The UK Government is reportedly looking to extend the Public Lending Rights (PLR) programme to include non-print publications such as digital books. The PLR programme compensates authors from a central fund for the potential retail loss of sales of their works. The fund isn’t endless and is capped and shared between registered authors but only applies to printed books.
It is clear that libraries have the opportunity in a digital world to become the community hubs for information, services and media. However, there are many questions still to be answered before this can be realised not least of which is their ability to fund their position within the digital landscape. Some would suggest that it is funding that will ultimately determine their role.
The UK Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) claim that in 2007/8 there were over 11 million loans of audio books and the figure is growing. The ebook is still finding its feet within the UK library but with the entrance of players such as Overdrive from the US and Gardners acquisition of Askews and Holt Jackson, it is now easy to see that digital has an even bigger opportunity than today. The issue of pay versus free and the library relationship with the High Street is still outstanding on price but it is clear that ebooks will be available from any and every library and will not take up any space, removes the question of overdue fines and could be loaned from any armchair.
The Digital Britain report, published earlier this year recommended looking at extending PLR and the DCMS is urging all parties to participate in a public consultation to discuss extending PLR. The consultation ends on 16 October. However, the question remains as to the whether the size of the pot increases or the funds just get spread thinner? It is hard to see how ebooks can be effectively covered whilst their pricing remains unstable and their market penetration is small. Why not reward an author on the work, irrespective of the format, after all a work is created once and rendered many times, so a book is a book, no matter how many times it is rendered into different formats.
Showing posts with label digital britain. Show all posts
Showing posts with label digital britain. Show all posts
Sunday, August 16, 2009
Sunday, July 26, 2009
That Was The Month That Was
July is proving an interesting month for the UK broadcasting and video market as companies change hands , focus and new enterants start to emerge.
First we saw the change of focus of Joost, which started with a fanfare , significant backing and support. Having been the driving force behind the groundbreaking Skype and Kazaa services, it looked like Joost’s founders could do nothing wrong. Alas reputation doesn’t guarantee success and this month Joost announced a reinvention refocus dropping its consumer video focus and reinvent itself as a business to business web-TV platform provider. The company had found it increasingly hard to stay afloat as a consumer-focussed independent ad-supported online video service.
Joost biggest problem was content, or the lack of great content and its model by the time it woke up.
to stream the video through web browsers it was too late as users had already gone elsewhere. Whether it will survive as a ‘white label’ service provider remains in question.
Project Kanageroo, a collaboration between BBC Worldwide, ITV and Channel 4 which was thwarted by the Competition Commission earlier this year and now has been acquired by Arqiva, which owns and operates part of the UK's terrestrial TV infrastructure and is a spectrum licence holder.
Argiva aims to use the technology to launch a new video-on-demand service with content likely to come from a range of content providers including the three broadcasters involved in the original joint venture.
Meanwhile Argiva face stiff competition from Hulu who continue to have discussions with UK broadcasters including ITV and Channel 4 and plans to launch in the UK later this year. Their offer is likely to include a significant amount of US content and would provide a one-stop shop for video on demand content.
The BBC's director general has suggested other broadcasters could share its iPlayer VOD service, which allows viewers to watch BBC shows online at a time of their choosing.
The BBC has revealed more detailed plans for, Canvas, its proposed joint venture with ITV and BT. It is now clear that what is envisaged is a platform and it intends to work with industry bodies such as the Digital Television Group, the European Broadcasting Union and the
Open IPTV Forum in defining appropriate standards. It is envisaged that Canvas will support a wide range of revenue options, including targeted advertising, micropayments and subscription and how these will be supported, including the approach to conditional access, digital rights management and billing.
The idea of a ‘box’ that combines broadcast and broadband delivered programmes with an intuitive interface is attractive to consumers. However, although the BBC has a role to play in establishing technical transmission standards, do they have the same role in designing the user experience of the box.
We envisage many more moves emerging, but the real test and answer lies in what the consumers decide to back.
First we saw the change of focus of Joost, which started with a fanfare , significant backing and support. Having been the driving force behind the groundbreaking Skype and Kazaa services, it looked like Joost’s founders could do nothing wrong. Alas reputation doesn’t guarantee success and this month Joost announced a reinvention refocus dropping its consumer video focus and reinvent itself as a business to business web-TV platform provider. The company had found it increasingly hard to stay afloat as a consumer-focussed independent ad-supported online video service.
Joost biggest problem was content, or the lack of great content and its model by the time it woke up.
to stream the video through web browsers it was too late as users had already gone elsewhere. Whether it will survive as a ‘white label’ service provider remains in question.
Project Kanageroo, a collaboration between BBC Worldwide, ITV and Channel 4 which was thwarted by the Competition Commission earlier this year and now has been acquired by Arqiva, which owns and operates part of the UK's terrestrial TV infrastructure and is a spectrum licence holder.
Argiva aims to use the technology to launch a new video-on-demand service with content likely to come from a range of content providers including the three broadcasters involved in the original joint venture.
Meanwhile Argiva face stiff competition from Hulu who continue to have discussions with UK broadcasters including ITV and Channel 4 and plans to launch in the UK later this year. Their offer is likely to include a significant amount of US content and would provide a one-stop shop for video on demand content.
The BBC's director general has suggested other broadcasters could share its iPlayer VOD service, which allows viewers to watch BBC shows online at a time of their choosing.
