Are you an artist? Have you put on a show? Have you performed music live?
Have you been on stage? Have you ever put on or been a part of a amateur
(or professional) dramatics production? (if you haven't you should it's
great fun :-) Given your comments here, I think it might help inform your
arguments better too)
Actually, in my spare time I'm writing a book; if I could submit the first
couple of chapters, an abridged version, or perhaps a short story, to a unit
at, say BBC 7, so they could look at it and air a reading (if they think
it's good enough), I'd be delighted. I'd then easily get a publisher, and
the sales it generates would more than make up for the time invested in
writing the whole book.
As alluded to, the model you propose for the BBC of people essentially
paying for space on the airwaves
I've never proposed this model, just used it as an example of the barging
power of the BBC. My model would be that of people like me and you,
submitting works to a unit at BBC 3 and\orBBC4 who go through the stuff,
pick out the best and air it under a Creative commons style licence, these
people, once they've aired some their work, will then be in a position to
charge for it as they do now as they've established a demand for it.
So, in your model of "the content producer pays the BBC" how DO you go
about covering these costs, so that you get it for free? (And let's just
assume for the moment, we're not even talking about paying the actors,
because in amateur dramatics people don't get paid normally either)
If you have an answer, I'd personally be interested. (As I suspect many
amateur dramatics societies around the country would be)
My answer is once you've shown that you're actually quite good, you can
demand payment for your services, but you won't be afraid of DRM free media,
since it launched your career; the public will pay for good work, what they
don't like is second rate tosh, that big media companies put out because
they are in such a strong position, they don't have to do any better [c.f.
Hollywood and Windows Vista]
[1] I don't see why it has to be the BBC - flickr for example isn't
BBC owned, but we could show any appropriately CC licensed pictures
from there.
Because what I've outlined above is true public service broadcasting, and
that's what I pay my licence fee for, not yet-another-reality-tv-clone
However I can't see how your model of "only expired copyright media" or
having content providers *pay* the BBC would result in a service that
people would want to watch.
At no point did I say "only", and I didn't advocate anyone paying the BBC,
the rest of the BBC operation goes on as normal, whilst new artists and
companies spring up taking advantage of the BBCs Free media platform, none
of whom need DRM in order to sleep at night.
I personally like shows like Doctor Who, Battlestar Galactica, Stargate,
Backyardigans and so on. None of which are cheap. How do they get made
if they have to pay for space? What's their income?
Currently in the traditional way, but the next pilot (script written in a
basement somewhere) could get it's break on a free BBC platform, and will
generate investment that way. The authors won't worry about DRM as it's
proven counter-productive, and they got their break without it.
