BBC documents under Creative Commons licence

The British Broadcasting Corporation, which has been recently digitalising its documental features archive, decide to licence it under Creative Commons. Christian Ahlert, a professor at Oxford Internet Institute and one of the major suporters of the change, admitts that it might be the first step in opening up all the BBC archive to public, and in a long run change broadcasting production formats.

… [F]or legal reasons, the BBC does not have rights over all that it produces. So, for the meantime, only documentaries will be licensed under Creative Commons, since the broadcaster owns a large part of these rights. What the BBC intends to do, from the time the archive is created, is to request authorisation for all those who participate in any type of production to facilitate digitalisation and licensing.