qwghlm.co.uk : because all the other domain names were taken

The BBC’s Sound Index project is a very interesting (and according to my friend in the technology unit, fairly quietly-kept secret) site. It pulls data from a variety of sites including Last.fm, iTunes and MySpace (with permission) and works out who the hottest artists right now are, with the ability to recommend you stuff based on your tastes. Although the odd recommendation for me is a bit iffy (most notably Lily Allen) the search is impressive and is clearly pulling in some heavy data crunching.

While the BBC have gone to great lengths to secure permission to use album art and other services’ data, it’s a pity then, about the mistaken attitude to copyright of free (as in speech) content on the site. For example, Coldplay, the artist summary is basically a clean copy of the introduction to the corresponding Wikipedia entry. While Wikipedia is credited at the very bottom, this isn’t enough; Wikipedia’s licence is like the Creative Commons sharealike clauses – copies and derivative works must carry the same terms & conditions to prevent people wholly privatising the content and others can share them as well.

Technically the BBC Sound Index is breaching the terms of Wikipedia’s copyright – I’m sure out of ignorance rather than deliberate malice, I must stress. However, given how other arms of the BBC wish t enforce its own copyright on other people, their digital strategy people really need to read up on how they can use free content before using it in projects as big (and potentially awesome) as this.

By the way, I have sent them an edifying email outlining the copyright breach as it stands, I’ll keep you up to date about what happens.