The Auricle

Many people in the UK won't have heard of The World, but the BBC has been contributing to a bit of interesting terraforming. The World provides international news for the National Public Radio network in the US and is a co-production of the BBC World Service, Public Radio International (PRI) and WGBH Boston. But what riches lies within? … My stereotype of the BBC World Service needs readjustment. Obviously, the US is as firmly within the Beeb's telescopic sites 🙂 as are the countries of the developing world, the Middle East, and the former Eastern bloc (although they are apparently losing audience in parts of the latter two).

“… it has proved difficult for the BBC World Service to obtain an FM presence in some areas. Losses were registered in Western Europe, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Ukraine” (BBC World Service Review 2003-2004, Director's Overview).

The UK Government Foreign and Commonwealth Office provide the basic grant (Grant-in-Aid) for the BBC World Service (GBP 220.1 million in 2003-2004) although the World Service can generate revenue from other sources (GBP 23.6 million in 20030-2004) within the constraints of its charter. It should be noted that ~90% of BBC World Service income is spent directly on content production and distribution which is pretty exemplary (for who? … you can make up your own mind:)

Anyway, I digress. I came across The World in a new podcast called modestly The World: Technology Podcast which I had assumed was going to be an amateur production with an ambitious moniker, but no, the presenter Clark Boyd was obviously very skilled in the subtle arts of media interviewing and with a little more homework I find that The World is actually a serious operation with some heavyweight sponsors and as PRI states “delivers global news perspectives and cultural insights”.

A recent example from The World: Technology podcast provides a flavour. In Computer Games Research (10 May 2005) Clark Boyd the technology correspondent reported a visit to the Center for Computing Games Research at the IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark.

The Center for Computing Games Research, IT University, Copenhagen is funded by Danish Government, has a team of academics from multiple disciplines, and carries out PhD level work. It's portfolio of interests includes: the ethics of games, educational uses for commercial computer games, and the design of games. Computer games are now part of the curricula of many universities provides a focus for academic research crossing many disciplines, e.g. what's the cultural and social impact of games in different countries?

To me what's as interesting is that my discovery of this programme was pure serendipity. The BBC has certainly done nothing to attract my attention to its existence. For example type 'The World Technology Podcast' or 'technology podcast' into the BBC search engine and not a single return from any of the internal sources could I find until I selected the 'Results from the Web' tab. So off I went to the BBC World Service Annual Review 2003-2004 to see what I could uncover there. Nothing much, apart from these very interesting quotes; the first is in the Financial Review section:

“We add further value to the core Grant-in-Aid through partnerships with radio stations and internet service providers around the world, which rebroadcast our programmes and material at no cost to BBC World Service. This enables us to further expand reach without additional distribution costs.”

And the second is in the Director's Overview section, where we find the US figures quite highly:

“But audiences have also reached a record 4.7 million in the world's most developed media market – the United States. More than one in five opinion formers in New York and Washington DC listen each week. In Britain too, 1.3 million people are listening to World Service programmes, which are now available on a range of digital and cable services.”

So there you have it folks, it's official, more people listen to the BBC World Service in the US than in the UK.

I'm a big fan of the BBC and I think it has a vast amount to contribute to the world (and to The World), but as a publicly-funded organisation it would be good if they could do more to attract our attention to these other more global productions … unless of course they want us to remain locked in to our mental national bubble? 🙂 Or is it best to leave the BBC World Service looking outwards like this just in case the BBC starts to feel it should absorb this semi-independent offshoot within its mainstream structure … and in the process destroys it?

Finally, The World also offers a couple of other podcasts which is a bit feeble in comparison to the, albeit still limited, scope of the BBC's new podcast trial.

If you're at all interested in the transformative/disruptive potential of the internet on established businesses and all our lives then yesterday's BBC In Business programme (8 May 2005) is well worth 30 minutes of your time. For those of us involved or interested in educational and learning technologies then IMHO there are big implications embedded within the narrative of this radio programme. Below I offer a little flavour of what the programme contains but, just in case you're not particularly interested in radio as a medium, I think it's necessary to think beyond the radio focus of the programme and consider more the internet/intranet as a 'filling station' drum I've been banging in earlier articles. The disruption/transformation potential is as relevant in many other contexts, including the potential impact on, and opportunities to enrich, how we go about finding or distributing educational content/resources at the moment.

