E.R.T. is the Greek television and radio broadcasting company that is part of the public sector and is supervised by the minister of state. Every Greek citizen has periodically (several times per year) to pay a certain fee (it is incorporated within the electricity bill) so that ERT can secure a sufficient budget to run. Recently, the Greek government proudly announced the initiation of a project regarding the digitisation of the old archives of the ERT that are an invaluable cultural legacy for the Greek society.
However, there is still an ‘innocent fraud’ behind this ‘fancy’ endeavour: the digital archives are still under the exclusive property of the ERT. The story goes on as the Microsoft’s formats WMV have been selected to support the digitisation of the archives.
Our concerns related to the digitisation of the archives, which are actually a Commons for all the Greek people, are evident. In addition, supposing that ERT turns into a private company then a Commons will inevitably fall into private hands. Within the scripts hosted and written by P2P foundation, we have repeatedly emphasised the difference amongst the peer, private and state property.
P2P foundation in Greece demands/suggests:
1_that the archives are obtainable under legal licenses such as the Creative Commons or the GP
2_that open source formats are adopted to support the digitisation of the archives
3_that the archives of the ERT are organised within an official Commons in order to show publicly what the difference amongst peer property and others proprietary regimes is
4_that there is a need to build and reinforce a social alliance premised on participation, voluntarism and innovation that will pretend to the right of peer property and guard the Commons. Open source and Free software communities, bloggers, citizens as well as progressive members of the EU parliament should take part in this effort.
We ask the foreign public to support this endeavour by promoting the “ERT case” throughout their network.
For more info (in Greek) click here