Public service announcement: Basically the BBC is doing a session in a couple of weeks (March 8th) in London exploring the impact of new technologies on viewing / listening behaviour and they're looking for volunteers to come and spend the afternoon with some key managers from around the organisation. I don't have a lot of details about the project, but I think there's a nominal contribution for the day and people who participate will be doing something good and positive both for the BBC and for all of us who end up consuming stuff that the BBC produces. If you're interested in participating then you have to fill in and return this questionaire as soon as humanly possible.
Is the dubious legality of p2p file-sharing not going to discourage most people from volunteering for this? Do they really not know how these things work?
Really really don't worry about that stuff at all. The BBC has run these things before, and they're specifically interested in how people are using this stuff. They want to know and they basically are pretty accepting of the fact that people are doing this kind of thing. Think of it this way. The BBC's content has ALREADY BEEN PAID FOR by the British people. Even thoguh they do try and sell their stuff abroad (and there's considerable importance in their being able to do that kind of thing in order to bring money back into their coffers) they're still not under the same commercial pressures as other broadcasters. They genuinely want to be distributing media online and over P2P networks (there's a BitTorrent trial going on at the moment for example). They're just unsure how to do it.
