An article on the BBC says that the corporation is to run a trial on releasing its archive with a view, one hopes, to releasing the whole archive to everybody via Freeview or IPTV.
In my wilder dreams, I hope that the BBC will allow free access to all so that users can either download or embed the material in sites/blogs and so on. Just think of the conversation and the (re)discovery of old episodes.
I confess I’m skeptical about whether this would ever happen given the current plans for the DRMed player for Windows (but Mac is being worked on I think).
I wait with crossed fingers.