The BBC has revealed more detailed plans for, Canvas, its proposed joint venture with ITV and BT. It is now clear that what is envisaged is a platform and it intends to work with industry bodies such as the Digital Television Group, the European Broadcasting Union and the
Open IPTV Forum in defining appropriate standards. It is envisaged that Canvas will support a wide range of revenue options, including targeted advertising, micropayments and subscription and how these will be supported, including the approach to conditional access, digital rights management and billing.
The idea of a ‘box’ that combines broadcast and broadband delivered programmes with an intuitive interface is attractive to consumers. However, although the BBC has a role to play in establishing technical transmission standards, do they have the same role in designing the user experience of the box.
We envisage many more moves emerging, but the real test and answer lies in what the consumers decide to back.
Saturday, May 02, 2009
Piracy: Its All About Open Rights Management
Piracy is a word now synonymous with copyright infringement, but where did it originate from and what is happening today to address it?
Ben Sheffner in his blog Copyrights & Campaigns traces the equation of "piracy" with infringement back to an English bishop named John Fell, the Bishop of Oxford, who lived 1625-1686 and who resuscitated the fledgling Oxford University Press after the Restoration. During this pre-Statute of Anne period, “piracy” was widely used to describe unauthorized printing of books. Adrian Johns in his study of book publishing in England, The Nature of the Book, piracy had a “technical meaning” in the seventeenth century: “a pirate was someone who indulged in the unauthorized reprinting of a title recognized to belong to someone else by the formal conventions of the printing and bookselling community.” Piracy “soon came to stand for a wide range of perceived transgressions of civility emanating from print’s practitioners.”
Today some 350 years later the internet has reintroduced the term across all digital media with some such as the Pirate Bay choosing to use the association to describe their business.
The French Government has attempted to create a 'three strikes and you're out' law but has failed to get it through their parliament. The plan, involves internet subscribers receiving two warnings about illegal file-sharing activity and then being cut off from the internet.
The UK Government has previously threatened the ISP (internet service provider) industry with such a law but Davis Lammy the UK government minister responsible for intellectual property has now ruled out a 'three strikes' law stating it was not "the right road" for UK law makers. Lammy has stated in The Observer, that disconnection is off the Government agenda.
The recent Digital Britain report proposed the creation of a 'rights agency' and has asked companies that produce copyrighted material to contribute to a consultation on exactly what that agency would be and how it would operate. Lammy says that ‘the solutions are going to be commercial solutions. They are going to be solutions that are about ensuring people pay for content, but the ease of paying is there.’.
Importantly in today’s environment Lammy says ‘Copyright has largely been the domain of lawyers and of creatives…We are moving into an environment where so many people have to be aware of being on the right side of the law, but at the moment accessing those rights is not a straightforward process for the consumer.’ He said, ‘I want to show the person in the street that the system actually works in their interests. I want them to see it helps keep them in work.’
So piracy, infringement and protection of copyright is on the agenda of governments and there are signs that they are grappling with the open management of rights. Maybe much of the current debate about orphans in publishing is not down to them being lost but about using technology to record and manage the rights given to them and protecting them from being land grabbed for commercial gain.
Ben Sheffner in his blog Copyrights & Campaigns traces the equation of "piracy" with infringement back to an English bishop named John Fell, the Bishop of Oxford, who lived 1625-1686 and who resuscitated the fledgling Oxford University Press after the Restoration. During this pre-Statute of Anne period, “piracy” was widely used to describe unauthorized printing of books. Adrian Johns in his study of book publishing in England, The Nature of the Book, piracy had a “technical meaning” in the seventeenth century: “a pirate was someone who indulged in the unauthorized reprinting of a title recognized to belong to someone else by the formal conventions of the printing and bookselling community.” Piracy “soon came to stand for a wide range of perceived transgressions of civility emanating from print’s practitioners.”
Today some 350 years later the internet has reintroduced the term across all digital media with some such as the Pirate Bay choosing to use the association to describe their business.
The French Government has attempted to create a 'three strikes and you're out' law but has failed to get it through their parliament. The plan, involves internet subscribers receiving two warnings about illegal file-sharing activity and then being cut off from the internet.
The UK Government has previously threatened the ISP (internet service provider) industry with such a law but Davis Lammy the UK government minister responsible for intellectual property has now ruled out a 'three strikes' law stating it was not "the right road" for UK law makers. Lammy has stated in The Observer, that disconnection is off the Government agenda.
The recent Digital Britain report proposed the creation of a 'rights agency' and has asked companies that produce copyrighted material to contribute to a consultation on exactly what that agency would be and how it would operate. Lammy says that ‘the solutions are going to be commercial solutions. They are going to be solutions that are about ensuring people pay for content, but the ease of paying is there.’.
Importantly in today’s environment Lammy says ‘Copyright has largely been the domain of lawyers and of creatives…We are moving into an environment where so many people have to be aware of being on the right side of the law, but at the moment accessing those rights is not a straightforward process for the consumer.’ He said, ‘I want to show the person in the street that the system actually works in their interests. I want them to see it helps keep them in work.’
So piracy, infringement and protection of copyright is on the agenda of governments and there are signs that they are grappling with the open management of rights. Maybe much of the current debate about orphans in publishing is not down to them being lost but about using technology to record and manage the rights given to them and protecting them from being land grabbed for commercial gain.
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