Keitai

The Beeb has just launched their new Open News Archive.

Included amongst the initial offering of around 80 online reports will be footage from important events like the fall of the Berlin Wall, Beijing’s Tiananmen Square protest, the Poll Tax riots, the Piper Alpha disaster and Nelson Mandela’s release.

The videos are offered under the terms of the Creative Archive Licence which allows UK residents to view, download and edit or remix the footage for non-commercial purposes..

For those of you not familiar with the BBC’s existing offerings, the Creative Archive License Group offers select collections of downloadable, remixable content from BBC, British Film Institute, Channel 4, Teacher TV and the Open University.

BBC Backstage rounds out the offerings with a site aimed at developers offering feeds and APIs ready for experimentation. The allows users to submit ideas and prototypes and also holds competitions several times a year.

Now if only they could open up their license a bit so people outside the UK could take advantage of all this. Or maybe we just all move to the UK! (Hmm…suddenly my EU passport is looking pretty handy.)