New Media and the Creative Industries In the UK

The Culture, Media and Sport Committee report

Opening paragraph of summary

The pace of change is so rapid that solutions to some of the problems that we sought to address have already begun to emerge. However, at the same time, new challenges are being posed by technological developments that are now coming to market. The ease with which consumers can now access content, copy it and keep it, makes the protection of intellectual property and enforcement of copyright law of far greater importance to the health, and indeed the survival, of our creative industries than ever before. Some have argued that the rights of intellectual property owners should be limited in order to promote the spread of knowledge and creativity. However, we take the view that this is a matter of choice for the creators and that rights owners who wish to retain control over the use and exploitation of their material should be able to do so. We also believe that the level and period of remuneration as well as the future direction of the development of technology are generally best left to the market to determine.

I am not convinced entirely that it is best left to the market. If you look at Korea, the investment in a digital infrastructure as catapulted an economy from being a backwater to a real global player.

I understand that this paper deals with the commercial context – but I think one needs a more joined up approach to infrastructure.

This paper also outlines the pressure being applied to commercial and copyright legislation which will become even more pressing for a variety of reasons.

In a knowledge economy our creative industries become a key component of employment and wealth generation, to this end ensuring the creative industries are well invsted in and financed makes a great deal of sense

The creative industries already make a major contribution to the UK economy and this is likely to continue to grow. The rapid take-up of new media offers enormous opportunities for both consumers and businesses and we welcome the increasing recognition of this. We look forward to the publication of the Government?s own Green Paper and hope that this will include many of the measures that we have recommended.

There are some 27 recommendations at the end of the report dealing with a host of commercial and legal issues created by living in a digital socio-economic eco-system.

The introduction quotes a BBC report from 2004

Digital radio and TV audiences will soon have the same flexibility as Internet users to control when and where they watch and listen to programmes. We expect seven in ten homes to be able to schedule their viewing and listening at a time that suits them best by 2016. Many will use personal video recorders (PVRs), which will be able to hold as much as 4,000 hours of content (equivalent to six months of output of a 24-hour television channel), compared to just 40 hours today. At the same time, downloading and file sharing of video and audio from the Internet will become commonplace for many people.

The current report states

Less than three years later, much of that vision has already come to pass, and the
predictions for 2016 seem, if anything, conservative. A revolution is underway not just in the way in which we watch television programmes and film but in the way we listen to music, gather news information, and use all forms of creative content: it could be said that the reproduction and dissemination of creative content has come to new life thanks to recent technological developments.2 This revolution challenges all elements of the delivery chain, from creators themselves through to distributors, broadcasters and consumers. These challenges are largely ones for the market to address and resolve, by adapting, by
exploring ways in which it can draw upon what technology can offer and by judging how to meet the public?s appetite. There are, nonetheless, roles for regulators and the Government in ensuring an open and fair marketplace, and in preserving a balance between public access to knowledge and ideas on the one hand and the right and ability of creators and rights holders to exploit full commercial value from creative products on the other. This report is about those challenges, roles and balances.

Of course Tomi and I have been charting these developments since 2003 and independently since 1999. But its good to see the government applying their thinking to such important issues.

One small point of interest to me was this

The Institute of Practitioners in Advertising described a ?seismic shift? in the relationship between consumers and the media, with consumers now dictating how they used it.

When we asked the IPA to endorse our findings in 2005, we were told they could not because it was a “polemic”. So I find their current perspective – interesting.

My question is and I understand that there does need to be different perspectives applied – but should there not be an holistic overview of what a digital universe means to us all in all our walks of life.

We see Education, Media, Commerce, Society, Organisation, Democracy all challenged by the same issues.

I wonder if anyone is looking at this universe from an holistic perspective? What benefits could that bring us?

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Posted in: Convergence, Culture, Economics, Education, Engagement Marketing, Generation C, Government & Politics, iPTV, Law, Media, Networks, Philosophy, Social Networks, Society, Television, Trends, Web/Tech

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