier' effect of reuse. Ability to reuse archive content will seed other creative work meaning that the archives benefits may be multiplied many times over. If the archive is open it will be 'creative' archive rather than just a 'consumer' one.
- Above all the CA is win-win. One can have all of the benefits outlined above AT THE SAME TIME. There is no trade-off between the public interest and getting money.
Philip Merrill wrote:
- A chance to fight the chaos of the mainstream "junk culture" (Reviving Ophelia, by Mary Pipher) in the sharable, digital media archaeology of organizing and creating projects based on the Creative Archive content pool. This will allow children to cultivate the vital moral values of discernment and diligent investigation, as well as facilitate improved social interactions based on things perceived as meaningful by the community doing the sharing, because the file-sharing framework allows the most-meaningful to be ranked as a function of community interactivity.
Promoting Creative Commons and Opening Up Content Worldwide
The Creative Archive is so special for several reasons. But one of the most important is that, if it does happen, it will be a massive legitimization and promotion the Creative Commons approach and concept. In fact, given the BBC's reputation worldwide it could precipate an avalanche of other archive openings among other public service institutions across the globe.
FCD original summary:
Back in 2003 Greg Dyke announced plans to put the BBC's archives on the Internet. This is a wonderful plan with amazing potential. It would show the real value of having a public service make television, and we believe it would spark a remix culture that would use the archive to make new creations, to enable people to create their own works from this rich source. The Creative Archive would stand as a shining counterexample to those people who demand increasingly restrictive copyright law: it would show that you can give media away without the sky falling in or creativity drying up.
But it must be done fully and properly. The license under which the material would be made available matters. It should be a complete archive, not just scraps. It needs to be available in the right formats for everyone to use.