Rip, Remix, Sample, Reuse the BBC...do you have 68 years to spare?

Paula LeDieu, the former Joint Director of BBC Creative Archive, spoke on the first day of the Commons-sense conference in South Africa about the BBC initiative to provide access to public service audio and video archives to the British public to rip, mix, re-use, and share the BBC (not for commercial purposes). The project, modelled after the Creative Commons, was launched in 2004. The Creative Commons model, which was the theme of the conference, proposes a flexible and customisable rights management. So instead of the strict "all rights reserved," individuals and organizations can opt for "some rights reserved," or "no rights reserved."

LeDieu told conference participants that to access all their archived materials, one needs to spend 68 years of non-stop video watching!