Digital Britain: Rant Warning. Sweariness ahoy.
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
The Digital Britain report is out and I'm not convinced by it.
There are good things -
50p a month to ensure 2mbp broadband nationwide by 2012 (just in time to
stream the apocalypse). Nice one.
Three Strike Rule for File Sharers. - not so good. Here's why:
1: Competition.
- no UK ISP is going to hand customers to a competitor. I worked for a
cable ISP in the USA who enforced the DMCA by suspending access and
terminating it for repeat offenders. It worked because we were the only
game in town. No one else was willing to drag the internet out to the cuds
where we did, so if you were busted for DMCA three times, your internet was
GONE and not coming back. If we'd had competitors, there would have been a
different business model. In the UK there are a dizzying number of ways to
get internet service, so if I'm determined to go P2P and get busted, I will
switch provider, be back on line very quickly thereafter.
2: Privacy.
- the way in which you catch a person sharing copyrighted files over a P2P
network is to browse the share folder they keep on their computer. Let's
imagine for a moment that you'd be dumb enough to leave all the illegal
material you own in that folder: the P2P network has access to it, because
that's the point of Peer To Peer sharing: as you download a file you're
also uploading it to other people who are downloading it...and uploading it
to still others. It means that someone out there is using the P2P client,
or something very like it, to wander around looking at the contents of your
share folder. Sure, if you can be identified as seeding a copyrighted file
then you could be in trouble. But otherwise, it's an open invitation for
people to snoop.
In the USA, the DMCA makes it clear that it's seeding and sharing that
people have a problem with: leech all you want!
3: Technical expertise and workarounds.
- I am not a hacker, not even close to being a hacker. Yet even I, less
than a script-kiddie, know more than one way to share a file. The comments
in the Digital Britain report make it seem as though P2P is the only way,
but I know it's not.
- I know that if I want to share files that I shouldn't be sharing, I need
to obscure my tracks on the internet. I can do this several ways. If I
was technically minded, I would do some learning and read up about IP
spoofing. After all, the primary way to track internet activity is by IP
address and if you can hide yours, or make yours look like someone else's,
so much the better. I've seen people become victims of this sort of thing.
- there are legitimate services out there - FTP, Drop Box, newsgroups -
that share information and are specifically created to do so. Sharing
information is what the Internet is about. Unless someone is get all
President Madagascar about the internet and block everything except Port
80, someone is going to find a way to use a legit service to do something
they shouldn't.
Solution?
- Make getting access to your content easy and worthwhile. Do a decent
deal with the artists and creative people for Digital Rights. Recognise
that the internet, and the people who use it, have very little time for
borders and geography. Don't geo-lock content, make it available for
subscription or by accepting the presence of advertising. If your content
is good enough and the service simple enough, chances are I'll pay a fee to
watch a show.
- if you are the artist, look...I have to confess, my relationship with
your art is much stronger when I have a relationship with you. My
favourite writers all have a presence on Twitter, for example, and have
demostrated that they think a bit like I do. Instant connection, and
instant desire to keep them working on their art by...ta.daaaaa! Buying
Their Stuff!
- Stop stressing about Monetizing things. Ferthelovamike, the Internet
does not require monetizing! It is not a place! It is not a product! And
fuck you if you think it is! The internet is a delivery system and a
communications tool. You don't have to monetize it, you just have to have
a product people want to pay for. What a lot of companies are running into
is that people genuinely don't think their products are worth paying for.
- Any old shit you choose to give us is will no longer do.
BBC Shares Licence Fee with ITV and C4
- No. Thrice no and double fuck off.
- for one thing, did the BBC go crying to .gov when ITV and C4 were riding
high? No. Have .gov beaten the BBC like a dog and dragged it around the
yard? Yes. Is a media free from corporate editorial control and also free
from the .gov influence a good thing that we're about to lose?
Yes.
IF ITV and C4 are unable to generate revenue from advertising, because
their programming is unable to capture viewers, I do not want to subsidize
them. They have failed. I'm very sorry about that, because even at it's
worst C4 is head and shoulders above the likes of ABC, and I'm also sorry
that ITV and C4 weren't smart enough to compete with Sky, or Virgin. We
keep being told we are a capitalist nation, and that means sometimes
companies fail. It should not ever be the job of the government to prop up
failing businesses.
