Digital Rights Network

The BBC, together with project partners Channel 4, British Film Institute and the Open University, today launched the provisional licence that will govern the use of material from their 'Creative Archive'. The licence is similar to, indeed explicitly inspired by, a Creative Commons licence, in that it allows the freedom to access, modify and redistribute work, provided that this is done on under the same licensing agreement, no profit is sought, and the original creator is acknowledged.

The scheme will begin with a pilot, in which 100 hours of BBC content and a small number of BFI clips will become available. But your reporter was unable to find an exact date for the posting of the first material - the BBC offer an uncalibrated timeline for the project that suggests the first phase will be under way in around three months' time; the BFI website states that content will be available 'shortly'.