We’ll let Mike Chambers explain.

Edited to add: the best first-day analyses of this event we saw were on kottke.org and gskinner.com.

Ars Technica wrote yesterday about the BBC’s progress on its plan to put its archival content online for free.

Now, anyone who attended Lawrence Lessig’s presentation at Flashforward2005 San Francisco will already be saying to themselves, “please let this happen under some kind of Creative Commons license so we can really use this material!”

Well that’s more-or-less exactly what’s happening! The BBC has gotten together with other British media entities (including the British Film Institute, at whose venue Flashforward2000 London was held) to form the Creative Archive License Group whose press release specifically credits the Creative Commons for its inspiration and whose tag line should ring a few bells: “Find it, Rip it, Mix it, Share it. Come and get it.”

Doesn’t that give you happy goosebumps?

The big catch is: the BBC is funded in part by a television license fee in the UK, so it is those license payers who have bought the right to access this material once it becomes available later this year.

The Ars Technica article notes a couple ways this limitation will likely be circumvented, but our thought is: surely these ‘loopholes’ are a designed-in feature of the Creative Archive License? Only those who paid their TV fee will get access to the BBC’s servers and bandwidth, but so far we see nothing that would prevent a friendly Brit from then seeding torrent files for the world at large, or any of a number of other repackaging options as long as they didn’t violate the CAL.

Another option they could pursue is to allow non-UK residents to go ahead and pay an annual TV license fee in exchange for access to these archives; educational institutions in particular would get an amazing value out of this.

Have we misunderstood the point? Are you as excited about this as we are? Will BBC America and other for-profit branches of the BBC find some way to crush our hopes? Let us know what you think.

Embarassing related question: are there really vans that drive by your house in the wee hours with devices that sense the presence of an unlicensed TV in your room? When I was a student in the UK this idea terrified me a little, but now I think it might just have been one of those social-engineering urban legends that is seeded to make punk kids like me behave… well it didn’t work! I watched 4-year-old Friends reruns all night long and didn’t pay a penny! Suckers!

Nominations for the 2005 New York Flash® Film Festival are only open until May 13… just under a month from now! So if you want your favorite sites (for example: your sites) to be considered by our esteemed panel of judges, now is the time to tip us off to your existence!

While we do our best to make sure no worthy sites are overlooked, the IntarWeb is a mighty big place, so don’t risk continuing on in obscurity… tell us how cool you are!

Do it! Do it! Do it!

PS - in response to a good suggestion we received via email, we updated the post about the San Francisco Film Festival winners to include the parties responsible for the winning sites, so have another look.

Inside Mac Radio spent a lot of time at Flashforward 2005 San Francisco, and interviewed several people, among them our cofounder Stewart McBride! Have a listen.

If you’re all caught up on the latest Mac news you could just skip ahead to around the 15-minute mark where the Flashforward content starts, or to 50:45 where Stewart’s interview about the film festival starts.

But we recommend doing what we did instead — hold down the fast-forward button on the QuickTime player until you get there. Especially entertaining was when the announcers got all belligerent with each other about the Apple vs Rumor Sites controversy, then had a chuckle afterwards… chipmunks arguing and laughing! Ha! (But then when Britney Spears’ “Toxic” bumper music played past at high speed, the dog freaked out… so watch out for that.) Oh, and the “Join the Coast Guard” power ballad also rocked at high speed.

Flash Film Festival 2005 San Francisco finalists. Photo credit Art Gruskin. Larger version.

And the winners are…
(Updated to include the additional information the winners asked to have riveted to their rubber arrows.)

• Application: Moonfruit by Moonfruit
• Art: Promenade the Puzzle by Michele D’Auria Studio
• Cartoon: Prowlies at the River by Adam Phillips
• Commerce: Muzak by Pentagram
• Educational: SparkTop (”Where No Two Brains Spark Alike!”)
• Experimental: Ze Frank by Ze Frank
• Game: ContiBackFour by WM Team Web : Design
• Motion Graphics: Microsoft Realizing Potential by BLITZ
• Navigation: JC The Store by Forsman & Bodenfors Kokokaka
• Original Sound: Johnny Hollow by My Pet Skeleton
• Story: Eyes on the War by washingtonpost.com
• Technical Merit: Ingris TMS by INGRIS Technologies
• 3D: Ingreme by Rui Romano & Simon Pawlica
• Typography: Barracks Stove by Nikolai Cornell
• Video: Boula Burton by Fishouse
• People’s Choice: RSVP by Pop & Co

And in case you’re curious, here were the runners-up for People’s Choice:

• 2nd: Fantasy Interactive
• 3rd: The Grudge
• 4th: Johnny Hollow