BBC to make TV & Radio archives public

Awesome. Greg Dyke, director general of the BBC, has announced plans to give the public full access to all the corporation's programme archives.

The service, the BBC Creative Archive, would be free and available to everyone, as long as they were not intending to use the material for commercial purposes, Mr Dyke added.

"The BBC probably has the best television library in the world," said Mr Dyke, who was speaking at the Edinburgh TV Festival.

"Up until now this huge resource has remained locked up, inaccessible to the public because there hasn't been an effective mechanism for distribution.

"But the digital revolution and broadband are changing all that.

"For the first time there is an easy and affordable way of making this treasure trove of BBC content available to all."

He predicted that everyone would benefit from the online archive, from people accessing the internet at home, children and adults using public libraries, to students at school and university.

Danny O'Brien over at Oblomovka has a good look at Mr Dyke's speech, and other comments the enlightened BBC Director-General has since made regarding this incredible plan from the world's pre-eminent broadcaster -- it's well worth taking the time to read to get an idea of what will be possible. As Danny points out, the archive contains...

Eighty years worth of radio, televisual and film content, from the General Strike to World War II to the era of Benny Hill and the world of the Hitchhiker's Guide .

...and much more.

The mere name of the project gives a hint as to that the Beeb are thinking: the BBC Creative Archive. Just consider the vast number of non-fiction stuff they've got down in the archives: imagine being able to call upon those resources when making your own documentaries.

There are, obviously, problems to be solved...

Sorting out the contractual issues with anything but completely internally produced content will be difficult. There are artist's residuals (payments made to actors for repeat showings of their work), external commercial content, and international rights to consider.

It's not clear what kind of licence the BBC will settle on for its archive. Will you be permitted to redistribute the material on file-sharing networks? Will you be able to do your own remixes of Dr. Who? Show BBC programs at your not-for-profit society? Make parodies of the news using real news footage? The project is a real legal adventure.

But that seems to be half the fun. Someone, sometime is going to have to figure out exactly how these sorts of issues are going to be dealt with, and who better (in my opinion anyway) than the venerable, sensible old Beeb?
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