Re: [Hampshire] [OT] BBC Petition

On Sun, 25 Feb 2007, Gordon Scott wrote:

> Why I wonder should a taxpayer funded public service broadcaster need
> DRM?

As I understand it the BBC makes a significant proportion of its income
from CD/DVD and overseas sales.

> I guess for similar reasons that theUK Hydrographic Office has declared
> all it's previously public-domain information is now private, copyright
> and chargeable .. because they're being forced to earn money directly by
> charging us a second time for their tax-funded work.

They can't legally do that can they? IANAL, but surely once it has been
placed in the public domain it is there forever. They can certainly say
they will no longer be making the information available and any new
updates will be copyright, that doesn't stop people using the information
they made public previously.

> Yet more "tax upon a tax" scams.

I'm pretty sure you wouldn't want to pay the license fee required to run
the BBC as it stands if it had no other sources of income...


Andy