Financial Times: The BBC's lessons for America. It also required a bit of creative thinking. For the natural intuition of content owners is control. The very idea of giving up perfect control over how and whether content is re-used is treason among insiders. But as the BBC understands, it does not live in Disney World. [Tomalak's Realm]
It is a little bit easier for the BBC to adopt a “Creative Commons” type attitude to their vast news archive since they have governmental support. It is very pragmatic and constructive for the BBC to allow people non-commercial use to “old” news since the taxpayers probably believe they have already paid for it. However, the BBC's pragmatic philosophy to intellectual property rights contrasts starkly with the RIAA. In the last couple of days the RIAA has just settled a file swapping case with a 12 year old girl. Common ground is sure hard to find on this issue in America. I would not be surprised if people are already starting to think of RIAA as a four letter word. Next thing you know, RIAA will become a verb like, “Boy, I really RIAA-upped it today!”
