BBC starts mp3 downloads
p2pnet.net News > Paris:- The BBC is still experimenting the free content, this time offering mp3 downloads some of its Radio 4 archives.
Radio 4 is the Beeb’s second most popular UK radio station and broadcasts a wide variety of programing including news and current affairs, drama and comedy.
Tom Coates, who on his blog here describes himsefl as “one-half of a rapid-prototyping and R&D unit with Matt Webb over at the part of the BBC that handles the interactive aspects of the BBC’s Radio and Music output,” says the mp3 files are DRM-free.
However, they won’t stay that way, Chris Kimber, head of interactive at BBC Radio and Music, is quoted as saying in the Guardian Unlimited here.
“MP3 might not be the right way to go forward, we may end doing something with more copy protection built in and we have to work with rights holders to find the right way forward,” he says.
The first programs to be released are this year’s Reith Lectures by Wole Soyinka, a Nigerian political activist, poet and playwright who won the 1986 Nobel prize in literature.
The Reith Lectures, started in 1948, invite a distinguished thinker each year to expound on a particular scientific, economical or socio-political theme.
Other programs remain only accessible by streaming.
Depending on the success of the experiment, the BBC will decide whether or not to convert all their shows, live concerts and other programs archives to mp3 format.
It’s considering letting people to listen free for seven days, and then ask for a fee if they want permanent access to the archives.
It’ll be almost a contradiction if they do that, however.
Last summer, the BBC said it will put the archives into Lawrence Lessig’s Creative Commons licence, meaning they’d be free as long as they weren’t used commercially.
Thuan Huynh
