Arachne said:
Alpha60 said:
I hate it by the way when the Beeb releases brilliant religious programming, like the very educational series Around the World in 80 Faiths and Extreme Pilgrim, with Fr. Peter Owen-Jones, and then provides no legal way for people in the US or the UK to acquire it, but makes a point to DMCA videos of it uploaded to YouTube. These are educational programs produced in the public interest and ought to be in the public domain, IMO. I understand the Beeb needing to protect copyrights on some of its more valuable intellectual property, but in the cases you and I are mentioning, its not as though we are talking about Doctor Who or Top Gear.
It usually does, but DVDs take time to produce.
Educational material being in the public domain is all well and good, but good educational material also costs a lot to produce. Prices drop, eventually.
Don’t misunderstand me, I have no qualms about buying these documentaries on DVDs. But the BBC doesn’t sell the documentaries in question on DVD, but issued takedown notices to remove them from YouTube. If there were DVDs to buy I would buy them (although that takes us to another issue which is regional encoding; getting an American DVD player to play them is highly unlikely).
The BBC is positively nasty when it comes to content they own, but don’t offer for sale, which includes much of the best television made.
Right now however they are permitting their wonderful documentaries on “the Great Offices of State” (not the Great Officers like the Lord High Steward or Lord Privy Seal, but rather, the Home Office, Foreign Office and Treasury) on YouTube, which is some splendid viewing.
Channel 4 also does some brilliant documentaries, edgier than the Beeb as I am sure you know (recall Hyacinth Bucket’s hilarious verbal abuse of Channel 4 in
Keeping Up Appearances), and these along with the occasional smashingly good ITV documentary are equally obscure (I think ITV did the brilliant documentary
A Lord’s Tale, about the reform of the House of Lords in 1999).
I am posting a follow up thread about British television networks and tea in Other Topics.