Re: [Fsuk-manchester] BBC Release Creative Commons TV Show

[Andrew John Hughes]

2009/4/11 Tim Dobson <address@hidden>:
> Lucy wrote:
>>
>> I know that we've had previous discussions about the use of free
>> software by the BBC and of its continuing use of DRM and restrictive
>> copyright for its shows. Well, the BBC have announced a new project
>> called R&DTV, created by RAD and BBC Backstage/ R&D [1].
>
> It's interesting the BBC is getting slated for the non commercial bit of the
> creative commons non-commercial attribution licence as the other place where
> the BBC is pushing the boundaries here is use of free formats.
>
> In my eyes, it's unlikely in the near future that content decide to
> retroactively licence popular media with creative commons attribution or
> attribution sharealike licences or similar. However, once they get their
> head round DRM actually being counter productive to their aims - thus
> defectivebydesign - I can see no reason why free formats cannot be used to
> redistribute media.
>
> If we look at the actual BBC Backstage -
> http://welcomebackstage.com/2009/04/rd-tv-a-collaborative-project-between-bbc-backstage-rad/
> blog post - we can see the video has intitally been released in OGG Theora
> with future episodes likely to be released in Matroshka and Dirac I'd
> imagine...
>
> Personally I'd say this is a big step forward - sure the media *is not*
> free, but does it need to be?
>
> This video can be remixed. That's more than can be said for the video of RMS
> speaking in Manchester last May.
> http://manchester.fsuk.org/blog/2008/05/06/free-software-in-ethics-and-society-richard-stallman-manchester-1st-may/
>
> thoughts and constructive flames?
>
> Tim
>
> --
> www.tdobson.net
> ----
> If each of us have one object, and we exchange them, then each of us
> still has one object.
> If each of us have one idea, and we exchange them, then each of us now
> has two ideas.   -  George Bernard Shaw
>
>
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>

Well, both are clearly non-Free.  I do however think the restrictions
on the FSF releases (which include the Manchester talk, the Freedom
Fry video and other material) are at least clear with a defined
purpose: they don't want the message being delivered to be perturbed
by third parties in some way.  Were someone to create a version which
was translated, transcoded into a different Free format or a full
remix/mashup that was still being used to advocate the beliefs of the
FSF, I don't doubt they'd approve the use.  The restrictive license is
there to prevent this being done in an uncontrolled blanket fashion.
It's not ideal, but I don't see a better alternative.

In contrast, the BBC's material is licensed under non-commercial terms
and it's not always clear where the boundaries between commercial and
non-commercial use lie
(http://wiki.creativecommons.org/FFAQ#Is_use_X_a_violation_of_the_Noncommercial_clause_of_the_licenses.3F).
 The terms suggest to me that while the BBC are happy to open things
up for some limited amateur use, while garnering good press for
themselves at the the same time, they want to maintain a clear
separation between 'them' and 'us', however they may actually define
these.  So I'd be much more wary of making use of their material given
this unclear intent.

Finally, we are still technically restricted in that neither is in an
ideal format for editing, as neither are in their original form; it's
still not too feasible to transfer multi-gigabytes of uncompressed
video data around the net.
-- 
Andrew :-)

Free Java Software Engineer
Red Hat, Inc. (http://www.redhat.com)

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