
"Erase and rewind": Thoughts on the BBC's plans to delete 172 websites - spxdcz
http://adactio.com/journal/4336/
======
sambeau
The deletion of the sites is purely political.

The BBC needs to make visible cuts in places where the British (anti-BBC)
press accuse them of providing services that they believe should be provided
by private companies.

If the site doesn't vanish the press wouldn't see it as a real cut, would
they?

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Semiapies
Hmm. Some of these sites look like genuine losses, but most are just promo
sites for BBC series, at least some of which have been cancelled for years
(and some of _those_ looked to have only lasted a few episodes). I think
fairly few of these deletions can really be compared to erasing and re-using
the master tapes for those shows.

I'm ambivalent. I'm generally pro-preservation, even of ephemera, but I feel
rather worse for the people getting the axe than, say, the sunsetting of the
pages promoting the Concert for Diana. (After all, do we gain anything more
than mild amusement that <http://goo.gl/sd4xD> is still up after ~15 years?)

As for the worthier sites, it looks like people should take it up with the BBC
that those sites are vanishing while BBC promo fluff like
<http://www.badwolf.org.uk> (warning: may still have sound) isn't on the list,
yet.

~~~
chc
Actually, I do think there's something to be gained by keeping the Space Jam
site up. Just look at it: That's what a professionally made website looked
like back then! I still remember the day, but I think for the fast-approaching
generation of designers who were born after that site (remember, this year's
Web Design 101 students were born in _1993_ ), it will be an interesting
history lesson with some insight into how the Web evolved.

~~~
Semiapies
Fair point, though aren't archival services better for that sort of thing than
hoping nobody at Warner says, "I don't think we need to keep the _Space Jam_
site after the next upgrade." or "Make that a redirect to
<http://www2.warnerbros.com/spacejam> " (or some future updated page for the
site)?

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joeyh
The WW2 People's War site that this article highlighted as particularly bad to
lose has in fact already been archived by the British Library:

[http://www.webarchive.org.uk/ukwa/target/114827/source/searc...](http://www.webarchive.org.uk/ukwa/target/114827/source/search)

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gaius
To be fair, the British _Broadcasting_ Corporation ought to have been a lot
clearer about its remit in the past. Take Dirac for example, why was the
British taxpayer funding that development work when H.264 was already widely
supported? It's no wonder now that they are being required to make cuts, they
had become a huge sprawling monster with a finger in every pie, no matter how
relevant.

~~~
bruceboughton
Your point about Dirac is entirely irrelevant to the OP, which was about the
Beeb embarking on a spree of wilful destruction of content.

All big organisation have areas of waste but content is the BBC's raison
d'être, not something that should be discarded to save money.

~~~
gaius
They aren't destroying it just for the hell of it; BBC Online has been cut
across the board because they were so wasteful in the past.

~~~
sambeau
Wasteful?

I'm an ex BBC Online employee. Most people don't realise quite how few people
are involved in the creation and update of the BBC website. When I was there
it was generally 2 people per site (and each person was on more than one
site). We had a dozen staff looking after a hundred sites using old and
borrowed tech and the occasional independent flash developer.

The BBC was never wasteful. Don't believe what you read in the anti-BBC press.
They have their own agenda.

~~~
imajes
BBC FM&T and R&D did/does awesome stuff with little resources. It appears to
outsiders-who-care that the problem exists higher up, especially with
decisions such as adopting Siemens to provide infrastructure support (Talk
about locking in what existed 10 years ago with an SLA!), and the perverted
influence of people like Highfield and now, surprisingly, Huggers.

------
Tycho
They could probably keep them running for the price of some football pundit's
yearly salary.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
They could release on a free document license or CC-BY or similar and the
content would appear on hundreds of websites. Indeed as the idea is money-
saving and efficiencies they should archive the lot (about half a days wages,
at first, and maybe a single HDD) and then sell of the domains at auction
lock-stock - deleting them is silly whilst they have any value at all.

They could give the domains to me I'll maintain them.

~~~
notahacker
I'm extremely tempted to perform a Reocities style rescue job and handle the
takedown notices as and when they come. Might not work for some of the
interactive stuff but at least the text can be saved.