“Radio you don't have to make an appointment for because it finds what you want and has it waiting for you on your own player at your own convenience … personal content, personal speech, music, potentially video … any sort of media at all … that's the transformative thing, people can consume on their own terms … it's a better consumer experience and it's more economically efficient.”

“The ability to communicate without wires has become so cheap to embed in user equipment that anyone can do it … and it's a capacity to communicate without wires that matters and that's what can be done in individual computers today … the barriers to entry become not regulatory or even capital based in terms of being able to buy a transmitter but purely in terms of quality and relevance to the people listening … we will have on us and with us machines capable of connecting us to any form of information flow including what we now experience as radio … ” (Yochai Benkler of Yale University)

“Going digital overturns many of the assumptions we radio people have lived with for decades , and you listeners to … rather than everybody having to listen to exactly the same thing at the same time it's much more viable for them to listen to what they want when they want it and on the device of their choosing and that changes a number of things … it changes the nature of the radio schedule … radio programming people are hilarious … they always think that people will make themselves available at a certain time to listen to a certain show and we know that back in the real world life isn't like that … what this technology allows is for people to set their own schedules … we're already seeing that in television, homes that have Sky+ or Tivo (in the United States) or PVRs (personal video recorders) … people essentially can record everything there is in digital form and then watch it at their convenience … and we see that the viewing patterns are quite different in homes that have that technology than in homes that don't … In the final analysis what the most valuable thing the consumer has is his or her time … and quality will tend to win out … in the long term the distribution channels will become less important.” (Steve McCauley)

“Radio is springing free of the regulated gatekeepers who've managed what you can hear since radio was invented … it's jumping into the hands of anyone who has something or nothing to say … merging into this thing I call Radio Me … but the internet is going to disrupt dozens of other businesses to, this is just the beginning of the revolution.” (Peter Day) .

You've got a week to listen to this Radio Me edition of In Business from the BBC archive. It's particularly ironic that, given the topic, the BBC doesn't yet offer a podcast/MP3 download for this programme; but, to be fair, it is on the BBC's podcast trial list and so should become available 'real soon now' 🙂

Here's another post on the theme of nodes on the internet/intranet becoming the 'filling stations' for a more portable/flexible approach to online and blended learning. Notice how I've managed to drop the 'e' word and added the 'blended' word in there:) Auricle readers not familiar with previous articles may find
A 'filling station' model of e-learning? - The Sony mix? (and earlier posts linked from there) of interest.

In my recent Shock of the Old post (8 April 2005) I highlighted how impressed I had been with the creativity and interactivity of the other speakers, but one presentation in particular caught my attention, i.e. The use of PDAs to support learning by David Sugden of Dewsbury College and John Whalley - National Learning Network mentor. David Sugden has also explored accessibility issues and PDAs in his TechDis article Using PDAs with Learners.

To date, I've eschewed involvement with PDAs. I've even mentally rolled my eyes as colleagues pulled out their flashy boxes as I made a lightening entry in my retro pencil and paper-driven pocket diary whilst they were still struggling to start their device up. But David and John's presentation sowed the seeds for what was to come. These guys came armed with a bundle of PDAs which they issued around the audience, so strike one for instant audience participation. Strike two came in the form of a description of their work in environments where there is no internet access but where the 'loaded' or 'refreshed' PDAs provide students with resources they wouldn't get otherwise. They even managed to play a video (sort of) on their bog standard PDAs.

In the weeks following the event I reflected on their presentation and mentally tried to map it to my postings about e-learning filling stations (sorry! … online learning filling stations:). I decided to see if the current generation of PDAs have anything serious to offer personally and professionally. I wanted to try and view the use of the PDA from both a potential teacher and learner perspective.

