We first reported it a while back, but the BBC's Creative Archive is now well underway and a group of UK-based copyright activists and concerned license-payers have gotten together to lend their support to the project. The Archive is a project to put the BBC's enormous archive on the net for free viewing and remixing by the license-paying public. If the Beeb pulls this off, it will be the largest and most ambitious open-content project in the history of the world; a shining proof of the idea that the sky doesn't fall when you relax your copyright a little. I mean, we're talking the future of public service broadcasting here. So the Friends of the Creative Archive are a bunch of concerned people who want to keep this on track. It's certain that there's going to be a lot of opposition to this -- from rights-holders, commercial broadcasters, even parts of the Beeb. But at the end of the day, the license-payers bought that programming, and it's not doing us any good sitting on the BBC's shelves. You can help: if you're a license payer, you can join the Friends, and there will be lots of opportunities in the near future to petition the Beeb, the Governors, the DCMS and Parliament for this -- there's an open letter now that you can sign onto. More here ...