~~~
imajes
Already started. Email me if you want to help (in my profile).

~~~
pbhjpbhj
You realise of course that this is unlawful copyright infringement?

~~~
msg
When you're on your deathbed, you're not going to tell your grandchildren "I
sure wish I had upheld the strict letter of copyright law on the internet
more." But you might say "remember that time I saved the BBC from itself?" And
like Big Fish, it will be almost true.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
That may or may not be true, however it is still copyright infringement. It
doesn't matter incidentally if you copy it solely for personal use - stopping
a rights holder from being an idiot is not a given exclusion.

I assume that the downvoters can explain how this is not infringing or how I'm
not adding to the thread by noting this fact that some may not wholly realise?

~~~
JonnieCache
The BBC has a very permissive attitude to it's IP back catalogue as long as it
isn't stuff they're currently trying to sell. See
<http://www.youtube.com/user/trippynet> \- this has been there for years,
untouched. There are many other examples, try this for spoken word radio
comedy: <http://www.temples.me.uk/harry/read.php>

This is the advantage of being a taxpayer-funded player in the media business,
they simply do not have to care about monetizing their content if they don't
feel like it. It is already paid for before it's made. They have been
operating an unofficial policy of allowing pirates to act as a distribution
network for years. This will probably change when they launch the paid iPlayer
overseas.

It is also the reason why murdoch and by extension the murdoch press attack
the BBC constantly. They see it as unfair, and it is, but it isn't about being
fair to the murdoch empire. It's about getting a good deal on good TV for the
british people.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Stated (and binding, as far as I know) license terms currently displayed for
BBC websites:

<http://www.bbc.co.uk/terms/personal.shtml#4> \- personal use, excerpt: "
_Nothing in the Terms grants you a right or licence to use any trade mark,
design right or copyright owned or controlled by the BBC or any other third
party except as expressly provided in the Terms._ "

<http://www.bbc.co.uk/terms/business.shtml#2> \- business terms, excerpt: "
_2.1.1 you may not copy, reproduce, republish, disassemble, decompile, reverse
engineer, download, post, broadcast, transmit, distribute, lend, hire, sub-
license, rent, perform, make a derivative work from, make available to the
public, adapt, alter, edit, re-position, frame, rebrand, change or otherwise
use in any way any BBC Online Services and/or BBC Content in whole or in part
on your product or service or elsewhere or permit or assist any third party to
do the same except to the extent permitted at law ("Restricted Acts");_ "

FWIW I think that BBC created content should be under a liberal license like
CC-BY-NC but it isn't; whether they press for legal action is orthogonal to
the matter of it's lawfulness.

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unreal37
When things are no longer relevant, I have no problem with them going away. If
it means a lot to you, make yourself a personal copy.

Humans often have a hoarding instinct, and it's hard to shake that temptation.
How many of us keep every email ever sent to us over the last 10 years? How
many of us have 1TB of personal storage on our PCs. and we're running out of
space? How many of us have the phone bill from 5 years ago filed neatly away
in some box? Let some stuff go.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
>How many of us have the phone bill from 5 years ago filed neatly away in some
box? Let some stuff go.

5 years is, IIRC, the term for keeping records for tax purposes where I am ..
worth checking before discarding all your old records.

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ck2
Put it on a $100 2TB hard drive and give it to Google or the WayBackMachine.

~~~
gwern
$100? I'd rather pay $72: <http://forre.st/storage#sata>

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tobylane
It's not about holding the information, it's about serving it. The BBC makes a
whole lot of websites, for when they mention stuff in dramas (Think Bad Wolf
in first series of Doctor Who). They will hold all the information they ever
made, offline, just like all the TV they can keep, they do.

What they should do is make sure the Internet Archive has it all. And then
stop hosting it, stop paying for the domains.

These websites are only mentioned in dramas, they are pretty much useless
after a few weeks. If you're watching first series Dr Who and want to see the
sites, you can live with using the Internet Archive (Wayback machine).

~~~
pbhjpbhj
>These websites are only mentioned in dramas, they are pretty much useless
after a few weeks.

They're worth at least a little more than their domain names and content costs
by virtue of them being SEO bait. "Bad Wolf" could be a good company [trading]
name or band name if you could buy out the top spot in the listings from the
BBC.

