Hope this starts an interesting discussion on the IrishBlogs sphere.
Posted this on the Creative Commons Ireland mailing list
“The BBC Creative Archive – http://creativearchive.bbc.co.uk/ was recently launched which hands over some content to the public to play with.
How can RTE be convinced to do the same ? Can anyone outline any legal restrictions stopping them from doing it ? Assuming it’s only home produced content they’d release. ”
To add to what I posted, here is the Slashdot Commentary on Creative Archive Launch. Channel 4 and the Open University have also joined this initiative.
Coupled with this, the BBC today announced more podcasts are being made available. It’s pretty damned cool if RTE made podcasts available and not crappy RealMedia files that I have to stream off a computer to listen to. Sure, there are workarounds to download the stream, convert it to mp3 and then listen to it, but it’s cumbersome and it’s not endorsed by RTE. Morning Ireland is still the best show around with quality journalists and for those that sleep in late it’s a shame to miss it.
RTE are being slightly progressive I guess. They have the streaming media on the site, pity it’s realmedia. Give us OGG Vorbis for audio ! RTE also have XML feeds for their news section, they don’t advertise this on their site though, which is a shame.
So, what would be some bold steps from RTE ?
1. Podcasting, with podcasts wrapped in XML feeds
2. Online audio and video archive available for download, and using BitTorrent to solve bandwidth issues ? They should include free tools to allow people to remix the content.
3. RSS Feeds for all online content as well as allowing people to comment on online stories.
Any additional suggestions ?