It's been a long week, but thanks for all your letters and emails to the Online Dungeon. Most of them were actually directed in a general sense towards the paper in response to the bombings in London last week. You can get an idea of what they said at this post.
But ahead of our letters page tomorrow, it's time to look through of some of this week's comments. If you see anything on the site that you want to talk about, email us at online.feedback@theguardian.com or leave a comment below.
Creative conflict
The biggest talking point this week was our lead comment piece in which Ben Hammersley took the BBC to task for not making its Creative Archive available yet. "Why are the creative industries in the UK allowed to take public money without fulfilling the obligation to deliver publicly accessible value?" he wrote. "Why is this even an option? We have paid for it, now let us use it."
Several readers dropped supportive notes, including Bertil Gralvik from Sweden, who said "important pieces of culture should, at some point in time, be made available to the public, no matter who paid for the production". Frankie Roberto, meanwhile, told us it was "spot on": "Rights management is a nightmare, but the BBC has huge teams of people working that area, and they should just get on with it and release stuff."
However, not everyone agrees. Jennie Macfie, who licenses material through her company's film archive, says that not paying the owners of older films could seriously damage the industry. "When these films were first made there was no idea that 30 years or more later they would still have any kind of value or interest," she wrote.
"Film makers charged very little to make them, sometimes making little or no profit in order to make a particularly interesting film or work for an unknown but inspiring band or artist. None that I know of ever had enough spare cash to contribute to pension funds! When my company licenses their work, their share of the licence fee is the nearest thing most will have to an occupational pension, often for decades of work. So I resist strenuously the idea that the BBC should make their work available to the public at no charge which would inevitably decrease their commercial value."
Chess chase continues
John Gilder got in touch to answer the question put forward by John Colenutt last week: "What happens if one chess computer plays another one?".
"Well," came the answer. "If they are both good enough, after due deliberation - and without moving any pieces - white will offer black a draw, which black will accept." Any other business
Finally, a reader request. Roy Chiverton lost his rag with BT after they managed to install some non-working BT Yahoo dial-up software onto his desktop - particularly as he could only solve the problem by calling one of their premium rate help lines (rather than one of the cheaper numbers).
"Happily, I haven't gone to broadband yet - though I plan to," he writes. "Recommendations, anybody?"
That's all for this week. Remember, if you want to talk about anything, email us at online.feedback@theguardian.com or leave a comment below.