So for the last couple of weeks I've been living and working with a brand new Dell Axim X50v PDA which has got four outstanding features and one less desirable trait. The outstanding features are it's: small (~12×7 cm); light; got a VGA display(640 x 480), got integral wireless networking (WiFi and Bluetooth). The less desirable trait is the standard battery has got the life of a gnat when the wireless is switched on and the display brightness is set high.

But despite the caveats this device is just so … liberating. It gives you a real sense of what's to come. It's so unobtrusive that I carry it around everywhere. Want to do a bit of web browsing sitting in the garden … no problem. Want to preview a Word or PDF document without carrying a stack of paper? … All perfectly possible … Once you've adjusted to the PDA way of doing things that is.

For example, if you want to read PDF documents then you could download the free Acrobat reader for Pocket PCs from Adobe but, to be honest, the quality of the text wasn't really very good so I had to switch to a third party (paid for) product called RepliGo which proved to be really excellent. I also wanted to test out how this PDA would cope with rich media like video. On the video front it's not bad at all, Microsoft's proprietary media format is supported by default, but I got even better results from encoding in DivX using free utilities and the freebie BetaPlayer. It's even possible to encode a whole movie or TV programme; which might be of interest to passenger commuters … but this might prove a bit fatal for car drivers, cyclists, or pedestrian commuters. Nevertheless, significant audio and video learning resources could be downloaded to the PDA's compact flash or SDCard storage. I haven't succeeded in getting Macromedia (or is that Adobe?) Flash files to run as yet, mainly becase the default Flash player for the Pocket PC operating system is an ActiveX control which will only run within Internet Explorer for Pocket PC; the resultant double hit on the PDA's memory is just too much for it.

But, it's the wireless networking which is the real liberator. The short range Bluetooth wireless I can use with a fold away keyboard, so inputing text will be more efficient. The WiFi is for intranet/internet access.

Want to do a bit of Voice over IP (VoIP) then just install Skype for Pocket PC and off you go … but remember keep in sight of that power socket … and turn that screen off. That assumes of course that the wireless connections work as expected. My home Wireless setup had been fine with my other devices, but the PDA, however, uncovered a problem in my WAP's configuration which required a firmware upgrade, but otherwise it was fine. And it's really intriguing wandering around my neighbourhood and discovering wireless access points I didn't know existed.

So if you see a strange man standing outside your house with a PDA then lock down your access point or it could be me Skyping via your broadband connection 🙂 And if I knock on your door it will be to ask if I can recharge my battery from one of your power outlets 🙂

It was on the work WiFi (802.11b for the pedants) front that things began to get really interesting. My institution is running a pilot wireless network access system and so I took myself off to various hotspots to try and view things from a faculty or student perspective. In summary, what took me minutes with my domestic setup; has taken me a week at work. The explanation is interesting.

Now at home I'm just connecting to my own Wireless Access point, but at work I'm connecting to the institutional network and so the priority is security, particularly with wireless network access. As a result, before using a new device each user has to register their MAC address using an automated system which then grants them access. The difficulty was that the automated registration system mapped one user to one device and I had previously registered a laptop. And here was me coming along with yet another device and so, no, the system wasn't going to let me on board. Anyway, to cut a long story short with the help of our excellent IT support service we managed to diagnose the problem and bypass the automated systems so that I can have more than one device registered on the system. Later in the year the automated registration system will be modified to allow for self-registration of multiple networked devices. Thanks chaps!

But this experience was illuminating. Students and staff in HEIs are increasingly going to turn up with multiple devices such as mine and the systems and policies need to be there to support them. Of course institutions could try and ban such devices, but try banning something you can't even see easily, try banning mobile phones … some of which are becoming more like PDAs … or is that PDAs becoming more like mobile phones?

The lecturer of the near future is just as likely to use his PDA or other ultra portable device as the source of his Powerpoints or other resources as he/she is their laptop. The student of the near future or present is just a likely to produce their wireless capable PDA which can link nearly immediately to resources being referred to, or to check different points of view either from the Web or their colleagues via peer-to-peer.

