by Derek Morrison, 10 April 2010
The following posting reflects the perspectives and opinions of the author alone and should not be construed as necessarily representing the views of any other individual or organisation.
In my short essay ELESIG puts head (or toe) in the Clouds (Auricle, 23 March 2010) I reflected on some of the issues relating to ‘ownership’ and preservation of the archives of content and interaction generated by social network implementations such as Facebook and on a smaller scale the OU hosted Cloudworks. So thanks to my colleague Terry Mayes who brought to my attention Wendy Hall’s recent contribution to the BBC’s World Service Forum (14 March 2010) which explored some of the issues in considerably more depth than my own humble posting. Wendy Hall is one of the alpha thought leaders, along with Tim Berners-Lee, regarding the development of the semantic web.
But as important as such weighty issues as the semantic web is the BBC World Service itself; it is an understated national gem. It receives a fraction of the main BBC radio budget, it doesn’t appear to do “star’ presenters with gross remuneration packages but, yet, the quality of what it produces is usually outstanding. The BBC World Service, however, has a typically eccentric British funding model. While the rest of the BBC is funded from the mandatory UK Licence Fee paid by UK television owners (it’s a criminal offence not to pay it) the World Service does not receive any income from that source. Instead the World Service is funded by a Parliamentary grant-in-aid, administered by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) of the British government (i.e. another taxpayer-funded channel). It transmits in languages decided by the FCO but editorial control remains with the BBC and consequently that includes, at times, being critical of UK government policy or representing the views of the “other”. Long may the eccentricity continue.