It is also a terrible mistake to sacrifice the BBC in order to do it.
The BBC is:
The best news service in the world, although I hear surprising things about
Al Jazeera.
The most comprehensive and consistently the highest quality radio service
in the world. BBC 7 in particular has been a thing of joy - the other
night I lay back, headphones on, tea in hand, listening to Alan Bennett
read "The Wind in the Willows". Glorious. Utterly glorious.
If ITV and C4 cannot compete without sharing in the BBC's revenue source -
which has been an excuse for the forces of .gov to hold the BBC to ransom
over the last decade or so - then they have failed as ventures. If C4 is
the natural home of digital innovation, why do I not ever visit a single C4
website? Why do I never hear about the exciting things they are doing?
And why are we going to punish the BBC because they failed?
If we divert funds from the BBC, we stand to see a drop in program quality.
I for one am not willing to miss out on stuff like Top Gear, Doctor Who,
Ashes to Ashes, Being Human and a variety of other shows the BBC has
produced in the last few years. I don't want talent shows, or reality
shows. I want stuff like the BBC's poetry season or QI. Stuff, in other
words, that if I know where to look I can find online. Because people
think it's worth sharing and preserving. A lot of it...most of it...seems
to be BBC content.
It argues that people are not generally keen to share the output of other channels because it's of a limited appeal. Folks in America are generally very impressed with BBC output, and some stuff from elsewhere - Primeval ( now cancelled! Booo!) and Skins, for example.
Enough of this for the moment.
3 comments:
Hear hear!
As usual, you are right. About everything.
File sharing: ditto.
BBC: ditto.
Except i disagree about BBC news being so good - it USED to be but the insidious Slant creeps ever further in. (Now, is that a mixed metaphor or is it not?)
The worst thing Channel 4 ever did was to get rid of Sesame Street.
nersodi: Little jingly thing like a string with glittery bead bits at points along it, like the kind of decorative whatnot that apparently are sexy when worn by belly dancers or a young Barbara Windsor, with sweeties instead of beads, and hung around the brow of a hound who is thereby tantalised by being unable to reach the dangling treats while able to smell them.
Pretty much my thinking.
Why don't content providers, and that's all the media, music, broadcasters, publishers etc just wake up and smell the digital age. They are all too mired in geographical borders, regional and rights issues and the like to conceive that actually if they removed the fences around their product and sold it for a reasonable price on the internet then bingo you'll probably get less people going down the piracy route.
I only use P2P to see the shows that I'd have to wait for in the UK. Sky have been sporadically good at trying to broadcast 24, Lost and Battlestar within days of their US transmission. We can't go the simulcast route simply because of time zone differences but the gap can and should be closed. And there isn't anything stopping the likes of NBC and ABC from putting these episodes onto iTunes or their own sites the day after broadcast and allowing international access for a small fee.
Distribution and rights is the key to all these companies selling their products internationally via the internet. That's the market place now. We have to recognise that traditional ways of buying programmes and transmitting them is looking rather analogue. A good example is BBC4's treatment of Mad Men Season 2. I saw all of Season 2 via the internet as it went out on AMC. It took BBC4 probably nine months to actually schedule those episodes. And I watched them all again because they were also on BBCHD and I could see them in HD. AMC and BBC got me twice. And I'll probably buy the Blu-Ray. Somewhere along the line one corporate behemoth or another made money off me.
The idea of ITV and C4 creaming off the license fee feels me with dread. As you say, these broadcasters have clearly failed in their commercial dealings. Like you, I can't recall using any of C4's so called innovative digital presence. Their public broadcasting remit is pretty much in the toilet after they started chasing lowest common denominator audiences with so called 'reality' shows. They have a good rep for drama but make so little of it each year. If you start tinkering with the BBC's license fee then quality at the BBC will obviously be affected. I know the money is for propping up local news and children's programmes but this is a lack of funding ITV and C4 should be addressing. They need to get their priorities right. As a license fee payer, the BBC also needs to get accountability down to a fine art, because I'm sure that a number of us will begrudge this move and could rightly claim they are using our money to pay for ITV and C4 programmes that we don't actually want to pay for. The old argument about not paying your license because you don't watch BBC will no longer be true.
I'm generally up about Digital Britain's commitment to skills development, digital literacy and partnership working but it's closed the door after the horse has bolted on piracy, rights and IP.
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