The caveat to all of the above, of course, is that most Web resources at the moment conveniently ignore the format of ultra portable devices, but, as the user base grows, that's going to become a big issue. For example, I hadn't been aware of how badly Auricle displays on a PDA, so that's something I'm going to have to fix.

To round off this post and just in case you think I'm getting too geek-like then let's consider the recent outpourings of the uber geek.

Bill Gates' (I know, I know … boo, hiss, slow hand clap etc etc) recently introduced a concept model called the Ultra Mobile tablet PC 2007 which looks awfully like a useful device to me. I'm no advocate of the Redmond view of the world but the right combination of hardware, firmware and software (and price) will make such portable devices serious objects of desire, not just because they look good but because they enable things to happen that would otherwise be too difficult or inconvenient.

What makes the Gates Ultra Mobile Tablet interesting is that it appears to be a non-volatile memory only device, i.e. no hard disk, much faster data access, and data retained on switch off. Hence reduced battery drain, reduced heat, and reduced weight. And, if driven by a 64-bit operating system, e.g. Microsoft's forthcoming Longhorn, then an awful lot of memory could be accessed, so there would be plenty of space for those documents and perhaps even the odd movie or two. Now Microsoft's Longhorn operating system (the replacement for XP) is still some way away (latter part of 2006?), so there is still a small chance of some usurper swerving in there to steal this ultra mobile show … know anyone with experience in small mobile devices? 🙂

The other caveat with the Gates' vision is an assumption that non-volatile memory prices will continue to fall and that international events, corporate greed or natural disasters won't disrupt, or artificially constrain, production.

So, in the Dell Axim X50v, I think I've found a genuinely useful tool (ok, gadget if you like) which fits in with the online learning filling station model I've described previously. I'll report back on any ongoing issues and experiences, but at the moment it's looking pretty promising.

Finally, if you've thought ultra mobile devices aren't relevant yet then I seriously urge you to think again. They are going to become the norm … so book early and get some experience under your belt.

Picked this one up via the Daily Source Code. A new German kid on the podcast block. Thomas Wanhoff offers an English language version of his weekly science news podcast called ScienceCast.Net.

Way back in the early days of Auricle I proposed that the humble weblog perhaps offered an alternative, but more appropriate, model for building a VLE. I've revisited this theme several times if for no other reason than to challenge my original thinking. Have I changed my mind? No … if anything, I'm becoming even more convinced that this would have been a far more profitable route than that offered by the mainstream VLE vendors who only very recently seem to have woken up to the potential, e.g. Everybody's Blogging (13 April 2005). Such latecomers will, perhaps inevitably, view this as a useful 'feature' to add to their core product but certainly not at the core of the product itself … so no architectural rethinking here.

In my Shock of the Old post (8 April 2005) I suggested:

“… there are now so many opportunities and services arising 'out there' that it's perfectly feasible that if institutions are found wanting in their future IT/e-learning infrastructure and services provision that the teachers and students will migrate to systems and services about which institutions have no knowledge and over which they certainly will not be able to establish any control.”

At the time I wrote this, I was thinking about the next generation Flickr, Bloglines, Blogdigger, Orkut, etc, but there was an interesting feature in last week's Guardian Online A friend in need (28 April 2005) which caught my attention.

Refering to the social networking site MySpace.com the article states:

“From the initial act of finding friends, it reaches into every part of modern communication, allowing users to blog, send instant messages, join chat rooms and set up school homepages or HTML profiles.”

Now I'm not recommending the MySpace.com site per se, just presenting it as an example of the type of environment (because that's what it is) that's now 'out there' and which is sucking in the users who, let's remember, 'choose' to be there. Users of this type of environment enjoy facilities that are going to set very high expectations. Users of such 'out there' systems can join existing, or set up their own, interest groups and have some control over who joins, can upload and download content relevant to their community, and can use a rich variety of communication tools to 'publish' and communicate with one another.

So, increasingly, users will begin to see these types of systems as the norm and that's going to leave them singularly unimpressed with what the average proprietary VLE has to offer.

That's why in my 3 March 2005 posting The Weblog as the model for a new type of VLE? - Revisited I drew attention to the work of David Tosh and Ben Werdmuller with their ELGG system.

