The BBC announced last month that it would be slashing much of ts online programming due to severe budget cuts. As part of the cutbacks, it planned to axe jobs and websites. Some 172 of those websites are scheduled to not just go dormat, but to actually be deleted, within the coming year.
But one good online citizen – an anonymous one at that – has taken the time to spider and archive the endangered content and provide the material in a BitTorrent file (available here).
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It’s an act, s/he says, that points to the continuing decline of online storage. “The purpose of this project is to show how the entire 172 public facing websites that are earmarked for deletion have been copied, archived, distributed and republished online – independently – for the price of a cup of Starbucks coffee (around $3.99).” In other words, the cost-savings from the BBC’s gutting of its online presence: minimal.
The act also has a political side. “The purpose of this project is to expose the ‘cost savings’ of this proposed exercise as nothing more than a charade to appease the detractors to a strong BBC and to curry favour with the current government. BBC’s current senior management has demonstrated a lack of leadership and a lack of courage in pushing back on these demands.”
Political or not, the archivists of the Internet are thankful. Perhaps the accountants at the BBC should be too.
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