POSTED AT 8:48 AM October 1, 2009

Dutch public broadcaster goes Creative Commons with new documentaries

Paul sez,

The Dutch public broadcaster VPRO is currently running a thematic week on the century of the city. As part of this they have commissioned a number of documentaries about places like Johannesburg, Paris and Gurgaon and they have taken the still rather unusual stuff of releasing most of these under a Creative Commons license that allows for redistribution and remixing of these documentaries.
What is especially cool about this is that they are doing this with current documentaries that have aired for the first time in the last 10 days (and while they are also selling a DVD box edition and trying to sell the documentaries to other broadcasters). Right now English language versions of documentaries I am Gurgaon - the new city in Inda by Marije Meerman and Stayin' Alive in Jo'Burg by Rob Schroder are available via bit-torrent and a third one (Metropolis: Coming to the City) will follow later this week.

VPRO Eeuw van de stad (Thanks, Paul!)

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Anonymous | #1 | 08:54 on Thu, Oct. 1 | Reply

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I have read in the dutch newspaper they release in dvd quality.
The VPRO is really progressive with this kind of stuff. They have developed their own Content Management System before, MMBase, and made the source availabe.
Cool stuff!

spraffnet | #2 | 14:42 on Thu, Oct. 1 | Reply

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The BBC should absolutely be doing this. Public-funded content like podcasts and tv programmes should not have more restrictions than privately created content, for example the Guardian's podcasts, which i am free to download, burn, copy, etc. Sorry for changing the subject!

Anonymous | #3 | 20:22 on Thu, Oct. 1 | Reply

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The Gurgon docu is crazy intense and disturbing, side of India we barely see.

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