Ok … it's early days for ELGG, but the concepts are right. The community urgently needs the open source equivalents of MySpace.com if there's not going to be a slow bleed away from institutional provision which, currently, appears more focused on how well a product integrates with central information systems than pedagogical flexibility, community building and providing users - yes, even students - with tools and functionality they feel they control.

What MySpace.com, Bloglines et al are showing is that there is another way of doing things. But let's not forget that although these 'free' services will probably (perhaps, maybe, possibly) be there tomorrow, they don't have to be, and that's going to be the key justification for institutions avoiding them and ploughing on down the current VLE furrow. But we should be prepared to learn from MySpace and Bloglines et al and so welcome and support the efforts of those who are striving to provide open source alternatives.

One of this week's items in the On the Media (22 April 2005) podcast was an interview with Brewster Kahle of the Internet Archive fame. Brewster's got even bigger plans. If you want to listen in you've got two choices. Either download the whole programme MP3 (21.9 MB) or listen to the streamed item The Internet Forever direct from the site. If you opt for the download the Brewster Kahle interview starts at 37m 18 secs and lasts approximately 6 minutes. For the bandwidth challenged the transcript should be available soon.

Links
On the Media site(22 April 2005)

On the Media MP3 download (22 April 2005)

The Internet Archive.

Last Wednesday (13 April 2005) the not-for-profit LAMS Foundation (managed by Macquarie University) launched the open source version (GPL) of the IMS Learnng Design 'inspired' Learning Activity Management System. LAMS is a visual authoring environment for creating sequences of learning activities; so those with a personal preference for a heavy dose of teacher design in learning (or at least who are working in institutions where it's the norm) should find this tool - or should that be virtual learning environment? - very interesting. While the LAMS Foundation is a not-for-profit there's also an interesting commercial cousin called International Pty Ltd. To quote:

“International Pty Ltd is a commercial services company set up to assist with implementation and technical support for LAMS, working in conjunction with the LAMS Foundation. It has the right to offer the LAMS Beta/Support Partner Program and LAMS support services, as well as commercial (ie, non GPL – see below) licenses for LAMS on behalf of the LAMS Foundation.”

International Pty Ltd look like it will be offering the LAMS Support Partner Program, a fee based support and other services package to assist with deploying LAMS.

Richard Treves posted a good challenge to my critique of the New Zealand Moodle decision. My response grew beyond what's comfortable for a comment so here it is as a full posting. As I indicated in World's largest deployment of Moodle? (part 1), if we're going to be using VLEs/LMSs then I would rather it be one like Moodle where the users retain some control and don't have to work through a vendor to extend functionality. A vendor is primarily driven by market imperatives, although they will undoubtedly claim they are responsive to their 'customers'.

My contention is that the HE sector, in particular, seems to have been hell bent on creating a monoculture by consolidating/aggregating around a limited number of immature proprietary and perhaps even open source solutions. Furthermore, they are having to adapt their internal goals and processes to fit the needs of the technologies rather than being able to select/modify the technologies to fit what they want to do.

So it's not the affordances of Moodle et al I've got any problems with. Instead, it's the constraints we need to focus upon. The constraints will have nothing to do with control of the functionality or modular architecture, which I accept are key Moodle attributes. Instead, the key constraints could arise from within the organisations or consortia who, having made the commitment, will adopt a strict 'Moodle policy' which will be the equally pernicious equivalent of say a 'WebCT policy' or a 'Blackboard policy' etc, and who perceive any deviation from this policy as dysfunctional.

If you've get a chance do look at my various past postings and those of others, e.g. James Farmer. You'll find examples where organizations attempt to 'refocus' anyone who is perceived as doing any innovative work 'out of the box' because this is perceived as either ' non corporate', 'off message' or just plain inefficient. In such cases, the fact that such 'boxes' are open source or proprietary matters not a jot. The fact that universities should be encouraging 'out of the box' thinking seems to be forgotten in the rush to corporatize. We all claim uniqueness and pride ourselves in our diversity but at the same time we're now making big scope IT decisions that could end up making us all behave very much the same as each other (institutional isomorphism).

