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Comment by pierrefar | Hacker News Reader

Given that the tax payers (and I'm one of them!) fund the BBC, we shouldn't be needing to demand this from them. They should've done it ages ago without prompting. It's our money that paid for it and we should have unfettered access.

Come on Beebs, release your feeds!

I'm seeing a parallel to government funded academic research that comes with stipulations that the resulting publications should be Open Access.

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I strongly agree. There's a license fee in Ireland too (where I'm from) and they do the same thing, one sentence news feeds. If you're getting funded by mandatory public contributions, then you don't really own your content, the public does.

I don't care if the BBC's management wants to drive people to their website. In fact, I don't care about the wants of the BBC management at all. Besides, the textual news content even on the website is pretty shallow. People will still visit the website to get more information by watching a video.

Of course the BBC sometimes (often?) take their news from the agencies (PA, AP, etc.) and then it gets complicated.

(and let's not even start on what the Daily Fail and other vocal competitors will say.)

that was kind of my point, but I didn't want to sound too aggressive by saying that

yet ;)

Well someone needs to hammer the point home.

Also, this may fall on very favourable ears: part of the most recent govrenment, ummm, cabinet improvement was a move to open up the UK government's data. RWW has a nice piece on it: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/open_goverment_berners-...

And who's in charge of this? None other than Tim Berners-Lee.

Hmmm.... I wonder if they'll let him do what he really wants to do with it? The UK govt has made a number of high-profile - dare I say, "celebrity" - appointments at the moment (see also Alan Sugar, Martha Lane Fox). So do they want the best person for the job, or is it just a matter of the publicity and the prestige? As a citizen, I think TBL is an excellent choice for the job. Will the govt be able to stomach his changes? I sincerely hope we don't see him resigning from his post in 6 months, citing "unassailable differences of viewpoint with his employer".

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