Digital Public Space

After two years analysing the content, framework and potential of the BBC's archive, Ageh's conclusion is that many of the challenges – not least rights, accessibility and the cost of digitisation – are shared by other public institutions. So his vision is to create a new "digital public space" for publicly owned content.

The Digital Public Space proposal is still being developed with organisations including the British Film Institute and the British Library. Essentially it would be a new layer of the internet in which institutions would make publicly owned content available, free, for non-commercial public use. That content could be used elsewhere for commercial projects at a cost.

"This notion of the public space allows content to be amphibious rather than only commercial or public sector. It would allow the web to be as commercial as it needs to be, but structured in a way that you couldn't retrospectively apply to the web." It would, he claims, stimulate the creative economy, drive digital literacy and maximise public value. The Digital Public Space idea is as brilliant as it is ambitious. "As a nation, we need to decide that we are going to create an environment where every one of our citizens can get value from these technologies," he says. "The BBC should facilitate this, but it is an opportunity for these technologies to remind all our national institutions what they were trying to achieve in the first place."

Tony Ageh on the BBC Archive and how to remake the internet | Media | The Guardian

Related article: A New Digital Presence: The Smithsonian Commons and the Digital Commons Charter 

See also an invitation to debate 'paying the cost of making things free'