It's also worth looking at the 'Future VLE' discussions that are now taking place in the UK and then perhaps pop over to what JISC is promulgating via its E-Learning Framework (ELF) supported by the development of e-tools and toolsets. In an alternative view of the world the VLE as we currently know it is but an interim step to something better which is more adaptable and flexible, and which is based on lots of loosely-coupled flexible tools and services, not monoliths.

It's ironic that just as we begin to have a better grasp of what's required some organizations and groupings are starting to behave as though the current generation of VLEs are mature commodities, instead of the interim steps on the journey that they actually are. The net result may be to impede progress, both in practice and in thinking. The conformity pressure will be high and will be based on no more than “crumbs if they've made that decision it must be all right then … perhaps we should do the same?” No … 'surely not' you say. But it was exactly this type and level of thinking that gave proprietary VLEs such a toehold within Higher and Further Education in the first place.

It's not usual to hear arguments that go along the lines of “because the rest of the institutions in our region have made proprietary decision x wouldn't it be more efficient if we do the same so we can all share?” Of course, anyone who has worked with any of these products will know that while sharing is a great concept and it's even backed by claims of sharing standards/specifications compliance, such as IMS or SCORM, the reality is far far from this ideal … and that's before we add human and organizational factors which impede such sharing. This, type of 'rational' thinking is of course, is a vendor's marketing department dream as they watch institutions fall like mindless dominoes around them.

Once organisations, consortia, states, or countries make strategic commitments that tightly couples them to a particular platform, then being open source or proprietary doesn't matter much. Unless they develop policies which actively immunize themselves against it, institutions can become every bit as 'locked in' as a WebCT or Blackboard institution or consortia. Within a few years it will become almost impossible for them to reverse. And that will colour every decision that they make in the future. You'll find Auricle has several links to such items and papers on this theme.

Again, I'm a big fan of Moodle and I think it has a lot to contribute. But I also think that an 'all eggs in one basket' mentality is just plain bad, and imposing an all eggs in one basket mentality is worse, whether that 'basket' be open source or not.

Finally, we are Moodle users and we certainly view it as part of the online learning armoury … but viewing it as the armoury? No.

But people do find the concept of the 'one stop shop' just so seductive and rational don't they? 😉

I picked this one up via Stephen Downes' OLDaily. The Kiwis are apparently moving over to the open source VLE/LMS Moodle big time. Their Open Polytechnic is leading a consortium project with a budget of NZD 1 million for open source procurement. You might expect me to be cheering this one on but … While I feel a lot more comfortable with institutions (or consortia thereof) not handing over de facto control of what is, or will become, a key part of their technical and pedagogical infrastructure to commercial interests, let me remind you of a quote from my Be afraid … be very afraid! posting of 11 April last.

“The Connecticut implementation of WebCT Vista is expected to expand over time to include private institutions and K-12 schools in the state, all of which will be able to leverage the existing contract by participating in a consortial purchase, thereby reducing their costs.”

Now consider the following from the Polytechs migrate to Moodle story.

“The Open Polytechnic, Nelson-Marlborough Institute of Technology, and six other polytechs are already using the system. Twelve other tertiary institutes, including four universities, will likely migrate to Moodle by July, Mr Wyles says. It's also being deployed at 10 secondary schools.”

Notice the similarities? There's a different ethos, but apparently a common goal, i.e. to consolidate around a single solution. If that's the case there are issues aplenty buried in there.

As long as the developments and knowledge find their way back to the growing global Moodle community I can certainly see benefits from some big players and developers migrating to this platform … because platform is what Moodle looks like becoming. I suppose my concern is that the rather seductive concept of there being THE SOLUTION doesn't just lead to us substituting the dangers of proprietary monopoly for a de facto open source one.

As with my earlier Connecticut example in Be afraid … be very afraid! the key justification for the decision in New Zealand appears to be financial:

“Project manager Richard Wyles says the polytechs started investigating open source as a way of cutting costs. He estimates that using Moodle instead of proprietary software will save the Open Polytechnic about $50,000 every year in licence fees alone.”

