Cory Doctorow writes:

<<The BBC has struck a deal to put all of Britain's publicly owned paintings online – presently, 80 percent of the 200,000 publicly owned paintings are not on display. This is ferociously awesome, at least on the face of it, though one can imagine all kinds of ways they could screw this up (crappy EULA, stupid Flash-based DRM, low-rez only, wasting license-fee money trying to keep non-British IP addresses out of the collection, etc). But, assuming they do this the way you'd expect something built by and for the Internet would work, this is the best news for free culture that I've heard since the BBC announced that they were going to put all their archives online for free remixing. Let's just hope that this promise is an easier one to keep – it's an embarrassment to see this once-great beacon of public service reinvent itself as a DRM platform (iPlayer) and a glorified video retailer for Americans (Worldwide).>>

http://www.boingboing.net/2009/01/28/bbc-promises-to-put.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/jan/28/bbc-digitalmedia