BBC Creative Archive Launch

The BBC have launched today their BBC Creative Archive License Group.

The Creative Archive Licence Group was formed on April 13th 2005 to promote the use of a single, shared user licence scheme for the downloading of moving images, audio and stills. The Group's legal framework is known as the Creative Archive Licence, and by sharing the same scheme we hope to make it easier for users to understand and to respect the framework.

As I understand it the license is a derivative of the Creative Commons licensing scheme and while it claims to be for the whole of the UK, its terms are governed by the laws of England and Wales, with no specific provision for Scotland or Northern Ireland jurisdictions. License group members currently are the BBC, Channel 4, the Open University and the British Film Institute. There is not as yet any content licensed under the CA License.

During the pilot phase

• the BBC plans to release 100 hours of content under the license
• the british film institute will release footage including silent comedy, early literary adaptations, newsreel footage and archive footage of British cities in the early 20th century from the National Film and Television Archive
• the Open University will release clips of natural features, such as aerial views of the Franz Josef glacier and plan to including footage of, e.g., the interior of Sienna Cathedral
• and Channel 4 will provide a resource for aspiring documentary film-makers that will include copyright-cleared stock footage for users to incorporate into their films as well as Pix n mix providing av content for VJ's.

I haven't looked at the license sufficiently to determine the differences between it and the CC England & Wales license, though I assume it primarily is concerned with a UK only requirement. Incidentally, the England & Wales CC License went live today, congratulations to the team who have been working on it for the last 16 months.

This is however a significant milestone for the 'some rights reserved' movement and will drive creativity in the UK. Because the BBC is license fee funded they are releasing the content only to UK Internet users. They are not however using DRM (Digital Rights Management) technology on it, relying instead on a GeoIP solution to allow downloads from only UK hosts (and those smart enough to circumvent GeoIP restrictions)...

Posted by Paul in Intellectual Property Law at April 13, 2005 05:11 PM