So if the financial argument is, and remains, the primary driver does this mean that all e-learning development must now be done in Moodle? Does this mean there is no scope for the development or use of 'e-tools' which are not part of the Moodle architecture? Is diversity only permissible within the constraints of the selected platform, albeit a fairly benign one, free of development constraints and licensing fees?

I'm quite a fan of Moodle and, like many others, I can see it's got bags of potential and that the Moodle community can only benefit from the flurry of interest. Also, Moodle is certainly focusing the minds of the vendors of proprietary VLEs/LMSs, and that's got to be good thing. But there is no one solution no matter how much we would like this to be the case and, so, institutions (or consortia thereof) need to also build some headroom into their strategies which will allow for future Moodles (or whatever) to emerge.

An open source monoculture is still a monoculture and monocultures tend to get monotonous and prone to disease.

The UK's Creative Archive Group have launched their licensing system which will enable the BBC, Channel 4, the Open University, and the British Film Institute (and any other body which joins) to make available some of their resources from their extensive audio and video archives. Great stuff but … The FAQs are probably the most informative part of the Creative Archive site at the moment with the project timetable being the most obscure, i.e.

Things are looking really good when we get the declaration that:

“The Creative Archive Licence is heavily inspired by the Creative Commons Licences.”

And the good news keeps coming with:

“The Creative Archive will not be using DRM (digital rights management) around the content.”

And peer-to-peer technology apparently gets the official blessing:

“Peer to Peer (P2P) distribution technologies are certainly one of the technologies that will make it possible for large files to be sustainably distributed online and therefore of great interest to the Creative Archive. The good news is that the technology is not illegal. When used for the distribution of legally licensed material, it provides an efficient and cost effective means of sharing and distributing content on the internet.”

But then they go an spoil it all by stating:

“The BBC's pilot site will be using a technology called GEOIP filtering to ensure that content sourced directly from the BBC will only be available to UK citizens … The delivery of content in the Creative Archive is paid for by the organisations who supply it. They are funded with public money to serve the UK population, and therefore they are restricted from subsidising services to overseas audiences.”

But in another part of the site we find:

“The Creative Archive content is made available to broadband users within the UK for use [primarily] within the UK.”

What does primarily mean? Is this a caveat?

For a start the Group really need to fling away the concept of this static set of average British citizen viewers/listeners. British citizens are mobile and they may actually even live and work overseas:) You'll be telling me next that they've actually got broadband connections there as well:) And some of these British citizens actually consume publicly funded media from other countries already and, horror or horrors, this is actually made possible via the interent.

I applaud the share-alike aspect of the license but does the Creative Archive Group really think this can be restricted to national borders? Are we, therefore, forbidden to collaborate and share-alike with citizens of other countries? Including citizens of the European Union?

Since the Creative Archive Group apparently want to shut out the non-UK riff-raff let's hope that other countries don't decide that their own use of GEOIP or similar is justified. So no Open University programmes for Africa under this initiative then? And let's say that the US, or Canada, or Australia decides that they're not going to share their 'stuff' any more?

I know … why don't we just shut down the internet?

Anyway, the GEOIP approach shouldn't be too much of an inconvenience to those in the know:)

It's pretty sad that the group claim that this licence was Creative Commons 'influenced' and then they come up with this parochial distortion. It's obvious that the mindset of the public funded media sector still needs some thought-surgery.

Don't get me wrong I think this is a fantastic initiative and I would rather it existed even with this flawed license scheme. The Creative Archive Group, however, should be setting an example to the world by demonstrating their confidence in the internet, not trying to constrain its boundaries for this purpose.

We should encouraging other countries to 'open up' and share; not creating new silos by attempting to lock content to one country. Attribution and share-alike can work across national boundaries you know.

Perhaps the Creative Archive Group ought to model themselves more on the ethos of the BBC World Service?

Oh … and just in case anyone from the Creative Archive Group stumbles across this post (unlikely) here's the URI of MIT Open Courseware. I'm not aware that MIT have suffered from their decision to open up to the world.