Open Letter from Free Culture UK

Dear Mr Gerhardt,

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 to realise that potential fully. 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.

1. Removal of the UK-only restriction on use of the Archive.

We believe that the UK-only clause in the Creative Archive Licence is both ineffective and counterproductive.

The clause is ineffective because, in the age of the internet, there is no way, once the material is online, to effectively restrict access to UK users (or at least to do so without incurring costs and imposing restrictions on legitimate users that are so burdensome as to make the scheme unworkable).

The clause is counterproductive for several reasons. First, providing access to the Archive for foreign users would cause minimal -- if any -- harm to the UK licence paying public but would encourage reciprocal sharing by other, foreign, archives directly benefiting UK licence payers. Second, restricting to UK-only use prevents British citizens who are resident abroad from using the Archive. Third, and finally, permitting non-UK access will increase the indirect benefits of the Archive to UK users such as those that derive from greater reuse and greater uptake of associated commercial services.

2. Adoption of a Creative-Commons licence.

The promulgation of a Creative Archive licence separate from a CC one is, we believe, a great mistake. A major aim of the Archive is to promote active engagement of the material through re-use. However by releasing its material under a licence that is not only different but incompatible with Creative Commons licences -- at present the predominant 'some-rights-reserved' licensing model -- an enormous obstacle is created to the Archive's use in a creative rather than simply passive manner. While appreciating the special requirements of the BBC that resulted in the formulation of a separate, incompatible, licence we would suggest that the benefits of compatibility outweigh these considerations and therefore we urge the Archive to adopt a CC license (or, at the very least, a licence compatible with the relevant CC licences)

3. Release of material under the least restrictive licence possible.

We note that several of the items released by members of the CALG (most notably the BFI) appear to be public-domain. As such it seems odd to attach the Creative Archive licence to such works given that this imposes far greater restrictions upon use and reuse of the work than would be the case if such works were simply left in the public domain (it might also make one doubt the enforceability of the licence in those cases). We therefore ask members of the CALG to release work under the /least restrictive licence possible/ for the material in question.

4. Making available 'non-programme material'.

The BBC, and perhaps other members of the CALG, will often retain a large amount of 'non-programme material' such as rushes which are not part of a finished work. Such material, at least for the purposes of reuse, will likely be as valuable if not more valuable than that taken from complete programmes. As such the BBC should prioritise it for release equally with material taken from finished works. Given that the rights situation is likely to be simpler for such 'non-programme material' it might even be sensible to focus on releasing this category of work rather than excerpts from publicly released programmes.

5. Removal of the non-commercial restriction.

Restricting usage to the non-commercial category is, in our view, counterproductive -- at least for material in which the BBC controls all rights. The existing share-alike clause is likely to be sufficient to ensure that in most cases of commercial reuse the BBC receives payment (as well as to ensure that the BBC does not displace commercial competition). At the same time the addition of the non-commercial restriction greatly increases the complexity of the licence and reduces the value of the Archive to the British public by reducing the possible avenues by which the material can be reused and redistributed.

6. All work available in open formats.

All works in the Creative Archive should be available in an open format.
Open formats promote accessibility, facilitate the archiving of work and ensure that material can be used on as many platforms as possible.
Making the contents of the Archive available only in proprietary formats places the Creative Archive, and its users, at the mercy of the vendors of those formats, which may become obsolete or have their licensing terms altered unfavourably.

Yours faithfully,

Tim Cowlishaw, Free Culture UK
Rufus Pollock, Open Knowledge Foundation Tom Chance, RemixReading Matt Lee, CNUK Adnan Hadzi, Deptford.TV Owen Blacker, Stand.org.uk Cory Doctorow; Fellow, Electronic Frontier Foundation; Fulbright Chair, University of Southern California Annenmber Public Diplomacy Center 55 other individual UK TV licence payers

The online version of this open letter, including details of all signatories is available at:
http://www.freeculture.org.uk/letters/CreativeArchiveLetter